Pakistan: No compassion or mercy

Had it to be the United Nations to feel the pain of the flood-devastated of Sindh and Balochistan and cry out their grief? Not the political eminences swaggering so grandiosely on the national landscape, posing to be the people’s leaders and the masses’ voice? Not the civil society moguls, posturing to be the nation’s conscience-keepers? Not even the media, with the grand pretences of being the spokesman of the distressed and the aggrieved? In an appeal, the world body has drawn the international community’s attention to the woeful plight of the people battered by the freak rain flooding that has left behind in its trail large-scale death and destruction in Sindh and Balochistan. And it has asked for immediate donations to the tune of $29 million for food, shelter and health services for the flood-battered. Some five million people, it says, have been affected. And in certain areas the stranded in floodwaters are still being rescued. Tens of thousands of homes have been destroyed. And hundreds of thousands of the flood-ruined are living in makeshift camps or just under the tarpaulins by the roadsides. The UN appeal underlines that vast swathes of croplands have been washed away. And as huge acreage is still under up to 2.5 metres of floodwaters, prospects of sowing the Rabi crop are next to nil. Worse, as the floodwaters are yet so deep despite the passage of one month since the rains and submerging a huge swathe of land, no immediate end to the suffering of the flood-stricken is in sight. Still worse, the standing floodwaters could potentially end up in contamination of water sources, diseases outbreaks, infrastructure damages and livelihood losses in the affected areas. And yet this distressful gloomy picture has not registered at all in any of the quarters of the political elites, civil society glitterati and the echelons of the media grandees. It has bypassed them all as some kind of a nonevent not worth their exalted notice. No relief convoys are moving on to the devastated areas even amid the photo-ops both the political elites and the civil society grandees are so fond of. No relief supplies collection camps have been pitched anywhere in the land for the succour of these unfortunate flood-ruined. The philanthropy in effect seems having gone wholly parched dry at the national level for these woebegone. So much so, the 29-million-dollar UN donations appeal includes, ironically enough, $6.5 million for “milling, fortifying, transporting and distributing wheat donated by the governments of Sindh and Balochistan”. Why? Couldn’t the two governments do all this and bear all this expenditure on their own to save the lives of the people whose weal and welfare is primarily their own first and foremost responsibility? Or, have they gone broke after throwing a lot of money on the pork barrel in these election times to spruce up their wobbling electoral prospects? Or, has human compassion departed them all completely? Why indeed no tears are being shed anywhere even over the heartrendingly tragic demise of some 400 people swept away by the stormy floodwaters? Is their death lesser grievous than the deaths of the drone victims or those slain in terrorist strikes? The political nobility and the civil society gentry could be excused, though. They cry where they see the benefit in crying and keep mum where they see no such benefit. But why for the media too have these 400 unfortunate people become just cold statistics, no human beings? Why none of them has gone beyond the statistics and not explored how many mothers has this tragedy left widowed and how many children orphaned and how many parents with lost children? The insensitivity and apathy of the politicos in the instant case can, of course, be understood. As the victims belong to the voiceless, practically disenfranchised peasantry, they need not shed a crocodile tear on their doleful plight. After all, this peasantry is a captive electorate in the serfdom of fat-bellied land barons who predominantly make up the nation’s political elite. Since this enslaved peasantry’s vote is assured, why should they bother about its woes? And why should the civil society too? The peasantry has never been the favourite of this glitterati that cries only over the pains of its masters, not on its woes. But if the political nobility and the civil society gentry have no compassion or mercy for the peasantry, has also the media too? If they are mere charlatans and chicaners, has it also to be. Even now, can’t it spare a few moments to speak out the grief of the flood-battered of Sindh and Balochistan? It can, if it wants. But that is a big question mark.