Business as usual

Hollywood tells whoever wants to hear that there is no business like show business. Indeed the whole world has fallen for its make-believe spectacles. Hollywood now seems to have taken note of the first non-white president in the White House, and is mulling over a non-white James Bond. Considering the history of abducting millions of Africans as slaves to plantations of the New World, ‘James in Bondage’ would be a more appropriate name.
Over here, in the Indus Valley, where show business struggles to survive, the counter-slogan would be: there is no business like business as usual. Come what may, the movers and shakers of this land are determined that they must carry on with their business as usual. The worst terror attack in the country, targeting innocent and defenceless schoolchildren on a large scale, has not led to a change of priorities.
Take some key players of the land and watch them doing business as usual by manoeuvring around the senate elections or the economic corridor. The daily business of corner plots, contracts and kickbacks or the police favouring culprits against victims goes on under their benevolent eyes. There was great sound and fury over the Peshawar tragedy, with both the military and the civilian leadership vowing to make life impossible for the terrorists.
However, with each passing week, the myriad problems of coordination and competition sap a little more of the original resolve to interdict and apprehend the purveyors of death.
In the process, amazing things are happening by way of the military trying to exert ever greater influence on the civilian administrators to get their act going because in the final analysis, the military cannot do the policing, we are told.
The civilian rulers consider the counterterrorism mission as necessary but are unable to muster the required energy and determination, with occasional grumbles of ‘who made the jihadis so powerful in the first place?’
There is greater emphasis on the optics of the fight against terror. If optics were an indicator of how seriously the menace of terror is being addressed, we have made great strides. But the truth is well known. While the khakis exhort the civilians to get on with the job, the latter are mostly going on with, yes, business as usual.
Several spots of Rawalpindi and Islamabad dug up for the metro bus project are still gaping holes, with mega tons of earth around them. Once completed, the metro bus will be plying right above the median of the Jinnah Avenue commonly known as the Blue Area. Mega road projects are going full speed ahead as if the voters are going to judge the government’s performance by the rising infrastructure rather than their aching bellies.
Karachi, which could have been Pakistan’s own Dubai, is groaning under a leadership that excels in inventing new avenues of graft than providing security or basic civic amenities to the megalopolis. Any businessman other than international crooks hearing about the APCs scandal wouldn’t want to book a flight to Karachi.
In another business-as-usual case, NAB is taking the National Police Foundation to task for allotting a plot to a civil serpent for making a quick buck, of course in violation of the rules. ‘Rules are for fools’ is the oft-repeated refrain in the corridors of power where life revolves around favouring family and friends.
Old timers say that Nawaz Sharif is no match for Bhutto in dictatorial tendencies. ZAB became the only known civilian chief martial law administrator to decide the people’s fortunes. He continued with those tendencies even after relinquishing the title of CMLA on becoming prime minister.
In a summary sent in the latter part of his term, recommending yet another extension to General Raza, then secretary administration at the Foreign Office, Bhutto approved the proposal but wrote sarcastically in the margin, “Let him die in the chair”. Let it be said for record that the general was relieved of his duties after Bhutto’s fall but continued to live for many years after Bhutto.
Business as usual also goes on in appointments and transfers, the plums usually reserved for the near and dear ones. ‘For friends everything, for enemies nothing and for the rest the rules’ is the basic rule of thumb for rulers of all hues. Reports have surfaced that an officer who has served as consul general abroad is now vying for another foreign posting rather than returning to serve the nation at home. Who can blame him because he may be trying to ensure proper education for his college going children in a developed country?
Balochistan is another sad story of business as usual. Civilians and the military are running parallel administrations while the infernal cycle of death and destruction continues unabated. The FC has been granted an extension in its policing mission amid frequent terror incidents notably on vital national infrastructure.
The big players of business as usual have probably taken note of Imran Khan’s change of tactics from dharna politics to a mantra of change in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as prelude to a bigger change. He claims to have introduced fair practices and put an end to political interference in the functioning of police service. This may be valid to some extent but the deeply entrenched system of widespread corruption and neglect remains in place. For a majority of legislators and state functionaries, it is still business as usual.
Email: saeed.saeedk@gmail.com