generalspeaking

Failed Pakistan

In which country of the world are there not those who are poor, depending on the goodwill of those who are not poor to welfare their existence? There will always be the haves and the have-nots, and those larger proportions of any population who live with the grace of sufficiency, book-ended by the wealthy and on the other end of the scale, the indigent. All the advanced, developed countries of the world have their middle class, their wealthy and their poor demographics.

But those wealthy, socially-advanced countries also recognize their obligation to lift the lives of the poor from abject poverty to genteel poverty; the former intolerable, the latter tolerated. Being poor and disadvantaged in Western democracies is not commensurate in any way with the tragic conditions in which the poor live in developing countries of the world. The poor in Western democracies are in a sense wards of the state and looked after. Albeit never quite to their satisfaction.

In countries like India and Pakistan, although democracies on a different scale, the poor are truly in need. India, because of the sheer scale of its population size and its position as a rapidly developing, technologically-advanced country, the state of the country's downtrodden and poor is almost explicable, just as it is in China, with its immense population base; both are administratively unwieldy. Public health care, universal social services are virtual unknowns, unaffordable.

In a country like Pakistan, heavily reliant on international loans and grants from countries like the United States, to maintain itself, the vast underbelly of the country is subsistence-poor and neglected. Predictably enough, the huge sums of money Pakistan receives from the U.S. to ensure its status as a 'partner' in fighting terror goes to its military apparatus. Harbouring aspirations toward first-world classification and importance, it took the country's political class little by troubling conscience to opt for nuclear advancement as opposed to lifting the poor out of their existential travail.

Like every other country of the world with few exceptions, Pakistan has always been far more engaged in building its military, in funding and providing it with the most advanced of military equipment. And concomitant with that, the need to invest in training and arming non-state militias more commonly known as terror groups, generally religious fanatics intent on installing their version of unforgivably social-political-theocratic rule. To bitterly contest its arch-enemy, India.

The condition of the poor was of little concern. Government outreach, infrastructure and assistance virtually unknown in the provinces where tribal leaders reigned supreme, indifferent to the presence of a government which had no interest in the welfare of their tribal villages. A perfect formula for national disintegration and social-political disaster. Add to the potentially lethal mixture a perfect confluence of imperfect human interference with natural geography.

And then bring on historically-heavy monsoon rains that defy the ability of the landscape to absorb its extravagant generosity of downpour, and a third of the country becomes inundated, the security of disaster relief is improvidently unavailable, and helpless populations are left to flounder, to drown, to lose all their life's achievements, housing, farms, domestic animals. Heralding a loss to the country of future crops and security in food.

And then the country's diplomats remonstrate with the international community that their lack of generosity in charitable funding for rescue of the country and its people confounds civilization's need to support those who cannot support themselves. Pakistan, priding itself as an important, first-world country of nuclear achievement.

And little else, other than the distinction of being the world's terror-militia central.

Labels: Pakistan, Political Realities, Poverty

posted by Pieface @ Monday, August 23, 2010