Last chance to survive with honour

Why nowadays most of citizens prefer watching TV every moment to reading a novel or a short story? Do they expect something marvellous from the news breaker? What could be that except for 50 per cent reduction in prices of food, clothing and house rent?

The focus in exchange of views is on left-over corruption, nepotism, unemployment and poverty etc. Circumstances are not yet as good as the common man had expected soon after the change of administration. The new-born baby named ‘democracy’ appears to take time to grow and bear fruit for ‘demos’ (people).

Old educationists relate episodes of the past to set right the socio-economic and political situation besides health, education and water crises.

Once a doctor advised consumers to boycott the profiteers, but Hakim Syed Irshad of Gujrat said it was like asking the hungry man to catch a fish with his hands from flooded water, and eat it. The profiteers never showed any concern at warning by the administration. What was true yesterday holds today.

So far as the common man’s economic welfare is concerned, the truth is that every time the government changes, he is reminded of a French proverb: “The more it changes the more it remains the same.”

Retired officers of various ministries living in Islamabad and Rawalpindi have many tales to tell in sympathy with the common man. For instance, a businessman or an industrialist may not pick a man’s pocket, but he may overcharge him as much as he likes. Control, for the businessman, only means an opportunity to create scarcity and to resort to black-marketing to his heart’s content.

As a result, the common man, in utter helplessness, says “it’s better to have things without control than to have control without things”.

The time is long past when we could depend upon the personal righteousness of traders and producers. It’s all exploitation. The irony is that most of us have forgotten the words of the founder of Pakistan. Let’s recall what he said three days before the first Independence Day:

“Black-marketing is another curse; the black marketers are intelligent; when they indulge in black-marketing they ought to be very severely punished because they undermine the entire system of control and regulation of foodstuffs and essential commodities, and cause wholesale starvation and want, and even death.”

A hungry man is an angry man; and an angry man is a dangerous man, for anger is a bad counsellor. Frustration gives birth to dangerous ideas, and dangerous ideas often lead to desperate actions. And history repeats itself.

How we should celebrate the Independence Day in 2019? That’s the question linked to motherland’s future. Elder say the story of independence has not ended yet. The struggle for survival with honour continues. Who is doing this tremendous task and who is trying to create hurdles in his way? Patriots say God almighty has provided us the last opportunity to avert ‘bloody disaster’.

— zasarwar@hotmail.com