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Friday March 29, 2024

The state of the state

By Kamila Hyat
May 21, 2020

Some things should astonish us far more than they actually do. For two months into the coronavirus crisis, there was no session of parliament to discuss the problem, to devise strategy or most importantly of all to build unity amongst parties.

When it was requisitioned after the opposition sought a gathering of the most important decision-making house in our democracy, the prime minister himself and even opposition leaders including Shahbaz Sharif generally avoided making themselves present. At some sessions on the government benches, only the foreign minister was present to answer questions and his focus, fitting in with his portfolio, remained on providing figures from other countries. He cannot be blamed for this, although his diatribes against the PPP, a party to which he had belonged for years, were more unwelcome.

There is of course no health minister in the country, even at this time, with Imran Khan holding that portfolio himself. The interior minister, the planning minister and others who could perhaps have answered questions put by the opposition simply did not feel it was important enough to turn up. Of course since then the Supreme Court has itself settled the matter, making the legislature a little redundant

There were also doubts about whether the decision made that all members of parliament must clear a Covid-19 test before being allowed into the house had been met. Peculiarly, according to former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, during a session when the ‘lockdown’ and its relaxation were discussed, no cabinet document had been issued stating that any decision had been made regarding a lockdown. We can then only wonder how the government runs or how our state can function in this climate of disarray.

Outside the comfortable halls of parliament and the leafy streets of Islamabad, there are many other examples of a country which has no leadership, and no ability to deliver even basic services to people. So incompetent were authorities that they found it impossible to offer bags of flour to families eating almost nothing everyday – despite the prime minister’s repeated calls to look out for the poor. There is every reason to sympathise with his calls. They carried with them a degree of weight. Imran Khan quite possibly recognized the state would be able to do nothing for people and therefore thought it best to end the lockdown, which on cabinet papers never existed at any rate and at least allowed them to fend for themselves.

What he should have been doing however is offering the leadership that could help mend a broken system. The Covid-19 pandemic has in fact exposed the failure of health systems in many countries, including highly developed ones such as the US, the UK and Italy. They have failed miserably at offering care to the patients pouring in to badly-run hospitals without sufficient ventilators or staff. This should be a reminder to the world to re-examine its priorities. Why are countries across the globe able to spend so much money on weapons that kill people but not enough on equipment that can save their lives. Of course, this is also a question for Pakistan.

With a budget of 2.8 percent of its GDP spent on healthcare, Pakistan’s hospitals have struggled to cope with the Covid-19 crisis. Perhaps the only way in which there could have been some improvement in the situation was if all stakeholders had agreed to cooperate and work together at least during the worst days of the pandemic. Instead, traders demanded the reopening of shops, industrialists wanted factories to churn out millions for their bank accounts but had no scruples about dismissing workers who had no hope of finding jobs at this time and it sometimes seemed the entire problem had turned into an ugly, bitter battle pitching the centre against Sindh.

The federal government and the prime minister, who should have been building a common front, instead chose oddly enough to lash out at the PPP government in Sindh again and again, and even more strangely despite the host of meetings called by the various bodies with complicated initials set up to manage the crisis, then ignored the decisions made during these talks between leaders as the prime minister announced his own decision. Not surprisingly, Punjab and also Khyber Pakhtunkhwa generally chose to follow. The other two provinces did not.

There is more that Covid-19 has exposed. The situation of our agriculture is one of these. While industrialization has been encouraged through the decades and indeed since the times of Field Marshal Ayub Khan, we appear to have forgotten that it is agriculture and the growing of food crops that will feed the people. In southern Punjab, across giant swathes of land, sugarcane has replaced other food crops which could sustain lives. This brings in profit for the landowners but means the people are placed in greater peril. We have done very little to study agriculture and develop an agriculture policy. Even though Pakistan is still a country that depends mainly on its agriculture in terms of its economy, the sector has been neglected, except perhaps as a means to earn massive profits for the owners of mills. The full forensic report on the sugarcane issue will therefore be important.

There is then a great deal that Pakistan needs to cure. This will not happen simply with a vaccine or a dose of medicine – just like the coronavirus itself may not disappear so easily. Instead we need to devise long-term, sensible and pro-people policies which can help us survive crisis. Indeed, for many people in our country, life is lived in crisis even during times of normalcy. A situation like Covid-19 pushes them off the brink and into the abyss of poverty, hunger and in some cases suicide.

An entire team working together is required for this. The federation must work as a whole, the senator must hold it together and not push away certain units based on petty politics. This will only cause further damage and leave deeper scars. The talk of changing the 18th Amendment is already leading to some scars opening up a little wider. The NFC Award to provinces must be thought out carefully and equitably. This is hard when huge chunks of the GDP go to debt servicing, as we now go into a still graver debt crisis and other chunks to defence and administration. But there are measures that seem unnecessary. It is also hard to believe that not one person could be found out of the 10.3 million people of Balochistan to represent the province at the NFC.

These are all matters we need to look at. For now, we will continue to look over our shoulders to see if Covid is getting any closer to us, even as so many in the country insist it is a mere conspiracy. But for the future, we need more. We need a real state, one that can shelter its people and rebuild the shattered relationship with citizens that has left behind so much wreckage.

The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor.

Email: kamilahyat@hotmail.com