An eventful year

Pakistan is an eventful country but some years are more eventful than others. The year 2013 was one such year. In this one calendar year, heads of all state institutions, including the head of the state and the chief executives of the federal and two provincial governments were changed.
There were general elections for national and provincial legislatures, all parties’ conferences outside parliament, talk of talks with the Pakistani Taliban, Imran Khan asking them to open an office while visiting the church blast victims in Peshawar, renewed border tensions with India after the incidents on the LoC in Kashmir even after the new prime minister’s insistence on normalising ties with our gigantic neighbour, the first ever indictment of a martial ruler when Pervez Musharraf was charged under Article 6, the blockade of Nato-Isaf supplies in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa by PTI and Jamaat-e-Islami enthusiasts, and JI chief Munawwar Hasan declaring that Pakistani soldiers who fell while fighting militants were not martyrs – and so on and so forth.
What did not change from previous years was loadshedding and power cuts due to the insufficient supply of gas and electricity, enormous price hikes, suicide attacks by terrorist outfits across the country besides bomb attacks, sniper shooting and target killing claiming thousands of innocent lives, mindless bloodletting in Karachi, unrest, violence and disappearances in Balochistan, attacks on places of worship, jailbreak in KP, drone attacks in North Waziristan with an odd one in a settled area, carjacking, street crime, extortion, nepotism and corruption, etc.
Also, the number of boys and girls of school-going age who remain out of school stays the same: 25 million. The number of women dying in the process of childbirth remains the same too: 75 young mothers die daily in labour, ante-natal or post-natal conditions in Pakistan. In general, the status of women and children stays where it was. The state of non-Muslim Pakistanis is also no better.
The democratic transition between the two successive civilian governments is to be celebrated. The general elections were not perfect but saw people come out in much larger numbers than before to vote. Although the PPP and the ANP did not find it easy to campaign due to threats of violence and after having lost many political leaders and workers in terrorist attacks, all major political parties got their candidates elected in one part of the country or the other.
The COAS finally retired after a six-year stint and a new man was handed over the baton – a sign of institutions prevailing over individuals. A ‘controversial’ chief justice of the Supreme Court stepped down and apparently a calmer person succeeded him. Former president Asif Ali Zardari, who is still not credited for his handing over of all extra-constitutional executive powers after the 18th Amendment, finished his tenure and was replaced gracefully by a constitutional figurehead of the state by the PML-N, as it should be in a parliamentary, federal democracy.
While I do not like to see the political pendulum shifting from the centre to the right – and to the further right in many cases – it must be acknowledged that politicians of all hues and colours from mainstream parties have done us good by letting the process continue and we have moved forward in the realm of democracy and institution-building in Pakistan. This must not be undermined. However, almost nothing that directly affects the daily lives – rather the struggle to survive – of more than 90 percent of the citizens of this country has changed even a tiny bit.
Yaqub Masih passed away in 2013 leaving behind a widow, three sons and two daughters. He was not killed in the Peshawar church blast or lynched by a mob after being accused of blasphemy. He died of pneumonia and pleurisy in a Rawalpindi government hospital. He had worked as a janitor and sweeper for 50 years (since the age of eight) in various places. Two of his three sons remain janitors, one lucky to get an entry level job with a contractor working for the government municipal service and the other in a low-income private school. The third is a toddler.
His widow, like any malnourished mother going through seven pregnancies (one still birth and one died of jaundice when six days old), has arthritis, brittle bones and a perpetual backache since she entered her forties. She even gave birth to the youngest son in that state. The two older girls wash and clean in a middle income neighbourhood just across the road from where Yaqub Masih’s family lives, take care of the youngest sibling, do other chores and cook for everyone. The elder one is engaged to be married into a family from Sialkot. The mother keeps delaying the marriage due to the expenditure it involves.
Yaqub died after coughing every night for two years. Five working people, including his two sons and two daughters, could not afford a decent treatment for him. His older son told me that the combined income of all four siblings after Yaqub’s death is Rs26,000 in which six people have to be fed, a rent of Rs6,000 for the two-room house in a squatter paid, electricity and water bills managed and an attempt has to be made to save some money for the sister’s marriage and the youngest brother’s schooling.
Rukhsana’s husband left her for another woman. She lives in Moach Goth, on the peripheries of urban Karachi settlements, and travels by bus for about two hours one way each day to come and work in a house in the DHA neighbourhood. She has two children of her own, two of her brother’s who went back to their ancestral Kunri leaving his children behind in Karachi after his wife left him, and an old, ailing mother to take care of.
Although she does a lot of work – cooking, cleaning, ironing, etc – Rukhsana considers her employers to be humane and generous and for that reason alone, she takes that backbreaking journey involving changing buses twice. She is sending all four children to a government school. Her mother is not completely incapacitated, and needs regular medication.
Rukhsana earns Rs10,000 rupees a month and gets some support for the children’s books and uniforms every year. She got enrolled with the Benazir Income Support Programme as well. According to her, BISP at least pays for wheat every month. But she can’t save a penny and the children remain malnourished. They get to eat one egg each once a week, only thick tea and never a full cup of milk and meat when Rukhsana’s employers give her food to take home.
Habibullah is from Swat. He was not particularly trained but worked as a waiter at a local hotel as a teenager for some time before Swat became a battlefield in 2008. He moved to Lahore and found a job that included two pairs of uniforms, one paid meal a day and a bed to sleep in. He was recruited as an unarmed security guard in a security company at Rs3,000 a month with the ‘benefits and privileges’ mentioned above.
Since he had basic knowledge of guns, after a quick, semi-formal training offered by the company, he became an armed guard with a Rs2,000 raise in salary. Now he gets Rs8,000 rupees per month, out of which he sends 5000 to his mother and younger siblings and manages in 3000 rupees and the infrequent tips he receives.
And so, dear readers, 2013 changed so much for those at the top but did nothing for the family of Yaqub Masih, the children and nephews of Rukhsana and the mother and siblings of Habibullah. Democracy is to be celebrated but we can only survive as a nation if democracy helps us replace the elite-capture of our economy and affluent middleclass-capture of our political discourse by economic prosperity, social justice and equal citizenship for all. I hope we start moving in that direction in the new year. Happy 2014!
The writer is a poet and author based in Islamabad.Email: harris.khalique@gmail.com