A small village on the banks of a docile looking river, with mountains in the backdrop. The scene should by idyllic. But it was not. The village is still very much in ruins. A lot of houses have not been reconstructed, a lot of people are still in tents and/or makeshift arrangements, many fields that should be green with the beginnings of the wheat crop look like sandy wastelands. And there are children running around everywhere, in the sandy fields and in the partial ruins of houses. The schools are still not functioning. Sand blows hard and it is everywhere: in houses, on clothes and you breathe it in.
This is the story of a village in Charsadda on the river Swat, one of the rivers that overflowed and created immense havoc in the floods. Some villages in the path of the river got more than 10 feet of water, others around seven feet: you can still see the water marks on pucca buildings and on trees. The floods destroyed almost all of the weaker buildings and ruined many of the strong ones too. And in its wake it also left huge amounts of debris. In some areas the sand deposits are 3-4 feet deep.
For the first few months survival was the issue. And through the generosity of the people of Pakistan, national and international organisations and the efforts of the government of Pakistan, relief goods did make it, more or less, to these and other areas. Survival is still an issue, but the people have been able to pick themselves up to an extent.
But now the need is reconstruction and here the people in this village are struggling. They need to get their houses reconstructed, their fields cleared of the sand and debris, their water channels, roads, schools and health centres reconstructed and/or repaired. But here, it seems, apart from help from some civil society and non-governmental organisations, these people have been left to fend for themselves completely.
There is almost no government presence at least in the villages I visited. Watan cards have reached a small number of people in these communities but the distribution has been uneven and many people have been left out, and most people feel that the government does not have the money to make all payments promised through Watan cards. And it seems their sense is right. The government has been cutting development expenditure and since reconstruction in flood affected areas is going to be mainstreamed into the annual development plans, and the state is currently focused on cutting deficit and ensuring macroeconomic stability, clearly reconstruction will take a back seat, if any seat at all, in the governmental development plans and expenditure priorities.
This is a sad fact about contemporary Pakistan. The government wants to spend three billion rupees on parliamentary lodges, and does not want to trim defence expenditure but wants to cut expenditure: the cuts will be in development and the people who will bear the brunt will be the poor. Will anyone shed a tear if the current elite in power in Pakistan gets what it deserves!
The debris is 3-6 feet deep in the villages that I visited. This might not be a problem in all areas, but other areas have other problems that are as grave. How are the people going to be able to remove the debris to get to their fields below? They need heavy machinery for that which they do not have. All they have are tractors that small farmers can hire at commercial rates of around Rs 600 per hour. If they cannot sow their fields in this season or next, how will they make ends meet? And how will livelihood revival happen in the flood-hit areas?
International and local NGOs are helping where they can and to the extent they can but the level and scale of destruction is too large for this to be handled by NGOs and/or the local communities themselves. And the government is not stepping in.
The people of Pakistan have shown amazing generosity of spirit whenever fellow citizens have been in need. We saw outpouring of help and empathy when the earthquake struck in 2005, we saw a similar reaction in the IDPs crisis and even in the relief stage of the flood we saw the people of Pakistan come forward. It is true that the economic condition of most people is not very good. Unemployment is high, inflation out of control and growth has all but petered out. And there does not seem to be any relief or revival around the corner. But the needs for reconstruction and rehabilitation are also very urgent: there are millions of fellow citizens who are hurting much worse than us. Those who can, and it is for individuals to decide, have to step forward and share what they can.
There will be questions of how to share and who is trustworthy and will make the best use of the money for the right purpose. But all of us know of people: relatives, friends or friends of friends who have been affected or whose friends have been affected, and most of us also know of NGOs who have been working on flood issues and have done decent work. So, it is not important which channel we use to get the money out, the issue is generosity. Our fellow Pakistanis need our help. Please be generous and to the extent possible.
The writer is an Associate Professor of Economics at LUMS (currently on leave) and a Senior Advisor at Open Society Foundation (OSF). He can be reached at [email protected]
