Pakistan: Spiteful enterprise

So saddening it is that just for political point-scoring the politicos across the spectrum are feeling the least inhibited in trashing the most serious and grave into sheer triviality. Not even they seem any pushed about how their childish pranks are searing the hearts of a citizenry reeling under the worst of times in its life. They even seem not knowing that their silly antics are indeed hurting the people's sentiments ruefully.

At this point in time, the people all over the land are groaning woefully under the backbreaking load of tortuous power and gas load-shedding. For the most part, they are not getting electricity even to light their homes and gas even to cook their meals. The land is filled from end to end with the deafening shrill of a phenomenally distressed citizenry, crying hoarse to rid them of this torture. Yet, dismayingly, amid this public uproar, the federal and the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa governments have got embroiled in a tiff over power distribution and generation in the province.

Not that this is something unheard of. If indeed there are countries where the federal authority alone controls both generation and distribution, instances no lesser abound where the federating units hold this monopoly. Indeed, in the Gujarat state of neighbouring India, the Narenrda Modi-government has attracted so much of private investment in power sector with alluring incentives that it caters abundantly to electricity needs of its consumers, industries and businesses while the mainland continues suffering from chronic power shortages acutely.

Had indeed the offer and demand for power generation and distribution been part of some thoroughly-considered and well-planned action strategy, that would have been admirably worth it. Arguably, the problems confronting the nation presently necessarily entail tight cooperation and collaboration between the federal and the provincial governments. And nothing like that if Islamabad and Peshawar get together to give a stab to disastrous power shortage that is eating irredeemably into the vitals of the polity.

But it is more than evident that there is nothing serious about the whole show; it is all politics. In all likelihood, neither the federal government will devolve power generation to the KP's domain. Nor will the KP government be prepared to collect electricity bills from the users in the province. Ludicrously enough, the tiff between the two has incited the Sindh ruling hierarchy as well to start flapping its wings heatedly to take the same hop. But, unmistakably, this too would be just politics. It really hurts that power-wielders and power-contenders could be so obsessed with their political ambitions and political agendas that for their objectives' perpetuation they would desist not ever from riding roughshod over the masses' acute sensitivities. Whatever the May general election was, the electorate had expected that winners would come to power with a sincere intent to overcome miseries making the people's lives increasingly unlivable.

The general expectation was that politics would henceforth be put behind and the people's wants and needs would occupy the incoming rulers' top priority. But from street to street, the common citizenry is livid that politics instead has become the political elites' prime, and sole, mover. The people are outraged that political capital is being sought to be made even on matters that should best be left to the forums they are being dealt with at. Pervez Musharraf is arraigned before the courts and the law will take its own course to decide his fate.

Yet the political hierarchs, particularly at the centre and in Sindh and Punjab, are apparently out to squeeze it to the last drop. With bowls in hands, they are wandering all around to make hay while the sun shines. He is being accosted blithely. Surmises are being thrown at him giddily. And he is being demonised with every ill on the earth. This political discourse may be enthralling the chattering classes, the media, the commentariat and the seminarians. But the street it is not. There is dead silence over there. No one is talking of him; no one is listening about him. The street is all engrossed about its own woes of bread and butter. It is all preoccupied with deepening concerns if ever power and gas would become available in quantities that homes are lit, industries, businesses and undertaking start working full blast and throw up jobs and opportunities aplenty and the access to basic needs becomes easier to make the people's lives livable. On this account, the political elites across the board are indeed under the microscopic scrutiny of the mass of the people. The public is not judging them by what political acrobatics are they playing. They are adjudging them strictly by their deeds in the service of the public. And there, truthfully, the political elites must be shocked from one to all. None lives in the people's good graces any more. They all stand condemned in the popular perception. It is only in the core constituencies of their loyalists that they still live lovingly. The street has begun distancing itself from them all unexceptionably. Even now, not all is lost. The political elites can still reclaim the lost territory. Only, they have to abandon petty politics and focus on public service both collectively and separately. But will they?