Balochistan’s Floods:Neglecting the distressed

FRONTIER POST

If one is to learn how to neglect the distressed, he or she is only to watch the act of this nation’s political elite and the grandees of all other hues and stripes. It is for days that flash flooding has been playing havoc with Balochistan’s three districts of Neseerabad, Jaffarabad and Jhal Magsi. The flooding has left them in utter ruins and devastation. Yet the flood-battered of the area are still to surface any compellingly on the radars of the political elite and the self-styled champions of the Baloch people. Mercifully, the prime minister has taken time out to pay them a whistle-stop visit. He has also unfolded for them a special relief package worth Rs.2.6 billion, which though makes not even a mentionable patch on the colossal loss they have suffered from this disastrous flooding. And it isn’t any clear either what would come of this package, given the notoriety the ruling oligarchy led by chief minister Nawab Aslam Riasani in the province has earned for playing ducks and drakes with the public money with impunity for personal enrichment and gains. But at least the prime minister has visited the area, even if belatedly. The other political eminences posing to be the real voice of the people of Pakistan and their true representatives have just not bothered to do even that much, even for form’s sake. They have been addressing rallies, leading protests and demonstrations and what not in every nook and cranny of the country. It is only the flood-devastated areas and their deeply distressed residents that have evaded their interest rigidly. It is the army which is actively engaged in rescue and relief efforts. The provincial administration itself is more conspicuous for its absence than presence in the relief operations. And, quite appallingly, the destroyed area is still to figure on the itinerary of Riasani, that is, if at all he is still present in Quetta and is not on his fond junkets outside the seat of his office. Not even once have his flood-battered people seen of him, whereas it is he who should have been leading the operations personally to rescue them from their distress and provide them every possible relief vigorously. But what is most stunning of all is the muteness of the self-touted champions of the Baloch people. They claim to be the voice of the Baloch people. Yet that voice is totally silent on this Baloch catastrophe. They are so tirelessly voluble about the missing persons. But is this calamity that has befallen the Baloch people any lesser, if not more, horrendous? Scores of residents have just been swept away by the stormy waves, with their fates unknown. Hundreds of thousands of people are still stranded in the flood waters. A lot more have been rendered homeless, with all their belongings, including cattle, having been wiped out. And yet their tragic woe has touched no heart among the so-styled Baloch nationalists. Is it because those eminences see no politics to play in their grief or no brownie points to pick up from talking of their catastrophe? Or, is it that tribal affiliations have overwhelmed a colossal human tragedy? After all, while the grandees of this nationalist clan were making a beeline to the visiting UN rights team “to unburden their hearts”, why none has cared to even speak of the woe of the flood-battered, what to talk of visiting them and sharing their travails? This calamity of the Baloch people has indeed been a great exposer. It has exposed the elites across the spectrum for what they really are: a tribe of imposters, charlatans and opportunists, no friends of the people but mere sharks. Be it the political eminences or the nationalist grandees, they all are the co-travellers, ruthlessly poaching on the human beings to promote their trades. The flood-battered will somehow tide over their distress sooner or later. But the infamy that this tribe has earned by neglecting them will be hard to redeem for times to come, so heartlessly apathetic has it been to their colossal catastrophe.