NO SUCCESS WITHOUT ACCOUNTABILITY

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2017/05/29/no-success-without-accountability/

Greased palms make the world go round

When members of the National Assembly gathered on Friday the 26th of May this year to hear the Finance Minister Ishaq Dar announce the Federal Budget 2017-18, the opposition walked out in protest against physical mistreatment of farmers who had gathered to protest earlier that day in D Chowk, in Islamabad. Farmers undoubtedly have much to complain about, as do people from almost every sector of life in Pakistan, but when the national budget was being read out was surely the time to focus on that important matter then at hand. This inability to organise and sort out priorities is a trait that actively lends itself to corruption, and is at the heart of the chaos that is Pakistan today.

A case that further illustrates this point is the non-payment of salaries to the employees of the National AIDS Control Program (NACP). These employees were not paid their salaries since June last year. It is only now that the Ministry of Health Services, Regulation and Coordination (NHSRC) has issued a notification for the salaries to be paid – and a very fuzzy notification it is – which could create legal problems, and further non-payment of dues. There were various reasons at different stages for the non-payment of salaries for this unconscionable period of time. The latest this year in March was the merger of three programmes, those dealing with HIV, TB and malaria into one program now called ‘Common Unit’, and a dispute as to who should head this merged program.

The three diseases mentioned (HIV, TB and malaria) are among the worst health scourges in the world. You wonder why the fourth major disease, polio, was left out of this group, but that is another matter.

The figures for these three diseases are damning.

According to a report published by one of the newspapers in Pakistan, in a comparison of the years 2005 to 2015 (ten years), there has been a 14.41% increasing in deaths due to HIV/AIDS in Pakistan. A 17.6% increase in the number of people living with HIV/AIDS in Pakistan. Compare that to a 2000 to 2015 (fifteen year) increase around the world of people living with HIV/AIDS, at just 2%.

According to the WHO, Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the major public health problems in Pakistan, which ranks fifth amongst TB high-burden countries worldwide. Approximately 420, 000 new TB cases emerge every year in Pakistan which is also estimated to have the fourth highest prevalence of multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) globally.

As for Malaria, the disease has re-emerged as a major cause of morbidity in Pakistan. With an estimated burden of 1.5 million cases annually, Pakistan has been categorised by WHO in the Group 3 countries of the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region, along with Afghanistan, Djibouti, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Yemen. These Group 3 countries share 95% of the total regional cases of malaria.

It is obvious that Pakistan is doing something wrong with regards to this matter. Could it be that one of those things is the non-payment of dues to persons dealing with the issue?

Obviously, it was not enough to reorganise the organisations working against these diseases or set up new ones if in the end those departments are to be rendered ineffectual, since no department can function if its workers are not paid their salary – just as no sector in the country can function if people involved in that sector are harassed.

And they are harassed.

It seems almost cheeky for a government labouring under the Panama-gate allegations to spell out details of property tax, but that is part of the government’s job, to set taxes and collect them. But at least, you wish, that those who pay their dues would not be harassed after their payments are cleared. Instead we are told that tax collected on the consumption of electricity by industrial or commercial users is adjustable, which is almost comical because it is so adjustable that if you pay a certain amount to the thugs who come around to check your meter, you will have to pay no more each month for electricity. That in fact is the offer that is made.

Nothing works unless a system of accountability exists and works as well. That people are not paid their dues, that consumers are overcharged and actually offered free electricity if they grease certain palms… and there is no recourse for justice following such events is what makes this country a third world country. If there were some accountability in this country the finance minister’s claim of Pakistan becoming ‘one of the largest economies by 2020’ would not be as laughable as it is at present.

No government can aim at any degree of success let alone a ‘large economy’ unless it makes provision for justice and a certain degree of law and order. The results of such a move would far outdo any investments, social interventions, taxation, rebates, loans or credits that any budget can promise.

