“Social Justice for a Slave-Nation”

We should have a State in which we could live and breathe as free men and which we could develop according to our own lights and culture and where principles of Islamic social justice could find free play”- Quaid e Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah.
Our country is not independent. Not as yet. Jinnah s Pakistan remains a dream as we enter 2014. Slavery is adamant, dominant and secure. Our people have no civil protection and rights to life- food , water, energy, security , employment or state welfare available to them. Simply because the constitution of 1973, though available online for people to read in these tech-savvy times of modern innovation , has not been put to practice as common law. For the simple reason that the parliament is full of the affluent few, who are influencers , enforcers and power brokers, with the GOD given right to rule the remaining billions of people who live in this country without any legal or constitutional protection.
Case in point : According to “Right of children to free and compulsory education’ in compliance with Article 25-A of the 1973 constitution, the government is duty bound to ensure free education to all children between the ages of 5 to 16 years. In its legal context, it is a clear amendment in place but practically, the administration of these schools governed by the provincial government is doing absolutely nothing to ensure that the fathers and mothers of those children get them up every day to go to school. Primarily, because the feudal lord or the PIR, of that constituency relies on these uneducated people to blindly vote every election and educating their children can change that for that person of power. Farmers in our villages do not own the land they live on and make their living for all that land belongs to the rich and powerful , thousands of acres, millions of rupees every month and no share of wallet with the farmer – who is basically a slave , under debt and enslaved along with his family against the threat of being permanently deprived of land , financial earnings, education or child care, without any insurance of security of his life- the single birthright that farmer has is being a certified slave and nothing more.
Power to the powerless is a myth as Pakistan has the powerful few keeping the majority of the population insecure, uneducated, threatened and severely marginalized. How can an agriculturist make a policy which taxes them ? How can crime syndicates be stopped from protecting criminals within and outside the law because the lawmakers themselves shelter the criminal elements that are involved in extortion and organized crime? Why do people die every day on the streets while the police is never able to completely recover arms? Where to convicts go after arrest why is the proof not made public ? Mainly, it is the lack social justice and rights to life for less affluent citizens with no means to secure themselves against threat of any sort as the law enforcement is corrupt, alongside some elements of other elected law making bodies. In the country, after 1973 till now, the constitution is not implemented by the book , despite it being a mandatory requirement for all elected governments , of the present and the past.
According to a global authentic human rights association on global index for slavery, some 30 million people worldwide are victims of sex trafficking, debt bondage, forced labor and other forms of slavery. In Pakistan alone, some 2.1 million Pakistanis are thought to be enslaved, especially children and bonded labor. The Asian Development Bank estimates 1.8 million people enslaved and without any legal support of any sort, controlled by mafias. Many migrate illegally to Gulf states and elsewhere in search of work, where they are at the mercy of labor agents who promise them jobs they never get and are hence forced to take up unwarranted illegal labor, without legal documents and in violation of labor laws. Even countries like India with extremely poor health and safety conditions and lack of enforcement have better labor laws than Pakistan , actually ending up lower on the slavery index than Pakistan. Shockingly, half of the 30 million slaves worldwide are in India.
Another recent case of Baluchistan, the natural resources hub province of our country with the largest geographical presence is stateless and leaderless as people continue to use the province for political mileage , especially their own local feudal leadership and their kin. Never once were they able to provide money and resources to the starving province, which by the way has the lowest population as well. How can governance fail so brutally ? In rural areas , we have the issue of the tribal lords while in urban areas, we have political goons belonging to elected parties into government , busy fuelling hatred through media while looting the city, through the mafias that they protect and run and make billions in black money which they later invest in purchasing land illegally which is now termed as land mafia. People behind these crimes are the ultimate criminals and they unfortunately are sitting in positions that govern law and social and civil order.
The problem is the sheer lack of “ decisive “ action by the state and the provincial governments. Why do we sensationalize Malala , when there are a thousand Malala s every day , everywhere begging on the streets on traffic signals and footpaths, controlled by yet another mafia through “ polite extortion”. People who claim to fix the public school system for example , must first start by sending their own children to public schools and put and end of private education mafia , another way of showing our masses that there is classist system in this country, where the rich will go the expensive schools, the middle class chasing the rich and the poor left stranded in poorly managed public schools , stranded and obsolete, as our system does not support it . Instead of improving internal governance though accountability, we encourage charity from outside making the country, a slave to the grind.
Slavery is everywhere but no one says it out loud, from the parliament houses to the streets and the corners of our cities inside our schools and hospitals or even at home. Money buys out almost everyone and the few who are beyond money have no legal protection or social justice or rights to work independently and successfully for the nations. On the money front for example, we now have banks where people get employed to go outside and officially rip people off in the name of private and personal banking, without a single customer client satisfaction rule in place, basically fleecing customers and charging for every single service , which was previously free of cost. Simply because of nepotism and financial corruption on the top, by the first and second tier of high powered executives, writing off loans given to the people with power, who deliberately default on their payments.
The NAB Chief has promised that all corruption cases will be opened which is highly unlikely but then we can wait and see. While we wait, we must witness slavery– forced labor, forced marriages, forced illiteracy , forced media domination through chaotic news, forced lack of law of order, forced corruption, forced high prices and forced killings. What will remain missing for now is the legal rights to life and justice. “Today, we see people being born into hereditary slavery, a staggering but harsh reality, particularly in parts of West Africa and South Asia” , says a report by Reuters. Our justice system has decayed. A mammoth crusade against corruption is now required to eradicate this infection of deceit . If Pakistan needs to grow economically into a viable livable country, we have to amend the law that protects the classist and the elitist mentality and paves way for equality and credible justice handed down to countless people whose only hope left is eventual bare minimum social justice in this slave nation.

About the writer :Zeeshan Shah – writes on IR & Public Policy – is a banker and media broadcaster