Something’s missing

I have a migraine. It’s not the most comfortable feeling in the world, but one can work through it, given the right mix of dopamine and other crazy painkiller-cocktails that doctors prescribe. But these cocktails only provide momentary relief and the effect is temporary. To get rid of the problem altogether would require expensive, untested and extremely risky exploratory surgery on my brain to determine whether these migraines are a result of a deep-rooted medical condition, such as Inter-Cranial Hypertension, or induced by proximity to morons.

Our country faces a similar dilemma. The masses collectively suffer from amnesia, concussions, tooth decay and even the odd sexually-transmitted disease. Senile dementia has beset most of our rulers and the bureaucrats suffer from responsibility-deficit disorder. Ministers and most public representatives are mostly dyslexic (given their twisted and sordid exploits, more of which are becoming public everyday), while those in the opposition suffer from attention-deficit disorder (meaning they can’t handle taking a principled stand on more than one front at a time). The police suffers from chronic muscle damage and is hence permanently incapacitated, permanently living off disability allowance. The military has developed what can best be described as ‘Ghajni syndrome’ (also known in the West as ‘Memento-itis’) and has trouble distinguishing friends from enemies. With such a bedridden social structure, it is a miracle that life goes on at all in our fair backwater state. But somehow, somewhere, someone is working to make sure that the show goes on.

This lethargic disdain for permanent solutions and our penchant for quick fixes is also what is eating away at the heels of our feet, like a particularly nasty case of Athlete’s Foot. Rather than trying to better ourselves by overhauling the system and all the ills associated with it, we prefer to play it safe and resist change wherever we can. In cases where it is unavoidable, we aim to make the change as smooth and uncontroversial as possible, which means essentially no change at all. Take the question of who will be the FIA chief, or the 60-rupee-Pepsi fiasco; in both cases, no one is prepared to take responsibility for the harm that has been caused to the fabric of society at large.

Around the country, we have people who believe they can get away with bribing their local FIA officials just because the same happens at the top. Similarly, shopkeepers are taking advantage of the multimillion dollar ad campaign launched by that beverage company to sell all sorts of products for Rs 60. So for the price of several thousand 1.5 litre bottles, you can get yourself a weapon, a fake license for said weapon, a brand new identity for you and your 19 children and an all access pass into the Red Zone in Islamabad. Not a bad deal at all.

So it is small wonder that whenever a new disease, be it God-sent or manmade, inflicts itself upon the Pakistani condition, the witchdoctors, hakeems and quacks immediately attribute it to a lack of faith among the populous and ask everyone to become more pious and pray for the salvation of our doomed souls. In the meantime, mosquitoes, civil servants and other vermin continue to suck the lifeblood out of life-saving measures.

Take the recent floods in Sindh. After waiting a whole month before asking for international assistance, the government is now embroiled in controversy over issues as insignificant as transparency, corruption in the aid delivery mechanism and disputes over which bureaucrat’s offspring gets to fly in a helicopter over Mirpurkhas. In any other country, such questions would’ve been settled by an inter-departmental inquiry committee, which would’ve taken its sweet time to establish that there is, in fact, no corruption whatsoever in the processes involved and that the government is doing a darn good job of keeping its head above the water. In contrast, we have no such procedures whatsoever and positions such as Director General and Executive Director are created and handed out like ration packets to people with the same last name as a sitting minister or top bureaucrat.

You may say that such practices have been the norm for as far as one can remember, and you may also go on to add that if it weren’t for nepotism, nothing would ever get done here. This is, unfortunately, quite true, but that does not mean that we should accept these evils as an inherent part of our system and continue as if all is well. There must be a sea-change, where we do away with the old and usher in the new. Say no to stiff do-nothings and replace such monuments with younger, more energetic (and upright) individuals whose prime objective in life is not to make a quick buck.

But please, for the love of God, don’t tell me that Imran Khan is the solution to all this country’s problems. That’s like saying dopamine is an effective remedy for decapitation. You may not feel the pain, but you will know that something’s missing. The light-headedness should be a dead give-away.