CALLING A SPADE A SPADE

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2017/05/22/calling-a-spade-a-spade-4/

Sometimes it really is black and white

One gets used to hypocrisy being a sizeable factor in politics, but sometimes things get nauseating.  Obviously, this refers to Donald Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia, a kingdom of hypocrites as big as the dignitaries visiting them this week. It is hypocrisy whichever way you look at it. Even the term ‘visit to Saudi Arabia’ might be better called an escape, taking into account the hangama the President of the United States leaves behind in the country his ancestors chose to migrate to, particularly since the firing of the FBI Director, the ‘nut job’ James Comey who is now to testify before a Senate Intelligence Committee against his former boss.

Saudi Arabia’s biggest export is not oil but Wahhabism, the extremist, intolerant, violent ideology which has nothing to do with Islam, but claims to have everything to do with it. Donald Trump, who has no clue as to what either is about, only a couple of months ago called for a total shutdown of Muslims entering the US, and claimed that ‘Islam hated Americans.’ And now this visit. And this is the man who was welcomed into the country by the King of Saudi Arabia, bent almost double…okay, okay, that’s because he is old and bent, but he was bent double in other ways as well.

The Saudis in their wisdom restrict women in many ways. Women are not allowed to drive, to work, or to dress according to the heat in that country. They are certainly not allowed to *gasp* shake hands with males. If they put a foot out of line they are punished severely, and that includes being whipped by the religious police patrolling the city of Riyadh.

And yet there was the King and everyone else shaking hands with Melania Trump when she arrived in Riyadh with her husband, and no doubt Ivanka had her hand *gasp* touched by *gasp* men as well.  It is understandable that visiting female dignitaries cannot be dictated where their clothing is concerned, but why go out and *gasp* shake hands with them when an alternative, a courteously pleasant nod would suffice, seeing as the Saudis subscribe to the ‘Look Ma! No hands!’ creed? Either you believe in not doing something, or you do.

Melania Trump, by the way was dressed in a jump suit with the most loathsome belt circling her midriff. The jumpsuit failed to conceal her *gasp* crotch. Several other visiting female dignitaries have refused to subscribe to the hijab, but have at least worn something that conceals their *gasp* crotch.

But all of this pales into insignificance when we have Mr. Trump’s Sunday speech in Saudi Arabia to look forward to. By the time this goes to print, it will have been aired. It must be obvious by now that one is no fan of the Saudis but the temerity of this President of the United States (or any other) to presume to talk to anyone about Islam is breathtaking. If it makes moderates so angry I can’t help wonder what take extremist quarters have on the matter. Let’s pray that whatever that take is includes no violent repercussions on a sickened world.

Saudi Arabia is a rich neighbour that has stumbled on a pile of riches, not acquired them in any other way, and it is well on its way to wasting the opportunity in spectacular fashion. The country is good for a sizeable bankroll when required. We give you labour, you give us cash. Thank you kindly. Let’s call a spade a spade and nothing else, unless it is something uncomplimentary, and that would be undiplomatic.  It is hard to choose the United States over the Saudis any time, given the United States’ intolerant, terrorising, bombing segment which is not small, and given the Saudi’s support of regimes that are leading to starvation and death around the world. Intolerant, terrorising, bombing segments anywhere in the world are fundamentally the same, and we do not lack our own share.

Let’s learn to recognise what is right and what is wrong, and admit that we are all, them, us, and anyone else, here to get the best for ourselves, wherever we find it. Let’s learn to live with everyone whether we go to Saudi Arabia, the US or wherever else to make a living, seeing that it is easier to make a living in countries other than the land of the pure. Undoubtedly the Saudis have some good points. Certainly the Americans have many. The Chinese are welcome to Pakistan because it is clearly profitable for them. It is certainly so for us. But let’s not bend over backwards for anyone, and definitely let no one presume to lecture anyone else about something they don’t know quack about.

AN ANALOGY FOR PAKISTAN?

The Indus Valley School for Art and Architecture

The Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture in Karachi is a singularity. It stands in the midst of Karachi, another singularity, both of them not just survivors, but vibrant survivors of neglect.

