The lost year

This year will likely never be forgotten, but the hope is that we remember it more for the lessons it taught us than the misery it wreaked upon the world. The year has been, almost all of it, dedicated to the nightmare that is the Covid-19 pandemic – with life as we knew it coming to a halt, major economies almost nearing collapse and people facing lockdowns which kept them inside their homes for months at a time. Across the world, close to two million have lost their lives to the novel coronavirus. Even though in Pakistan the virus initially caused relatively less damage, it has well highlighted the country’s fragile healthcare which collapsed as soon as the first wave of the deadly virus hit the country. To date, the country has reported more than 10,000 deaths out of which 100 were healthcare workers. We remember young Dr Osama Riaz who got infected while performing his duties of screening patients who were returning to Gilgit-Baltistan; his death emphasised the urgent need for PPE kits for healthcare workers exposed to suspected coronavirus patients. Karachi’s Dr Furqan-ul-Haq’s death in early May showed the crisis of an acute shortage of beds in hospitals across the city. There were many others – the nameless, the faceless, the masked – who lost their lives while trying to save ours.

Apart from the obvious news of death and illness becoming a feature of this year, the pandemic also led to an overall economic meltdown worldwide. And, while Pakistan didn’t adopt stricter measures and its industries remained open, the country witnessed a negative growth rate for FY 2019-2020. After the federal government’s dilly-dallying on a countrywide lockdown, Pakistan had a complete shutdown for a few weeks in March. The sudden closure of industries and education institutions left many people in a fix and, within a month, the prime minister insisted on reopening a majority of sectors to resume economic activities. But this relatively early resumption of business activities didn’t help the country reduce its financial losses. This year, the unemployment rate in the country stood at close to five percent. Pakistan’s unemployed labour force, especially those who work in informal sectors, rely on foreign jobs especially in the UAE and Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries. Due to the pandemic, there has been a precipitous fall in available jobs in these countries. We would like to hope that the coming year might be somewhat better, but the predictions by the country’s economists that around 10 million people will slip below the poverty line do little to assure that Pakistan’s economy will be any better.

While Covid-19 did take up most of our attention during 2020, the political front has been hardly boring. We saw the rise of Maryam Nawaz, who emerged as a force to reckon with – especially during the organising done by the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM). The autumn/winter rallies of the PDM drew a lot of attention from a public which is growing increasingly weary of the unprecedented hike in the prices of food items and other commodities, making it almost impossible for ordinary people to meet household budgets. Much else regarding the PDM has remained unclear, with discussions continuing into the final days of the year on future tactics. Much like 2019, this outgoing year too has featured NAB prominently. By the end of the year, Khawaja Asif has been arrested and Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, former prime minister, once again summoned by NAB in January next year. Governance has been a mixed bag, although winter has highlighted the debilitating crisis caused by the government's ineptness of allowing the LNG crisis to occur.

This year has also seen a further tightening of the censor around the press and other media, with journalists struggling to report the news around the country. As part of the overall media landscape, and in response to the vitriol-laden vicious attacks on social media, prominent women journalists in the country issued a statement highlighting the way dissent is treated by troll teams. These attacks also shed light on the growing curbs on Pakistani media and how the ruling elite uses social media as a tool to suppress critical voices. Pakistan’s press freedom’s ranking has dropped to the 145th position (out of 180 countries). The mysterious – and thankfully brief – disappearance of journalists continued during the year; the prime minister too continued to unfortunately remain somehow unaware of these instances. March this year also saw the editor-in-chief of the Jang/Geo Group, Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman arrested in a 30-year-old real-estate case. Critics within Pakistan and international media rights watchdogs were quick to see the fissures and called out this well-thought-out attack on press freedom in the country; he has since been released – after almost eight months in detention.

As though the year had not piled enough misery on the people, in May 2020 a Karachi-bound PIA flight – which was supposed to be one of the first flights after the lockdown opened – crashed, killing more than 90 people. Miraculously, two passengers survived. Add to that the near-apocalypse that visited Karachi in the form of torrential flood-inducing rains in the last week of August. In September, the country woke up to a terrifying case of gang-rape of a woman who was driving, along with her children, to Gujranwala from Lahore. The horrific gang-rape of the woman highlighted the disturbingly misogynistic mindset of our society, including the police. The case led to loud and unnecessary debates around public hanging and chemical castration but little introspection on the nature of the crime of rape and the status of women in the country. Pakistan also lost many famous names this year – from celebrities like Tariq Aziz and Sabiha Khanum to jurists like Fakhruddin G Ebrahim to political figures such as Mir Hasil Bizenjo and Munawar Hasan to the controversial Khadim Hussain Rizvi. As the country moves into the new year, it takes along with it a dangerous second wave of the virus. It also takes along with it lessons learnt from a devastatingly chaotic year – lessons on discipline (or the lack of it); healthcare reforms (on which the country needs to move fast); economic disparities (which are crippling); governance (that is missing); human rights (which continue to be violated); and the need for tolerance, empathy and freedom of speech (all of which are in shortage). We look to 2021 with hope for a future that allows us to live and breathe without the constant fear of a fatal disease – with a prayer for all those who were lost to this lost year.