Blackout

The heat and the humidity on the plains of the Punjab are soul-searing, indeed asphyxiating. Down south the mercury hits even higher. On its own, the weather, other than those ever so brief spells of rain, is enough to make one’s life miserable. But this year, electricity, actually its almost absolute lack thereof, has added to the misery by spades – driving the sanest and the most balanced to the verge of hysteria. The burden is all the more enormous, almost unendurable, for the common man, whose shoulders are already sagging with myriad problems, high inflation absolutely having crippled him.

And this past week or so, now with electricity not there practically the whole of day and night, he has to go sleepless too, taking the bleary-eyed distress to work.

The word used to explain the phenomenon, load-shedding, is indeed a misnomer in the best of times, for you only shed something that you possess. This is more likely a blackout, with only some snatches in 24 hours when you have electricity – always fearing that it would again be turned off at random. And those fears more often than not have a knack of turning out to be true. At least there should have been some method to the madness…

It is true that the problem of circular debt was the parting gift of the Musharraf/Shaukat Aziz combine. But it has been three years and a half since we said good riddance to the ignominious duo. And a solution to the problem should by now have been found to turn the situation around – if not wholly at least substantively enough so that the dent to the economy was minimal and the common man could at least have his forty winks in peace.

This 6,000 megawatt ‘shortfall’, and the torture, both physical and psychological, that it has inflicted on the ordinary citizen, is indefensible, especially under a political dispensation that should have been more attuned to the needs and sufferings of the people. Instead for the first two years and a bit, the people had to make do with the assorted excuses of the favourite, Raja Parvez Ashraf and afterwards Naveed Qamar’s gobbledygook, but no change on the ground, except for the worse.

The thing most manifest in this PPP stint in power is its current supremo’s ability to disarm his opponents on the political chessboard. His crafty moves may yet come to nought, his carefully laid plans may still go awry, if he doesn’t read the pulse of the people as well as he does his political detractors’ machinations. The anger for the moment may be suppressed, but the cauldron is boiling, and this cavalier attitude towards the people’s torment may well be the last straw on the camel’s back.

In the eyes of the people, the issue as in other spheres, is one of incompetence, corruption and mismanagement on the part of the leadership. Bad governance, really. The irony and the agony lies in the fact that the installed capacity is well in excess of the demand, and the constantly talked of circular debt the real culprit.

Karachi’s electricity issue has become all the more complicated, with an intransigent management running into an equally obstinate workers union. And the people in the mega city are condemned to suffer in the dark. Such has been the fate of the once- upon- a -time City of Lights.

While that may be so, the political Tsars of Karachi have come back to the fold, much to the surprise of the ‘experts’ fraternity which had maintained that there was a ring of finality to the parting this time round. The evergreen Ishrat-ul-Ibad is back and he may remain there till he gets into the Guinness Book for the longest gubernatorial term ever, anywhere in the world. Also the PPP, already comfortable with the head count in the AJK assembly, gifted the MQM the two AJK seats from Karachi that were the original bone of contention between the two. All this little appeasement was enough to lure the MQM back – for the moment.

But sadly, this thaw came about after a 100-odd people, mainly innocent victims, were laid waste – mostly by the MQM guns. There was little mourning for them. As Faiz had said so many seasons ago, Yeh khune khak nashinan tha rizq-e khak hua.

There definitely is going to be another falling out, for come what may Asif Zardari is not likely to reverse the introduction of the commissionerate system, nor is he going to hand over the keys of Karachi to the MQM by returning to the Local Bodies system. The gerrymandering that the MQM had manoeuvred through Musharraf in 2002 will also have to be annulled. In the circumstances, with the MQM as ever not budging an inch from its demands and the PPP and the ANP not willing to concede, how long will the latest rapprochement last?

The writer is Sports and Magazines Editor, Pakistan Today.