Rarely, outside of Karachi, do you encounter a woman like Anjum (not her actual name), who picked up three younger sisters out of nine and moved to Pakistan from India after the war of 1971. The sisters never saw their Indian family again, although their mother sends them home-made achar whenever she can. Anjum rebuilt their lives sweaty brow by tear until now she owns a small house, and her sisters are married and settled in their own homes.

Nor do you meet a person like Bilal (not his real name) who drives a cab, and belongs to KP. He married a girl from a rival tribe in Karachi and daren’t go back again. “Life is hard in Karachi, and I’m in danger here,” he told me. “But there,” he said, speaking of KP, “I’m dead.” Bilal has an income his family survives upon, and although he drives all day in the heat and hectic traffic of the massive metropolis with little to show for it, at least, as he says, he and his wife are alive. He is luckier than many others.

The School of Architecture too is in danger, from the salt sea air that kills the substandard construction material in the buildings around it. It is in danger from the environmental pollution that covers everything in a grey shroud. But where the building stood before, it was dead already.

The group of people who planned to build a school of art and architecture in Karachi using the National College of Art in Lahore as a model were already running a school in temporary premises, while looking for something more permanent. They had also been allotted a piece of land in Clifton.

The website of the Indus Valley School for Art and Architecture (IVS) contains a segment on the school’s history, written by Noor Jehan Bilgrami, herself a designer, and the wife of Akeel Bilgrami, a leading architect and one of the founders of the IVS. She describes the original building as a ‘Victorian style warehouse in Kharadar, built about a hundred years ago by Nusserwanjee Mehta, father of Jamshed Nusserwanjee, philanthropist, social worker and outstanding citizen, the first Mayor of Karachi. The four-story stone structure was to be demolished to make way for a concrete high riser.’ Probably another of the nightmare high rise buildings which may be seen everywhere in Karachi today, rising like malignant growths upon the landscape. ‘This Victorian style warehouse housed one of the first elevators installed in the sub-continent,’ Bilgrami mentions.

Shahid Abdulla, another well-known architect is also a member of the group responsible for IVS. He is the person who discovered the warehouse in Kharadar and realised its potential. In his words, ‘if we cannot move in here, we’ll carry it to Clifton.’

And carry it to Clifton they did.

Stone by each 26,000 stone, every single stone and ‘hundreds of pieces of timber numbered and carefully removed, cautiously transferred and stored before being re-erected at the (allotted) site’ in Clifton. And there the IVS stands today, a proud symbol of a what seemed to be an impossible vision turned into reality by a group of visionaries, with the invaluable help of a team of workers who laboured to make Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture what it is today…an exquisite building, exactly the same as the one that once stood in Kharadar now in entirely different surroundings.

The IVS stands in front of the grand barricaded home of those who do not care surrounded by a neighbourhood that is not cared for, even though it is among the wealthier neighbourhoods of the city. What would be piles of trash ignored by municipal authorities are dispersed and blown in the wind behind the building. In front is the sea into which pours the waste of an entire city and God only knows what chemicals from factories.

The IVS is a ‘registered not-for-profit, private, degree awarding institute managed by an Executive Committee through the Executive Director, under the control of an independent Board of Governors that includes distinguished educationists, artists, architects, industrialists, bankers and media persons, in addition to three members nominated by the Government of Sindh.’

The institute’s similarities to Pakistan are striking. When the group of people who set up this school went to see the original building ‘cobwebs made our entry difficult. Rotting scraps of paper, letter-heads and old photographs covered with pigeon droppings were mementos that we found. It then seemed to us quite impossible that this building could actually be transported to a new location.’ But transported it was, painstakingly and not without immense difficulty, like the people who moved from India to make Pakistan their home, like Anjum who came with her sisters, like Bilal who moved from KP to Karachi and married the girl from a rival tribe. Anjum who never got to see her family again thanks to short-sighted policies on either side, and Bilal who does not get to see his because of the lawlessness that prevails in his home territory, worse in his case than the lawlessness that prevails in his adoptive city. IVS, exists in neglected surroundings amid self-serving non-governance, and thrives despite it all.

