Tempers start rising along with the temperature as the load-shedding intensifies
In tropical climes, there are certain times,
Of day, when all the citizens retire,
To tear off their clothes and perspire,
It’s a rule that the greatest fools obey,
For the sun is much too sultry,
And one must avoid the ultra-violet ray.
–Noel Coward
Our historic city, Lahore has witnessed many vicissitudes over the course of its thousand year plus recorded history. It has had to endure repeated sackings at the hands of rapacious conquerors that using one pretext or the other (both usually invented) invaded and plundered the easily accessible city lying conveniently in their path on the onward journey to the capital Delhi.
Famines, floods, drought, earthquakes, fevers and epidemics, like Biblical plagues, have also been regular and unwelcome visitations, leaving death, destruction and misery in their wake.
But today, the great city (as indeed the rest of the country and more particularly the rural districts) suffers a torturing presence equal to if not worse than all the human pests and pestilences of the past, in that its cursed presence is now a permanent feature in people’s lives, leaving them utterly demoralized, with no light (pun intended) at the end of the tunnel.
Adventurers from the north-west came and left with their camel-loads of loot, but the present scourge is a domestic affliction, one which just doesn’t show signs of ever going away.
One refers of course to the agonizing load-shedding that has burdened the lives of the citizens beyond human endurance and is also constantly testing their sobriety to the limit. For tempers begin to rise along with the temperature, and the Punjabi vocabulary is particularly rich in its choice of vivid expletives. Hell, indeed, hath no fury like a citizen without electric power and water, with the mercury hitting the mid-forties (centigrade, that is). And also when, to add salt to the wound, the power rates are continuously increased by the kindly and benevolent government. More taxation without any power (electric) seems to be its motto.
But as everybody knows, the key words here are corruption, the mafias, meter readers and line losses, nepotism, inefficiency and the lackadaisical approach of the top leadership, past and present, which failed to tame the problem by radical steps. Leadership inertia and lack of political will have allowed the symptoms to grow almost beyond recall.
Load-shedding, whether scheduled or of the instant variation, breaks up the cohesion of a 24-hour day into meaningless chunks or bits and pieces of time, a fractured, staggered day in which no plan or programme can be counted as certain.
We do not need the services of the shrewd fictional gentleman of 221 B, Baker Street, London, who would probably, by instant observation and deduction, remark that ‘it seems to be one of those simple cases, which are so extremely difficult’. Out of the box thinking and swift action is imperative to alleviate the people’s ‘current’ plight.
An essential step is to regulate the timing of offices and markets. When the Tsunami struck Japan a couple of years back, damaging its nuclear reactors and cutting electric supply by over 40 percent, the Japanese people responded magnificently by ‘power lowering’, reducing electricity load to avoid blackouts. Housewives used washing machines once a week only, the air conditioners were fixed voluntarily at over 20 degrees, senior executives gave up formal suits and started wearing aloha, a loose fitting dress of Hawaiin origin, imported of course from China. The Japanese government also changed the timings of all government offices to close by noon, starting work as early as six in the morning.
Since we as a people are not much given to sacrifice (unless it is by someone else), imposed measures, seriously enforced in practice, offer the only pragmatic short-term solution.
As the world’s first private detective Sherlock Holmes would instantly deduct, much of the electricity being used in our huge markets is stolen, with the meter reader in the starring role. Most of these markets open at around noon, and do not down shutters till well past midnight. For a nominal monthly ‘fee’ to the above functionary they run their air conditioners and electric heaters all day without a care in the world, knowing that the billing axe will actually fall on someone else.
So the first and most urgent thing needed is to make the markets open at ten, which in the summers is late enough, and to close promptly at eight without fail, irrespective of generators or UPS on the premises. It must be lights out at eight, or else.
Similar restrictions must be placed both on government and private offices and their use of ACs, and also on educational institutions for a couple of months during the height of summer when the power crisis is at its peak.
The government has belatedly started a recovery drive against defaulters and most of the names that are cropping up are not surprisingly those of influentials, big business, the GORs, public offices and august places or palaces, like the President and Prime Minister Houses, and many other sacred cows, but the list also includes predators such as the police, many of whose thanas are running on borrowed juice.
It is moot that these astronomical sums will ever be recovered. And to make matters worse, an inter-provincial war has broken out over the matter of payment of outstanding bills, with the Sindh Assembly passing a resolution of condemnation and the KP government also showing thumbs down. But the government has to pull some rabbits out of its hat swiftly, or it will face the same storm of condemnation over this issue as the last regime. To refresh the government’s memory, people are also voters, something the leaders are much inclined to forget after the election.
Apart from the physical torture (and that includes sleepless nights) which repeated load-shedding entails (in collaboration with squadrons of dive-bombing mosquitoes), the stress of waiting and watching for power to resume cannot but leave psychological scars on a peoples already prone to start at sudden noises or even at their own shadow.
Load-shedding, whether scheduled or of the instant variation, breaks up the cohesion of a 24 hour day into meaningless chunks or bits and pieces of time, a fractured, staggered day in which no plan or programme can be counted as certain. Apart from the physical torture (and that includes sleepless nights) which repeated load-shedding entails (in collaboration with squadrons of dive-bombing mosquitoes), the stress of waiting and watching for power to resume cannot but leave psychological scars on a peoples already prone to start at sudden noises or even at their own shadow. Years of adversity and daily horrors have left their choleric stamp on the national psyche. There is ‘neither peace within nor calm around’.
Manufacturers and exporters are forced to slow down or shut their mills and factories and are unable to meet their foreign orders and export deadlines. The skilled craftsmen, the common labourers and the daily wagers all suffer the financial impact of load shedding the worst.
Of the foreign ‘balaas’ of the past who ventured our way, there was the Supreme Khan Changez, ‘the punishment of God’, who thankfully turned back from the north-west without crossing the Indus, Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, ‘the scourge of God’ who regrettably didn’t, Nadir Shah, the ‘son of the sword’ and Ahmed Shah Abdali, the ‘pearl of pearls’ or the ‘northern robber’, take your pick, whose ferocious credentials need no introduction.
These men of action behaved in an inhumane and brutal manner, waged war, tortured and murdered civilians and had towers of their heads erected. But in the end, they went the way of all flesh, ‘Tamburlaine the scourge of God must die’. But our present ‘balaa’ of load-shedding continues to cause havoc year after year and as for the elected leaders they can be reincarnated thrice, and if they do hand in their dinner pails, they are instantly renewed in the person of their offspring, who eagerly wait in the wings to take over and begin where the fathers left off. Help, Supreme Khan or the rest!