Relying on resilience

The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor.

We do not really admire the people of our country sufficiently. They deserve round after round of applause for simply surviving deeply flawed governance and what appears to be complete indifference about their welfare. But despite these disadvantages, people achieve small miracles everywhere, every day, only a small percentage of which we hear about. Such stories appear to concern no one – not the government, not the media and not anyone else. These people are too ‘small’ to matter; perhaps not worth caring about at all. Their feats go unnoticed; their stories remain untold.

We should tell these stories, and repeat them many times over. There are countless heroes in our society. Kamla Bibi, from Mithi in Tharparkar, has a quiet, unassuming confidence as she attends a conference in Islamabad on minority rights. She has acquired it herself, against all the odds stacked up against her. She was married off when she was in the eighth grade, at the age of about 13, to a man who was uneducated. She moved into a household where her mother-in-law abused her mercilessly for her desire to gain further learning and make some impact in the community where she lived. Kamla fought back bravely, with some help from the NGO Thardeep, to educate herself further and also persuade her husband to acquire learning.

Today he is working towards a BA degree. Kamla is also sending her own three children to school and is determined that they will not face the same fate that she did. As a community worker, she has developed various skills for herself and is now able to help other women in the community speak up for their rights, including that of access to running water, and advocate for the repeal in the marriage laws that apply to Hindus in the country.

There are other stories as well. Imdad Ali in Peshawar is a college student. He has just completed his intermediate studies. Moved by the plight of the children he saw every day on the roads since he was a small boy, who were unable to go to school themselves, he has established a small programme to help out child labourers by teaching them basic reading, writing and numerical skills in a class held daily in his garage in the evening. He believes his efforts will enable these children, who are between eight and 12 years old, to improve their lives and perhaps persuade their parents to enrol them in schools, as the law states that they must at least acquire some ability to read.

Other people, young and old, also help in their own way. Naseema Bibi in Lahore works to support her husband, who is a recovering drug addict, and her seven children. She has been able to put all of them, six of them girls, through school with some help from her employers. In the absence of laws to protect domestic workers, Naseema has to work nearly 15 hours a day and do two jobs to achieve this, but she believes that her efforts will pay off and that her children will bring in income when they grow up.

There is no doubt that there are many, many other tales out there, which are even more remarkable and even more moving. There are tales about the failure of society and state as well. A heart-breaking video posted on social media tells of a small boy in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the government of which had promised change, who sells handfuls of popcorn on the road but says he would much rather go to school and learn the way he sees other children do. There is no one to help him achieve this small wish: a right due to him under our constitution. Our situation is such that there is acute indifference to the fate of people everywhere. The growing divide between the rich and the poor has added to the plight of this country, which has no common goals, no common dreams and only limited empathy for others.

While the government of Punjab focuses on building the Orange Line transit system at the cost of over one and a half billion dollars, people whose houses have been torn down to make room for this project attempt to find other places to build new lives. Their houses have been demolished almost overnight, and the government’s obsession with such projects means that those raising their voices for the rights of a mauled people and a mauled city face vengeance in various forms.

Civil society is not popular. The problem extends beyond Punjab, with mega projects including highways and massive hydraulic stations planned in Thar, while children die from malnutrition there each day. This is not only because of the famine or drought that the media reports, but also due to the general condition of people who get too little to eat month after month, year after year. Anaemic, underfed women give birth to low-weight babies who are susceptible to infant mortality. The money for the mega-projects is not diverted to help them.

We are also very attentive to morality. The president of the country, who has said little throughout his tenure, recently spoke out rather viciously against Valentine’s Day and warned people not to celebrate ‘Western traditions’. It is unclear what harm the passing around of a few chocolates, cards and heart-shaped cakes, mainly in the urban centres of the country, could do. Isn’t there a need, instead, to focus on more pressing problems such as poverty, hunger, illiteracy, the lack of healthcare and lack of tolerance? Surely these problems are more worthy of the government’s attention. The line taken by the president simply promotes the narrow views of clerics who have taken over so much of the country.

There is also a frightening lack of the ability to tolerate, accept and keep things in perspective. Students apparently linked to the Jamaat-e-Islami have been accused of beating up students at Punjab University from Balochistan, after the Quetta Gladiators beat the Lahore Qalandars in a Pakistan Super League contest. Some of the Baloch students did not even know the game had taken place and obviously there can be no excuse for the thuggish actions of the assailants.

This is what is happening in our country. Yet, good lives on. People perform remarkable deeds. Shoppers have reported being called up by shopkeepers and given back the wallets that they left in stores; not all of us are dishonest, not all of us have lost morality. But in so many ways, those who run our affairs appear to have lost theirs. The matters they focus on do little to better the plight of people. The elevated, concrete structures that now stand everywhere in Lahore and Islamabad may have eased transport for some, but they have not changed the lives of the majority.

The biggest problems of the country live on. There is insufficient focus on our education system, on healthcare and on other aspects of life that could truly benefit the people. In this situation, people have no choice but to try and do what they can for themselves. A considerable number embody the spirit to try and move on in life.

Others are courageous and generous enough to help others, even though they need assistance themselves. But we hear little about these men and women, and as a result our nation appears to have become a crueller and more chaotic place with each passing day.

Email: kamilahyat@hotmail.com