Land of cheap lives

Too many needless deaths

Too many years of too many deaths have clearly made us thick-skinned as a nation, at least as far as unnecessary loss of life is concerned. It took us close to 60,000 deaths to declare war on the terrorists, after all. Before that no manner of institutional, targeted or even random killings, it seemed, mattered. Sectarian minorities were gunned down by the thousands, ordinary men, women and children were blown up by the tens of thousands, militant wings of political mafias spread terror in urban centres, even road-side pick-pocket killings became commonplace; yet few people seemed bothered in Islamabad.

There are also other types of deaths that hardly even register on the national conscience anymore; an 11-year old boy gunned down by a security guard in Karachi the other day, for example. Apparently he was wearing a ‘scary’ mask, which scared the supposedly professionally trained guard so much that he shot the boy in the head. This is not the first such incident, of course, and going by usual official neglect, it is unlikely to be the last.

Security companies – that provide security guards for homes, offices, people, etc – have become quite the rage for some time now owing to the general law and order breakdown. Going by reports, it is not that there has been out-of-control demand; rather the excess supply has also been used to create its own demand, following the oldest classical economics doctrine. And catering to this inflated demand has compromised quality on many fronts, to put it mildly. Most of these guards – armed and ready to shoot – have received minimal training. They are clearly unable to take calculated decisions at crunch time and can hardly do better than pull the trigger. This industry, which has run without proper oversight for a long time, has become a money-minting mafia in its own right. Not only should it be properly regulated, but those directly and indirectly involved in these deaths should be taken to task.