IVS provides girls and boys a great non-profit education in a displaced building of exemplary beauty. It is a result of the vision of a few men and women who did not seek to benefit themselves and therefore truly benefited society. It is what Pakistan could have been but is not. It is what Jinnah wanted but could not achieve. It represents a displaced people who moved to a new home in search of something better. The conditions in Pakistan are testimony to their never having found it, but they were resilient enough to carry on in spite of this.

The IVS stands as a testimony to what may be achieved. Even now, given some selflessness and hard work. A good reason to support the IVS and its endeavours in every way you can.

HOW MANY OF US BELIEVE IN GERMS?

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2017/05/01/how-many-of-us-believe-in-germs/

or in science for that matter

It is a truth universally acknowledged that any person in possession of a mind should not be wanting in education. There is a lot that is beyond sight and comprehension, a lot that exists and is waiting to be understood and discovered. To an ignorant mind however, the unseen does not exist, and it takes education and specifically science, that systematic study of the world through observation and experiment to achieve understanding and discovery, to change our day to day life.

To the common man in this country that is how it is; for him the unseen does not exist. Most people do not believe in germs, and certainly not vaccinations. A man setting up a biogas plant on his farm was mocked by his workers for his ‘silly foreign ideas’, for thinking that cow dung would light up homes and work pumps. But when the dung water slurry started generating electricity the men lined up for connections. It takes someone willing to reach over ignorance and act in ways that are informed by education, to show in practical terms that yes, such and such thing exists and works, thereby facilitating progress.

But at least these people who do not believe in what they cannot see have the excuse of being illiterate and uninformed. What excuse does the President of the United States, a man apparently educated in one of the most expensive universities in the country, have for his attitude when a few years ago for example he tweeted – as he does – that ‘The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive.’ Really? So who is going to reach over the President of the United States and his colleagues who have been handpicked by him, who share his attitude, people at the pinnacle of a great nation – to support science? That is what they are doing all those men and woman carrying some very interesting signs, participating in rallies all around the world, supporting science in an attempt to reach over those ignorant minds to protest against the proposed cut of billions of dollars in funding for scientific research.

People have discovered the power of numbers. Women marched on Washington earlier this year to protest against the new administrations attitude towards women. The rally was a resounding success, with many politicians, academics and celebrities also taking part. Since then similar rallies supporting the same cause have taken place around the world. At an estimate more than 4,000,000 people participated in the US and up to 5 million worldwide. If there is one thing that mobilises politicians it is the prospect of losing votes.

So what excuse does the Pakistani leadership have for not promoting educating, for not providing even a decent level of science in schools in this country? And is it time to threaten to pull votes if this neglect does not end? How many of us, after all, believe in germs?

I have mentioned this before but in my class of students learning spoken English, only one had ever seen a magnifying glass. The one exception again was the only one to have heard of the equator or the poles. Except for two none could say where in relation to Pakistan India was located, and none knew the name of the major river that runs the length of Pakistan. These girls were students of Intermediate to Bachelors, some of them studying science.

It may sound astounding, but the common man in the US is not much better informed. Unfortunately given the level of scientific research in the US, if funding to science is cut off there, the rest of the world will feel the impact. Not funding science in Pakistan, as it is not funded now, impacts upon us and us alone. This does not make the fact any less tragic, it is mentioned only to highlight how little important research is done in this country. As reported in an English daily newspaper, ‘Pakistan was ranked at 131 out of 141 countries in the 2015 report of the Global Innovation Index — which explores the impact of innovation-oriented policies on economic growth and development. This, according to the Ministry of Science and Technology is because of a 1) Low percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for science and development, and 2) low standards of science education in our educational institutions.’

This, in spite of the fact that Pakistan possesses a large number of researchers and Academic Doctors.

It isn’t PhDs we need as much as young students with a strong sense of curiosity, who have been taught to find answers to simple questions by means of observation and research. For this Pakistan needs basic practical teaching of science in schools by teachers who, for want of a better analogy once again, believe in germs themselves.

