Mourn the greed – only if you want to

Let’s start from the very beginning. God created Adam and Eve and they were right away instructed to procreate. Therefore giving them the benefit of condonation because of the prescribed instructions is pretty harmless. After all, they had the whole huge planet with plentiful resources in overflowing abundance only to themselves. The real problem started when their offspring mistook the idea of limitless reproduction and applied it on themselves. The worst comes to the worst and the idea is perceived to be applicable to date with humans still obeying the injunction religiously. The motive of breeding, however, has changed with the course of time from populating and spreading to every nook and corner of the planet to utilising the maximum of resources. Even the definition of resources has transformed from natural reservoirs of oil and precious metals at the disposal of individuals to accumulation of wealth. The degree of achievement and success has always been gauged through this barometer and, as it seems, will continue to be in the future as well.

This greed of owning the lion’s share of resources – either on your own or through your children – is what has got us here. This greed is what has led to overpopulation in developing and underdeveloped countries as the objective to have more and more earning hands and the struggle to win more and more bread to feed all the stomachs can only be achieved by siring more and more children. The vicious cycle thus created is difficult to disrupt as is evident in regions including South Asia. The struggle for power, the feudal-oriented politics of the region, sharp stratification of social classes, the ever-shrinking middle class, and the uncontrollable increase in crime rate and social offences are all practical manifestations and consequences of this snowball effect originating from greed. This desire which is insatiable is what causes transgression, plundering, and what we saw on last Sunday in Ahmedpur East.

Some are blaming the administration for the tragic spike in death toll because of the absence of basic health facilities and unavailability of fully functional burns units in any of the five tehsils of Bahawalpur with an approximate total population of 2.4 million. Indeed, this negligence cannot be simply disregarded as this is a clear vindication of the claim how roads, highways, red Metro buses, Orange trains and yellow cabs cannot replace the establishment of hospitals and burns centres as a mandatory indicator of progress.

There is, however, a flipside to this story which cannot be upturned and glossed over. The element of greed that was involved cannot be turned a blind eye to. Yes, we have people talking about imparting civic education and regulating the department of policing, and they are right. But before educating people about civic values and punishing them in cases of non-compliance, we should focus our attention towards another important aspect – the presence of will and sense.

With an oil tanker tumped over on a highway and the oil spilt over a stretch of several metres, people should have been stopped from collecting oil in every possible container on this planet by the motorway or regular police. But how about thinking for one fine moment that people should have themselves thought about staying at home or at least revisit their decision of ‘stealing’ the pouring-out oil before it was too late? It sounds ridiculously impossible, does it not? The idea further distances it from reality when the expressions of people collecting the oil moments before the explosion are viewed in the video clips made by women and children present on the spot, when the people with containers of all sizes and shapes are seen reaching the spot where oil was spilling from yet another tanker in Bhakkar on the very same day, when yet another village’s denizens are seen doing the same (I am actually short of words for explaining the same scene in different cities and at different times repeatedly over and over again!) after a truck and yet another oil tanker met with an accident on Karachi-Hyderabad motorway (the authenticity of the date on which it occurred is dubious but what is not is the greed of people as can be seen in the videos circulating on social media), and when women were seen hiding bottles of Coca-Cola under their clothes and men lifting crates and acting like adult-children after a truck of the company broke down somewhere in Punjab.

Yet another controversy erupted on social media when a local mosque’s imam was accused of using loudspeakers to inform the villagers about the incident and encouraging them to plunder the oil like some booty that is seized in war. Thus ‘education’ was imparted and there was a ‘religious’ scholar who did it, but both the teaching and learning minds were either too avaricious to think of anything else beyond temporary material gain, or were too numbed to predict its deadly consequences. The point that people were actually too illiterate to speculate anything of this sort does not stand because there is one basic thing that our mullahs never cease to tell them and that is: what goes around, comes around. The religious clerics, in their innocence, often convey such golden rules to the poor and illiterate masses with the primary intention of satiating their own material greed. And humans have been involved in using wood for fire since the discovery of fire itself, and it is impossible to even think that people living in the 21^st century are unaware of oil’s innate ability to catch fire under the mere scorching heat of the sun, let alone by lighted cigarettes or stubs.

Yes, it is painful and difficult to call the dead and injured greedy and imbecile, yet there is no denying the fact that these features are excessively common in our society. From singly occupying the place for two in a mosque and fighting with fruit vendors to put one extra apple or an entire bunch of grapes without charging to teaching children the lessons of putting oneself before others and witnessing the corruption of feudal rulers and politicians, it is greed that is being reflected. Greed encourages stealing which can acquire different forms, ranging from the Ahmedpur Sharqia tragedy to depriving a traffic policeman of his life in Quetta after being run over by a serving legislator’s vehicle.

This horrendous incident has undeniably spotlit the loopholes in our current education system because the oil was being collected by not only the uneducated villagers but also several passers-by wearing branded clothes and travelling in their expensive cars both of which are indicators of wealth and, therefore, the capacity to buy education in our society.

Thus, before criticising the government for inefficiency of police and inadequate medical facilities in the area, hold it answerable for the negligence it has shown in educating people. The miserable failure in designing an effective, valuable and uniform curriculum for all the provinces and administrative units that deals with our moral and civil values, and social ethics is what has resulted and will continue to result in such incidents. Cramming some formulae and certain facts is not what education is all about. Knowledge cannot be a virtue until it is entwined with a little, if not a lot of, wisdom which comes from differentiating between the right and the wrong. It is this discrimination which, if taught to a kid from the primary level, will make him civil enough to give way to ambulances, let another man sit beside him in a mosque, will make him pay for the extra fruit he was originally bargaining for, and will tell him what is his and what is not.

It is high time that these realities are fed into the minds of people instead of being rote-learnt for one day for the sake of taking and passing exams. Yes, the loss would have been much less had the vehicle been fit enough to carry 40,000 litres of oil or had the police guarded the area or had the injured been given treatment in time, but the incident would not have occurred in the first place had the people been wise enough. However, as religion is the only thing people tend to believe in, here is the religious justification of the aforementioned stance:

“And whatever strikes you of disaster – it is for what your hands have earned; but He pardons much.” (Al-Qur’an 42:30)

“When under trial, let no one say: “I am being tried by God.” For with evil things God cannot be tried, nor does he himself try anyone.” (James 1:13)

“When a person gives up all the desires in his waking mind and when his self is turned inward and satisfied within itself, at that time he is said to be stable of mind.” (Bhagavad Gita 2.55)