Food security in Pakistan has taken two different dimensions during the last six years. It has gone from malnutrition and lack of natural access to the basic amenities of life to abject haplessness after disasters, earthquake in 2005 and then floods 2009. Man made disasters emanating from terrorism and war on terror made people leave their homes and hearths to get displaced within their own country, primarily KPK and FATA; commonly known as Internally Displaced People (IDPs).
Defining hunger and categorizing it into plausible words is not going to help in the downward spiral Pakistan is in. Hunger and lack of subsistence is a traditional, historical problem in this land. As Gandhi once said that the world has enough to feed its inhabitants, Pakistan has enough to feed its people. The rotten feudalism inherited from earlier monarchies and then the British colonialists has kept majority of the Pakistani populace mal-nourished, under privileged, and kept a political system in place that segregates most of the people in this country out of the decision making process. Thus, inequality, lack of opportunity, and injustice. This is a ready recipe for exploitation of the most by a privileged few. It ingrains fear of the powerful, which, in turn, keeps the powerful well entrenched.
Structural food insecurity is what we call the looming large hunger in the country. This is the mother of all evil in the Pakistani society. Dependence of the tenets on the landowners for every morsel they take makes them incapable of any struggle for democracy, freedom, equality, or social justice. Famous revolutionary Urdu Poet Habib Jalib (1928-93) puts it poignantly into his many verses. One of them saying, ”Whenever I ponder upon the reasons for apathy in my environ, I reach the a single conclusion: slavery going back into many centuries is the cause of social apathy.” This is very much in sinc with Frantz Fenon’s idea of Internalization. Here internalization doesn’t have a racial colour. It is rather a feeling of inferiority in front of the ruling elite, the masters, of accepting the state of life as fate, something irrefutable.
When this internalization takes its roots into the socio-cultural structure of the society, the political will for a righteous social order based upon equality dies down. And it is at this point that the “slaves begin kissing their shackles”. Structural/historical poverty is strengthened by poverty coming out of malpractices in governance, like price hikes, hoarding of edibles, and so on, as well as natural catastrophes like earthquakes and disasters. Pakistan has seen many since 2005, besides the menace and terrorism and the ensuing displacement. Thus, the country has a horrible share of man made and natural disasters within an extremely corrupt political system.
Last year’s flood affected people are facing the new rains under the same roofless settings with no food to swallow and least clothes to cover their bones. And all this is happening amid tall claims of national and international organizations, NGOs, and naturally the Pakistani government’s claims of spending a fortune to help these people. Any recent media presentation, just a scratch on the surface, will lay bare the truth, the ugly truth of people being left in the lurch. A recent program on AVT Khyber, the only Pashto TV network (August 26th, 2011; 2200 hrs,) interviewed a number of flood-affected families from Charsadda, a town at 20 minutes drive from Peshawar, shows how miserable life has become for these families who were below the poverty line even before the floods last year. The respondents authenticated the sorry truth that corruption, nepotism, and apathy has taken the better of Pakistani society. That the people running relief organizations are running the show to fill their own pockets, to reward their friends and relatives as well as people with political connections, and are least interested in even thinking about the hapless families reeling under abject poverty right in front of them. Food and money has been taken away from them after being brought to these places (since this is usually the condition for such deliveries) and then being distributed among those who already have enough, while the needy remain hungry spectators, forced to beg for their daily subsistence in nearby cities, Peshawar being the nearest big town.
“We used to live well, had a house of our own, had three meals a day, and could buy clothes for the family. It is not far. It is nearby. Flood took it all away.” “I am living in this small tent, where it rains more than outside (pointing to the little tent, where hardly a single person could crawl in). They gave us nothing. I am forced to go with my small kid to beg for a day’s meal,” narrates a middle aged bearded man. He starts to sob while telling his story. “I can only get 100 or 200 Rupees after being humiliated all day long with my little son in Peshawar. People despise me; say nasty things in front of my child. I don’t have any other option. Now the kids are asking for new clothes, because eid is coming up. We live on alms. But it was last year. People helped during the heat of the moment. I tell my kids that whatever I could get, we barely get a meal out of it. Now if someone comes forward to give us more, we might be able to buy some clothes. Look at what I am wearing. He pointed to his shalwar and kameez, both different sizes and colours. The government is nowhere.” He stars wailing loudly,” May Allah burn all the powerful in government in hell. I am a Pakistani. I am born here and will die here. I have done everything in my prowess to serve my country, but nobody is bothered about me and others like me.”
Another family consisting of old and ailing parents and their teenage sons and daughters were living in a traditional sugar mill, a small room where local sugar from sugarcane is produced in a tiny mudroom. The old woman couldn’t walk, the old man crying while not being in any better shape than his wife. The young lads sitting in dismay while the mother and father narrating their plight. “They just take the rations from right in front of us and give it away to undeserving people. I ask my boys to go and ask for it, but they don’t. ‘Allah is watching. These people (NGOs getting the supplies from WFP) have humiliated us so many times that there is no use going in for it anymore.’ “When they go out to find work, there isn’t any. We just don’t know what to do.” The old woman sitting in the cot is too weak to even walk a few steps. She has a small pouch containing some cheap medicine. “I can’t walk. These are the drugs someone donated to me. I don’t know what are these for, but I take them. I went myself to get some ration. There were young and strong men and women who pushed me back all the time. I couldn’t even get the chance to look at the food items.”
These are no isolated incidents. It is all over. Families in Punjab and Sindh are under the open sky with little children walking naked without any food for days. Just a glimpse into the TV and one finds misery all over. The government, as usual, is trying to get hold of the political give and take by forming (and breaking) alliances to control Karachi. In Karachi the people are dying of bullet wounds and torture and also out of poverty. Poverty is no lesser factor in the big cities than in the rural backwaters, the militancy ridden border areas, as well as the displaced people waiting for the misery to end. A recent prime minster Gillani visit became a public relations fiasco when immediately after his departure the people started fighting for the food he brought to distribute for the camera flashes. One can go on and on citing examples. As one comedy show very cynically puts it on Geo TV: “everything is getting costlier during Ramadan. Prices are skyrocketing. But we still have one very rare commodity getting cheaper every passing day. It is human life in Pakistan.” This is the bitter, sad, but real truth of Pakistan.
Pakistani majority’s downwards spiral into poverty needs no statistics, no reports. It is not an issue to be discussed. It is a historical reality in this unfortunate land. The problem is not poverty per se. Poverty exists everywhere on earth, because “the world has enough to feed all men, but not enough to satisfy even one man’s greed”. The problem is Pakistani state and society’s inability to the curb the ever growing manifestations of newer forms of poverty. We haven’t been able give home to the earthquake’s affected people after almost 6 years, despite getting support, alms, and charity from every nook and corner of the world. IDPs remain hapless till date. People ruined by floods still remain under the harsh skies, with the new monsoon catching them in their homeless abodes.
The inability neither to find a solution to historical poverty nor the ever-happening man made and natural disasters is the real problem. Nobody is ready to deal with the problem by looking the monster in the eye. Unless and until we develop the genius to look into the social structure for immediate, mediate, and long-term solutions for poverty, things are never going to improve. Petty politics couldn’t feed empty stomachs. It only fuels the fires of hatred and anarchy.
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