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Whereas commenting on the home scene, it’s laborious to search out one thing that has not been commented upon, analysed threadbare and never recognized. There aren’t any unknown knowns. Whereas preserving the optimism on ventilator, one thing very disturbing lurks within the shadows on our nationwide scene with far-reaching social, psychological, political and financial implications. And that’s ‘apolitical apathy’ in all its ugly types. This apathy afflicts our physique and soul, and our state and society, and it manifests itself in bizarre methods.
At societal stage, folks, for instance the bike mafia specifically, pay no heed to any guidelines, rules, legal guidelines and courtesies when on highway, and the visitors cop haplessly and hopelessly shrug in despair, frustration and apathy. Academics willfully keep away from instructing in colleges to encourage college students to return to their personal academies for exam-specific and marks-oriented tuition, and to not be educated per se. Medical doctors over-prescribe exams for fee within the laboratory charges. Attorneys don’t inform the entire reality to purchasers when taking in instances. Officers get pleasure from lengthy prayer breaks whereas enterprise of the state and fellow citizenry can wait in agony or come once more. Companies, sure respected companies, import overseas gadgets by way of casual channels to defy import ban and purchase {dollars} off the open market to pay for it in money…furthering rupee devaluation and greenback hike.
Employees on building websites simply do the job as worst as doable and are solely bothered about their remunerations. The results of shoddy building be damned. Hawkers promote merchandise as deceitfully as doable. Transporters in employed transport deal with passengers with respectability, only a notch larger than that reserved for cattle. All people with alternative would cheat in taxes, steal electrical energy and divert to misuse arable water. And all, sure principally all would take into account deceiving the Authorities good and completely okay. And this can be a snapshot.
On the political stage, the economic system was in free fall whereas the corruption-laced cabal of PDM was doing politics and politics alone. And earlier than that, the nice chief left no stone unturned in exposing…solely exposing corruption and the corrupt, with no tangible outcomes. Recommendation to focus on governance as a substitute was bothersome for his fragile sensibilities and simply offended ego.
Add to the above poisonous combine, the foundation explanation for our financial woes. And that pricey reader…has been the truth that ‘we’re hooked on spending extra as a nation than we earn.’ Pure and easy. Within the heydays of our ‘relevance’, our ‘associates not masters’ would come to our rescue by way of budgetary help and different types of largesse. No extra. Therefore the disaster. And now, pitifully, escaping the noose of FATF, and securing mortgage from one and all are thought-about achievements, worthy of congratulations.
And with a begging bowl round our neck, we’d utter nonsense like ‘completely not’, accuse overseas governments of meddlesomely exacerbating our plight, go to Moscow when it assaults Ukraine and go for reasonable Pakistan-harming however politically engaging diatribes to cling to energy or regain it in order that these round proceed to reap hefty financial and monetary windfalls. Therefore, it’s okay to proceed to unleash the media brigade to foster, promote and propagate falsehoods, spin each truth, twist every reality and confuse every problem.
On the state stage, for a while now, the official equipment has been in retreat, ready for messiahs…and that too in good numbers, to return and put all that’s unsuitable with this nation whereas doing nothing itself. From shopkeepers to labourers to petty officers to academics to attorneys to merchants… to women and men, younger and previous in any respect social strata, we’re all consumed by politics, and common apathy elsewhere. With exceptions, a number of and much between, no person needs to do his or her job, and has an opinion on every part beneath the solar. And take pleasure in lofty, acrimonious and divisive political verbiage.
Whereas turning a blind eye to our personal failings and taking our respective obligations significantly and truthfully, we relish find fault proper, left and centre. We have now turn out to be social media warriors, breaking essentially the most sensational information…any information…to family and friends, regardless of its penalties and with out checking its authenticity and validity.
On this atmosphere of despair, confusion and lack of route, there aren’t any leaders bigger than life, who might be function fashions, who may rally the nation in these making an attempt occasions and gel the folks. It’s crises like these that convey out the worst (and hopefully the very best) in folks.
In my final column, I opposed holding elections beneath this poisoned environment within the foreseeable future, as it might additional polarise an already divided state and society. And that stability and de-politicisation, preserving our sham democracy on maintain, are callings of the hour. These on the helm can choose from the out there choices of nationwide authorities, or technocrats, or elections, and so forth within the nation’s very best curiosity.
If we step again and zoom out to search out what ails Pakistan essentially the most, moreover the curse of apathy, we’ll put our finger on management disaster and faltering economic system in any sequence, contributing to instability…financial, social, political and psychological. Hypothetically talking, we choose elections. Electioneering, holding elections and the run-up to the sham democracy ‘once more’ would additional agonise an already tormented frequent man. As no political celebration has any financial plan or succesful crew. We have now seen all of them. None has the nerve to impose the much-needed agriculture tax. None has the imaginative and prescient to undertake financial reforms (we nonetheless pay by way of the nostril from the lopsided IPP contracts of Benazir period). None can restructure our import-dependent economic system to jack up exports. None can reign within the rampant corruption that has now seeped into our physique politics by turning into a enterprise. As a result of the beneficiaries of corruption sit within the legislatures and rub shoulders within the corridors of energy, privilege and protocol. For them, elections are simply hole guarantees primarily based on hopes and aspirations with out strong foundations.
And any new authorities would cry foul in its early years for an empty treasury, as is the norm. Therefore instability and financial woes would persist. The acidic and abrasive personalities of our leaders additional compound an already difficult nationwide situation. Elections won’t heal us…interval.
Let this sham democracy perish, as its stakeholders are non-democratic at core! There can be no obituary!
Revealed in The Categorical Tribune, September 7th, 2023.
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