Side-effect

One of my readers, who would use an anonymous email address, has sent me a message saying what we need as a people is a genetic overhaul. No less could reform us. Another dear old friend, Shershah, who is a leading gynaecologist and obstetrician of the country and a dedicated social worker vociferously seconds this opinion. I met Dr Shershah Syed after a long time over a bowl of soup and a dish of deep fried prawns in one of his favourite Chinese haunts in Karachi. He had scores of stories to tell about how we have deteriorated both as a society and as individuals. To him, something has gone wrong with our genetic make-up and we have lost any sense of belonging to our people and association with our country. Unbridled pursuit for profit and a callous attitude towards the weak and the poor are the hallmarks of our privileged classes. The middle class, consisting of doctors, engineers, bankers, lawyers and other professionals, is selfish to the core. The marginalised communities don't count anyway. Being a doctor and a teacher himself, Shershah is disappointed most with those coming out from our medical schools. He said that every male doctor wants to get a government posting, which brings him dividends that he doesn't deserve, or a lucrative residency in a foreign land. If from central Punjab, Peshawar or interior of Sindh, he may sit the superior service examination and try getting into district management. While every freshly graduated lady doctor from Karachi, Lahore, Quetta or Peshawar fancies the idea of tying the knot with a computer engineer of Pakistani descent settled in North America. Then she may or may not practice medicine but definitely involve herself in preaching Islam to the already converted through South Asian Muslim community networks, cook biryani on Sundays and, once a mother, take children out to amusement parks carrying Halal sandwiches in her holdall. Brain drain is not the only issue. According to Shershah, those who are left behind or choose not to go bring so much incompetence and corruption to the system that the society slips backwards even more.

What is said of doctors is perhaps true in every profession. Engineers are no less and so are bankers and lawyers. They have tried to come at par with the landed aristocracy and hit-and-run businessmen. Pakistan's distant and indifferent elite, including all those I mention here, has no clue whatsoever about the state of affairs at the grassroots. Sohail Ahmed, a well respected chief engineer from PTCL who retired some time back, also relates a gory tale of corruption and mismanagement in his institution and how it was handed over to ETISALAT. He witnessed the worst kind of bad intention on the part of the policymakers and how PTCL, which was earning more than a billion-dollar revenue, was handed over to the cronies of the ruling elite who plundered its wealth in the first phase and then finally handed it over to a foreign firm. Ahmed stops short of blaming our genetics.

But here I must say that while I fully agree with the analyses of these citizens of Pakistan whose hearts bleed, I have a disagreement about the cause of our continued predicament. I understand that none of the people I have quoted above really believe that the reason for rampant corruption and inefficiency has actually to do with our genetics. It is due to the deep-felt frustration and helplessness that makes them doubt that Pakistanis are wired differently. We as humans are at a stage somewhere in the middle of the path of becoming civilised from being savages. Pakistanis are no better or no worse. People in the supposedly civilised West and the Far East live under surveillance cameras and know that they can't get away with any wrong that they do. Pakistani people are the victims of the failure of leadership, absence of good governance and the policies of their myopic elite. The change has to come from the top in every area.



The writer is an Islamabad-based poet and rights campaigner. Email: harris@spopk.org