A MAELSTROM OF GOBBLEDEGOOK

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2017/04/24/a-maelstrom-of-gobbledegook/

A circus of religious terminology and manipulation

Sadiq (the truthful) and Ameen (the trustworthy) were the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)’s attributes, because he was eminently truthful and trustworthy. They became some of the names he was known by, in a society in which people were customarily called ‘Father of so-and-so’, or ‘Keeper of this or that’.

In Pakistan, although originally the constitution called for no such thing, amendments to Articles 62 and 63 in 1973 made being ‘Sadiq’ and ‘Ameen’ requirements for holding legislative office, which effectively disqualifies almost everyone.

Sadiq and Ameen referred to the man who was the Messenger of God. If anyone were to inherit the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)’s job as Messenger of God, a requirement to live up to the same titles would make sense. But inheriting that job is out of the question. So although one might aspire to the Prophet (PBUH)’s values, it makes little sense to make his attributes a legal condition, now, for other public office, for other people. In any case, what is the litmus test, and who is to administer it? Therefore let’s give the circus a rest. This bandying of religion and so called religious terminology is sickening and nothing but deliberate manipulation of public sentiment since we have a public that is happy to accept that manipulation and is all too often unable to detect it. Although in fact, most publics everywhere are not too different.

This government has been attempting to purge those amendments from Articles 62 and 63, since once these requirements are removed those Articles can no longer be used as a tool to prosecute legislators for not coming up to scratch, in the sense of Sadiq and Ameen. A committee headed by Zahid Hamid has been deliberating the matter. It is another matter that the sudden desire for such a purge is like Richard Nixon trying to change the rules concerning obstruction of justice after Watergate became public. You wonder if that committee headed by Mr. Hamid will carry on its deliberations now that we have been informed that the PM is neither Sadiq nor Ameen.

Raise your hands, all those who ever thought he was.

No one?

Aww, that’s just too bad.

Politicians are good at manipulating public sentiment using words the public is comfortable with, which explains Donald Trump’s limited vocabulary, his willingness to honour the ‘dumb’ Australian deal, and his pronouncement that “It’s a very, very terrible thing that is going on in the world today.” Such language is one of the factors that led to his election, but not for the reasons that most people think.

Sarah Sloat mentions an article by Philip Roth in The New Yorker, where Roth equated Donald Trump’s limited vocabulary with ignorance, since vocabulary has traditionally been an indicator of intellectual acumen, or its absence. “But”, Sloat says, “It has become increasingly apparent to researchers that a non-expansive vocabulary isn’t necessarily the sign of a failing mind; rather, it might be the hallmark of a person sly enough to hook his listeners and persuade them using only a few words.” She says “An analysis by The New York Times found that Trump frequently repeats the same divisive words — like “stupid,” “horrible”, and “weak.” By means of this repetition she says, the “speaker guarantees that his audience walks away with his most important points in mind.” She also says that by using few words liberally sprinkled with cuss words, Trump wants the audience “to feel like he’s one of them. And that level of manipulation is anything but dumb.”

Well we’ve known this for years. Here, words or phrases that smack of Arabic will have the greatest impact. They need make little or no sense. We’ve had the ‘Tauheen e Risalat’ laws which no one dares touch because people kill to protect them, no matter how much our beloved Rasool (PBUH) condemned killing. There are the precious Sharia laws, although no word is more loosely defined than ‘Sharia’: what that is, whose Sharia it refers to, and how that applies to present times is yet nebulously understood.

Since it seems to be sufficient to give something an Arabic name to make it inviolate it can’t be long before all – rather than just the optional few – car number plates will be required to carry the words ‘Al-Bakistan’ along with the registration number, and it will be against the law to scrap old plates because it would be Tauheen e Risalat, and the constitution will be amended to say so. Unless of course the Ruet e Hilal committee says it’s okay, and then we can go ahead and chuck them, but only before the first session of the Majlis e Uzma, and after the Adalat e Aalia has been convened.

