A STITCH IN TIME

Natural disasters are a phenomenon that cause widespread death and destruction. These calamities in addition to bringing misery to the affected people also cause dejection, distress and disunity particularly if the people come to believe that their government did not do its best to alleviate their suffering. In Pakistan, the politicians usually take advantage of these feelings of alienation to extract their own pound of flesh, this is the sad history. Pakistan has suffered at the hands of these natural disasters multiple times in its history. Most of these disasters have happened due to regular floods in the rainy seasons and also the two devastating earthquakes: one in the 70s and the other in 2005. Seasonal floods are a routine happening resulting in huge loss of life and property and damage to the infrastructure. The political elite has restricted its efforts to spontaneous flood relief measures and nothing more, whereas this phenomenon requires a wholesome and sustained effort to manage the rivers including storage of flood waters. More often than not, such events in Pakistan have been used for image building or narrative building purposes.

The Bhola Cyclone that hit erstwhile East Pakistan in 1970 was an event that caused immense death, destruction and suffering to the people of the affected area. Additionally, and more importantly, it disillusioned the people of East Pakistan and caused an innate hatred of the government that was being run from the West Pakistan. One can argue that there was some government structure in East Pakistan that was being run by the Bengalis themselves but that did not matter, and a narrative was built that the West Pakistan dominated government did nothing for the people. In my opinion, this disaster alone eliminated any remaining reasons for the Bengalis of East Pakistan to remain a part of Pakistan. The East Pakistani politicians used the occasions to advance their separatist agenda and the rest is history.

The recent rains in Karachi have caused widespread loss of property and damage to the infrastructure. There were signs of disillusionment with the government appearing amongst Karachites. With already present centrifugal tendencies, this was the moment that things could have taken an unfortunate turn for the solidarity of Pakistan. Though not exactly like the 1970 East Pakistan situation yet provision of relief to Karachi was basically the responsibility of Sind Government, but there was a deliberate effort to drag the Federal government into it through statements counting the number of MNAs the city had given to the PTI. The butcher of Karachi would have caused a furor on these very lines, had he not been restrained from open venomous speeches though I am sure there must have been efforts to channelize the opinion of the population on these very lines through clandestine means. I have seen a post on the social media wherein the lack of relief support from other parts of Pakistan was highlighted. Why the PPP government did not take any discernible steps to alleviate the suffering of the people raises many questions, the least serious being one of lack of commitment, capacity, capability, care and concern for the suffering masses.

In this context, the central government and the establishment appear to have been alive to the situation and the hidden dangers in allowing the situation to deteriorate to the extent whereby people got really disillusioned with the governance structure. The Sind government had already started to shift the blame under the plea of lack of resources etc. The announcement of relief package for Karachi is thus the most appropriate and timely step the Federal government has taken to alleviate the suffering of the people and to avoid the disillusionment of the masses. A real stitch in time.