Punjab rises to the protein challenge

Islamabad diary
From lamb we get mutton; from cows and buffaloes beef. What name to give donkey meat, the new specialty rapidly expanding the culinary frontiers of Pakistan’s most food-loving province, Punjab? Language experts in major and minor Punjab universities are wrestling with this problem.
Punjab has had a continuous run of good if not superior governance for the last eight years. If we add 1997-99 when the present chef de province was chief minister this comes to more than a decade. If we go back to the Zia years the present lot has been calling the shots in Punjab for over 30 years. This is a national record. No Daultana, no Nawab Kalabagh, no Mustafa Khar comes even remotely close.
After this prolonged run of luck what do we get? One motorway, two metro-bus lines and – hold your breaths – donkey meat. Well-meaning citizens were given to bemoaning the sad state of the province’s hospitals and government-run schools, corruption in the police and revenue departments, the poor state of law and order, money wasted on glitzy projects, wasteful priorities in general. In their wildest dreams they could not have imagined that a donkey crisis would also be at hand.
That all is not well with the meat trade is generally known. Slaughter-houses and abattoirs in this country are no tourist destinations. I’ve always believed that one visit to a poultry farm to see the condition of the birds there is enough to cure one of the desire for farm chicken and eggs for the rest of one’s life. Similarly, anyone visiting a slaughter-house would be tempted strongly to become a vegetarian. Injecting water into carcasses to increase their weight is a widespread practice across the country. Our Islam is mostly about ritual and appearances. It is extremely flexible when it comes to practice.
If it was only about water-injected animals it would still be a mercy. Now come explosive revelations of substandard meat sold and transported across the province, with Punjab good governance too busy with flyovers and signal-free corridors to notice what was going on right under its nose.
Now there is something much bigger, something that would be the stuff of comedy if it were not so serious. Turns out that apart from meat injected with water, and substandard meat, a healthy trade in donkey meat has also been flourishing. So the meat-lover beware…the next time he orders a steak or a balti-gosht he may be getting more protein than he had bargained for.
Some time ago a horse-meat scandal rocked the European community. On supermarket shelves horsemeat was being shown as beef. There was an outcry and after investigations the meat was traced, if I remember correctly, to Romania.
Long ago at the Japanese embassy, after we’d finished with lunch – many courses and appropriate liquids to wash it all down – the ambassador, long since gone from these shores, asked me whether I knew what we’d just had. Special chicken, I said. Frogs legs, he shot back, with a twinkle in his eyes.
We know that in the Far East dog-meat is considered a delicacy. In Hong Kong, as I am sure in several other places, you can have your choice of snake for dinner – barbecued or cooked to perfection before your eyes. In the matter of food, to each his own…there is no quarrelling with acquired or ingrained taste.
But as far as I can tell, donkey meat is a first…higher and more exotic than anything to be found in the culinary bazaars of the Far East. And the credit for this goes squarely to Punjab good governance, so busy with cutting down trees, starving the social sector of funds, and diverting the money to useless flyovers and metro-buses that it failed to notice this sharp outbreak of Punjabi entrepreneurship: the donkey meat trade. While donkey hides were being exported, the meat from the dead animals was being supplied across the province, including to eating places in the provincial capital, the Paris of the East, Lahore.
Some time ago there was a report in this paper about chicken-feed being made from the flesh, especially the tails, of stray dogs caught from the streets of Lahore. And ginger washed in acid to give it a more rounded look and brick dust added to chilli powder to add to its volume…this not in any remote place but Lahore.
Then we go red in the face talking about democracy, decrying the imbalance in the civil-military equation. Should the army now declare war on the donkey trade too? Should this also become part of the National Action Plan?
We have elected governments, especially at the centre and in Punjab, in power several times over but which, if you judge them by their record, still don’t know the ABC of governance and administration. They latch on to gimmicks like a motorway here, a flyover there, and they are exceptionally good at protecting and promoting their private business interests. They are the most successful politicians in the nation’s history, in office the longest – longer than any single military ruler – but their understanding of politics even after all their experience remains very much their own.
Who will look to needed reforms in the working of state institutions? Who’ll look to madressah reform, under-funded schools and hospitals, the woes of the farming community, other aspects of governance?
No wonder, when confronted with the problem of terrorism they had no answer. The military took up the slack and the military since then has been providing the answers. The results are there for all to see: the military is in charge, taking the decisions, setting the national compass, while the elected governments which rightfully should have been in the lead if they had the requisite courage and imagination, find themselves diminished in influence and standing. This is no coup, creeping or otherwise. These are the wages of dithering and incompetence.
Read or watch again Gen Raheel Sharif’s speech on Defence Day in General Headquarters. This did not appear to be the army chief speaking. He sounded more like the head of state, touching all major issues: resolve to take the war against terrorism to its end, concern about the situation in Afghanistan, a strong warning to India, emphasis on the need to resolve the Kashmir issue, the importance of the Pak-China economic corridor. The armed forces were commended for their sacrifices. There was a word of praise for the media for helping ‘unmask’ the real face of terrorism. There was one token, almost pro forma reference to “concerted civil-military action”. That’s all.
I can’t say about interior Sindh or Balochistan or the Frontier but here in Punjab, and I think one can hazard the same guess about Karachi, public sentiment is all for the army and there is a deep yearning for an all-out war on corruption. The politicians are hoping this phase will pass, even though those with any sense in them are aware that the public disgust with the Pakistani style of politics is at an all-time high.
So Pakistan marks time, between the present and what is to come. Meanwhile the gods too are playing their part. What they seek to destroy they first make ridiculous. Donkey meat is serious business. But it also provokes laughter and has come to cover in a cloud of ridicule the claims and pretensions of ‘good governance’.
Email: bhagwal63@gmail.com