WHEN TALK IS CHEAP AND ACTION NON-EXISTENT

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2017/04/15/when-talk-is-cheap-and-action-non-existent/

When talk is cheap and action non-existent

Because what can you say in the face of Mardan?

Sometimes things are bleak beyond tears. The brutal, horrific murder of young Mashal, a student at Abdul Wali Khan University, Mardan, is one such. What do you say when young people upon whom your hopes were pinned as – perhaps – the bearers of change for the better, turn out to be more bestial and bigoted than their elders? If any of the many young men who beat Mashal their fellow student to death, read this, I hope they will think of what they and their mobster friends have done, just think. They not only turned upon their own, rejected the teachings of peace, compassion and tolerance contained within the creed they claim to subscribe to, but they inflicted immeasurable agony upon another human being and his loved ones, surely the thing condemned above all in Islam. They also presumed to tread upon the territory of God…whom they pretend to worship…by pronouncing judgement in a sphere that belongs to God alone. Did you see, they actually forced Mashal to recite the Quran before torturing and killing him? Did they see, do we see, that almost every verse of the Holy Quran begins with the words ‘In the Name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful’? Does anyone understand what that means? My God, this has to stop, this spouting of the ‘b’ word. My heart goes out to Mashal who is now beyond fear and pain, and to his family who has a lifetime to live through it. And to this country whose men made up that vicious, murdering mob of…surely it is too kind to call them men.

Where is this country headed when such things can happen? What is behind this?

Young people need something to do. They need to keep not just their hands but their minds busy. It is in the natural order of things. And when they do not find these things they drag a project out from under a stone to involve themselves in, whatever that project may be. And this is what allows them to play right into the hands of people who need ‘martyrs’, or a mob to carry out their distorted mission whatever that is. It is this instinct that is used to gain support both for wonderful projects and for utterly devastating ones, such as this event in Mardan.

Imran Khan tweeted: “Am in touch with KP IG since last night on condemnable lynching of student in Mardan. Firm action necessary. Law of the jungle can’t prevail.”

No it shouldn’t prevail, but it does. Nor should this mindset prevail, but it does. Nor should young persons be so readily available to do the dirty work for murderers. Please condemn the mindset as well as the breaking of the law, the law of man and of God. Humanity has also been killed here.

We need an organised effort to harness this energy among the young and direct it towards something constructive, failing which they will expend it in acts of vandalism and violence, in anything that makes them feel part of a group, participating in what they are taught is the grander, larger scheme of things. We really need remedial action.

Clubs. I know that sounds gratingly out of context in the current context, as would be the mention of Jacuzzis following a death by drowning, but it is not. The word gets a rise out of people because they associate it with something frivolous and bad. Well, like everything else clubs can be relaxing, or they can run on a scale from pointless to outright debauched. But others can be constructive and productive, and useful and one should possess the understanding to perceive the difference. Clubs can and do exist for young people as places where they can read, meet each other and gain information, take part in activities and sports, and achieve something. They are in short a way of bringing young people together and harnessing the younger generation’s boundless energy and new ideas, which can seldom be harnessed at home, except where the family is unusually active and enlightened.

Education is crucial, but it is as important to provide avenues for using it, along with better attitudes and values, otherwise education is like painting your front door and leaving the rest of the house knee deep in muck.

There are clubs that help young people participate in social work. They aim to motivate young people to educating society and fostering literacy. Communities need and can use young people, to construct buildings, paint walls, teach school, dig drains, run radio stations, television shows, to cook and distribute food for the needy and run fund raising drives. Instead of allowing them to do little beyond pose for selfies and dress up. Not using this huge source of power is like a senseless reliance on nothing but WAPDA in the presence of boundless solar energy, like using solar energy for nothing but bombs.

Mr. Khan I appreciate your twitterings. But if you can expend as much energy into keeping young minds constructively occupied as you did with your hospital then you will have succeeded as a politician and a visionary, something that is not happening at present.

