No One Talks About The Reality Of Pakistan Circa 2008-2018
By Mehr Tarar
November
15, 2020
Last
Sunday, an autumn smoggy day, I travelled to a village near Sargodha, the city
in Punjab where I spent the first sixteen years of my life. Accompanied by my
sister and a first cousin, the day trip was for the Dua for an uncle, one of my
late mother’s brothers-in-law, who had passed a few days ago.
Imran
Khan, Prime Minister of Pakistan
Image
Credit: AP
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As we moved
off the motorway down the narrow road leading to the destination, shaded by
lush green trees punctuated with unripe oranges, my mind wandered to the
endless summers and shadowy winters of my childhood in my mother’s village,
Kolo Tarar. Most roads to villages and most villages themselves in central
Punjab have a uniformity of time standing still. Not much changes while time
continues its relentless march half-listening to its rhythmic monotone.
Not much
changes in Punjab’s sparsely populated rural areas with their simple brick and
mud houses, mostly not more than simple structures of two rooms and a
courtyard; motorbikes and goats moving side by side on roads well-travelled
going nowhere; men and women dressed in nondescript clothes that remain
impervious to latest fashions as years pass them by without glancing backwards;
noisy children, kohl lining their wide eyes, their mouths stretching in big
lazy smiles; old people shuffling about noiselessly, histories of their lives
and their village deeply lined on their time-beaten faces; stray dogs lolling
in their sense of belonging to a place where humans don’t hate animals without
collars, without fancy breed tags.
Villagers
all over Pakistan, despite their varying geographical and seasonal and other
material characteristics have a bleak similarity. That while lives of their
landed gentry remain entrenched in various outward signs of prosperity and
all-is-well robustness, the lives of the majority of the villagers remain
unaltered. Despite their exposure to advancements in big cities through various
means including the good old television and now internet in some places, their
lives continue in ellipses.
And that is
something that I always note during my increasingly infrequent trips to my own
village or that of one of my many relatives. The unaltering reality of life for
most of my compatriots. They don’t just exist in villages though. They are all
over Pakistan.
In towns,
small, congested, teeming with humans and vehicles so densely clustered it is
hard to say where heartbeats end and machines hum. In cities, badly planned and
haphazardly expanded, where so many people live in such dismal conditions it is
a miracle they continue to carry on with the un-viewed theatre of their lives
for as long as they do.
In more
than seven decades of the existence of my beautiful country with its immense
resources, its gifted and smart people, its multi-hued seasons, its lofty
mountains, its historic rivers, its magnificent Sufis, its splendid writers and
poets, its hardworking aam aadmi, its smart businessmen, its sturdy
crop-growers, its brave soldiers, its valiant revolutionaries, its strong
elderly, its remarkable young, there is the unaltered reality that is so dark
it is almost invisible in its mundaneness: life of millions of those who
struggle in a manner that strips life of every good thing attached to its name.
On November
15, 2020, as three of Pakistan’s biggest and most important political
parties–the first time in power in the centre PTI, and the old and experienced
PML-N and PPP–fight the election in Gilgit-Baltistan, promising to change the
fate and the life choices of the inhabitants of the stunning region, I shake my
head, a quiet sense of unease shadowing my almost irritating optimism that
things will get better. All of them are asking the aam aadmi, the regular
Pakistani, to vote for them.
As the
Imran Khan-led PTI government struggles to fulfil its big promises and bigger
rhetoric, I hear the promises of the leaders of the two old and experienced
parties. Maryam Nawaz Sharif and Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, the charismatic new
leaders of their parties–Maryam has taken over her father’s party and Bilawal
that of his mother’s –speak more than Imran Khan, and they promise much more
too. There is just one problem. The system that they say has been made a mess
of by Khan and that they now promise to change is the creation of the decades
of the ideology, governance and government of their own parties, and that of
General Pervez Musharraf.
Much is
being said about the supremacy of democracy, sanctity of vote, transparency of
the electoral system, demarcation of institutional domains, imperatives of
non-interference of establishment in civilian matters. Much is being said about
Khan’s government’s “ineptness”, its “inability” to make the life of the common
man better, its failure to control inflation, its fatal blow to the economic
growth of PML-N’s government of 2013-2018, its attacks on the huge strides made
in the time of PPP in 2008-2013. Much is being said about the motorways and the
steady dollar rate and the few hospitals and universities, some mega projects,
some costly trains and buses. Much is being said about the “glorious” Pakistan
that Khan inherited and “singlehandedly destroyed” in two years and three
months.
Imran Khan
became the prime minister of Pakistan in August 2018.
No one
talks about the reality of Pakistan circa 2008-2018. A decade. Ten years. The
reality of the invisible Pakistani.
In those
ten years, millions of dreams were dashed. Countless hearts broken, some so
tiny they weren’t even aware of the shattering of their hearts. Too many lives
in so much pain it didn’t matter how they ended. The Aam Aadmi, the regular
Pakistani, whose vote is the difference between being in power and not being in
power is the invisible being that is only seen in the time of an election. And
forgotten quicker than a 5am dream.
In those ten years, 2008-2018…
In 2013, 24.3 percent of Pakistanis were living
under the official poverty line.
In 2018 the number was 24 percent.
In 2013, more than 40 percent of Pakistanis did
not have access to clean drinking water.
In 2018, 21 million Pakistanis did not have
access to clean drinking water.
In 2013, Pakistan had 25 million out-of-school
children.
In 2018, Pakistan had 22.8 million
out-of-school children.
In 2013, 50 million people did not have access
to grid electricity.
In 2018, the number was the same: 50 million
In 2013, 869 women were killed in the name of “honour.”
In 2018, 1,000 women were killed.
In 2013, maternal mortality rate was
161/100,000.
In 2018, it was 140/100,000.
A report in 2018 stated: 40 percent of the
under-five children in Pakistan have stunted growth.
Where
Pakistan stands after five years of Imran Khan’s government in 2023, time will
be the best judge. The voter will decide. In the meantime: who is accountable
for the hell of 2008-2018? Who is responsible for the misery of millions? The
pain of the invisible Pakistani. The powerful powerless voter. Who is
answerable? For the uneducated children. The gaunt humans dying of
water-related diseases. The broken souls wailing in dark slums. The killed
women with shards of dreams in their half-closed eyes. The unformed bodies of
children with old people’s faces. The emaciated mothers in dimly lit rooms with
their new-born babies crying in their dead arms.
Original Headline: Imran Khan did not destroy
Pakistan. You did
Source: The Gulf News
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