THE NON-EXISTENT QUEUE

http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2017/02/13/the-non-existent-queue/

One step forward, two steps back

A visit to a hospital is never a pleasure, but the reason for that absence of pleasure ought to be the illness that brings a person to the hospital, not the hospital itself. Unfortunately, that isn’t how it is. A simple visit to Jinnah hospital in Lahore to get polio vaccinations before travelling was a nightmare, although illness was not the reason for the visit.

You enter the hospital via the exit gate, which, in spite of the sign appears to be the way in.

Parking at Jinnah Hospital is – I don’t believe there is a word that would adequately describe the experience. ‘Nightmare’ seems gloriously inadequate. But let me tell you, I regret not tipping the parking attendant, an amazingly good-humoured, patient man, skilled at his job. The mess that was the parking lot was not his fault. There was simply no space for the cars present. He was getting people to double-park, asking them not to leave the hand-break on, or the car in gear, so that he could push the car up or down as required. I did as he asked. There was simply no other way. I was assured there was no parking either in or out of the hospital. Mind you, I was charged for that parking. All of thirty rupees.

You wonder what could be achieved if the armed forces of Pakistan would divert some of their budget into trivial things, such as health care for the masses, instead of into expensive killing machines.

In out-patients, at the Reception desk, there was the usual herd of Pakistanis falling over each other trying to get at the Receptionist. Not a sign of a queue anywhere in sight.

In today’s world, when man has got to the moon, when communications have reached the point they have, and medical science is what it is, queues in Pakistan remain what they always were, nonexistent. It is amazing that the people of a country fail to understand that to queue is to save time. Not the other way around.

This is also how it was at a recent trip into the Punjab countryside, where a ‘tralla’, a Chingchi rickshaw and a score of cars all decided to cross a bridge, but no one was willing to leave a lane free for the traffic coming from the other side. The resultant snarl took a good twenty minutes to clear. All because this nation does not believe in queues.

There’s an interesting bit in Khalid Hosseini’s ‘The Kite Runner’ in which Amir’s Baba says that, “There is no act more wretched than stealing – be it a life or a loaf of naan.” It is a simple truth. Even to kill someone is to steal from them, in the case of killing it is to steal their life, and to rob his/her family of a family member and his employer of a worker, and so on.

To refuse to queue is also to rob a person or several persons of their rightful turn, at a service, a product, whatever it is that is being presented at that point.

Providing health services is not easy. And it is expensive. Should it not be a priority to search for at least those aspects of a health service that can be improved without a great outlay of money?

As it so happens, teaching the public to form queues is one of those inexpensive things, and it can be implemented immediately. The other thing is to enforce a strict policy of cleanliness and against littering. It can be done. It has been done in other countries. In a hospital it is crucial. It only needs the will, and not much money.

Both these things are important. I’m not going to harp on cleanliness because everyone knows about that, particularly in the case of hospitals. Where hospital are concerned both queues and cleanliness save lives. Cleanliness for obvious reasons, and queues since it’s only when you wait your turn that everyone can be seen, without the need to push, shout, or negotiate a scrum.

The first thing is to convince hospital workers of this fact.

The second thing would be to enforce a queue at the point where it must be formed. Barriers? Personnel?

There was a time when Shahbaz Sharif as Chief Minister was obsessed with drivers not stopping their cars over the line at a red light. Traffic police had instructions to give tickets to anyone who so much as put a toe across the line. And drivers had got used to it. They didn’t put a toe across the line.

There was, and still is a rule (thank God) that marriage halls and hotel venues must end functions at 10.30 pm in Lahore. It is enforced, it is adhered to. People complained in the beginning but they’re used to it now, and they like it.

So it’s a question of enforcing this. Strictly, diligently, without exception. It won’t cost anything. And at least in a world where huge advances have been made, the people have Pakistan will have made one simple advance: they’d have learnt to form a line, and wait their turn. Because while I agree that CPEC is important, Trump is a worry, India is a pain, the Grammy’s are riveting and remittances have slipped, unless Pakistan concentrates on teaching its people this one little crucial thing, the country cannot progress. It’s like trying to write a computer software without bits and bytes.

When I came back to my car it was still unscratched. I wish I’d tipped that attendant.