What's going on?

Having been a proclaimed pessimist, sometimes boastfully so too, as they say, sex up a conversation, I am not very alarmed by the recent turn of events in this country. But consider the irony of a situation in which I occasionally find myself these days, when I have to hold someone’s hand and cheer them up. Hold on, I feel obliged to whisper, don’t give up so easily.

Giving up is what most people tend to be doing now. There is a palpable sense of despondency in the air. And I find the mood more despairing in the higher echelons of our society. I wish I could quote sentences uttered in restricted sessions by individuals who are known in the media. For that matter, a lot that is being said on record is also scary.

One problem, as I see it, is that there is no clarity about what is happening and where we are headed as a nation. There are whispers about dreadful scenarios that may unfold when the situation gets out of control. This sense of doom is essentially rooted in the economic distress of the middle class. Economists tell us that this level of inflation has never persisted for so long in Pakistan’s history. The federal budget, dictated by the IMF, appears to be, in its heaviness, the last straw.

So, is there a silver lining lurking somewhere in this darkness? I do find people, though not frequently, who point towards something to argue that all is not lost. For instance, the recent rise and rise of the stock exchange. But it is hard to understand or interpret the meaning of such developments.

Personally, I am a bit intrigued by the rush of activity that I notice around high-end eating places – and new ones are constantly arriving on the scene. Usually, there is a full house and people waiting. They seem to be having fun. But we can imagine that they are also anxious about the state of the nation.

Now, it is not just the economic distress that has pushed us into uncharted territory. The political situation, marked by an antagonistic conflict, is a major source of this uncertainty about the future. Again, there is no clue as to what is going on in this domain and if there is any possibility of a resolution of the bitter feuds that are mostly continuing in higher courts. Is there any hope for moving towards political stability?

In this context, the Supreme Court of Pakistan should serve as the arena where crucial disputes are finally resolved and universally accepted. That is how new beginnings are made. But Pakistan has its own history of how judgments made on the high table of the judiciary can become controversial.

This brings me to the historic judgment that was announced by the Supreme Court on Friday. It related to the allocation of reserved seats in the National Assembly for women and minorities to other parties instead of the Sunni Ittehad Council which was joined by independents who had been backed by Imran Khan’s party, the PTI.

Even though a split within the 13-judge full court was foretold, the judgment of eight of them instantly became a kind of an explosion. Essentially, it declared the PTI eligible for seats reserved for women and minorities. This judgment was announced by Justice Mansoor Ali Shah. It is a vindication of the PTI’s political struggle and it changes the composition of the National Assembly, giving the PTI a dominant presence in the house.

There are complexities in this judgment that I am not going into. In fact, I have referred to this judgment primarily in the perspective of how the nation is deeply enmeshed in troubles that affect the lives of ordinary people and there is a lot of confusion about what is going on. Sadly, Friday’s verdict of the Supreme Court, though seminal in its judicial and political consequences, has generated passionate disagreements in a polarized environment.

I have acknowledged the great significance of the Supreme Court’s ruling that the PTI is eligible for reserved seats – and the media has gone to town with it. But aren’t there other important developments and stories that are ignored or frightfully underplayed?

One choice this week could be a monumental tragedy that was enacted in Naushahro Feroz in Sindh. A 15-day-old ailing daughter was put in a sack and buried alive by her father because he could not afford her treatment. He was arrested and the body was exhumed by the police. But there were no details in the reports that appeared on a few TV channels. A brief report was also published in this newspaper on Monday.

Almost every day, you find some snippet in the inside pages of the newspaper that tells of the deviant behaviour of the poor and emotionally unstable people. There have been instances of parents killing their children and then committing suicide. There was this single-column, three-inch story in the metro section of an English daily on Wednesday, datelined Dadu. Its heading: ‘Woman attempts suicide after poisoning three children”.

Now and then, I do try to underline the vagaries of our broken society, such as the lynching of someone accused of a crime or blasphemy by an enraged mob. But, not being a social scientist, I am unable to comprehend or explicate these incidents. The very thought of how the poor can make ends meet or pay their electricity bills is forbidding.

I wonder if there is any relevance here that this column is being published on the fourteenth of July, Bastille Day when France commemorates its revolution and the beheading of its monarch in 1789. What the French Revolution means to the world, because of the ideas that it proclaimed, is another story. It was a period of major societal and political upheaval. However, it culminated in the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte.

In Pakistan, we have no idea as to who will rise and who will fall. Meanwhile, the misery persists.

The writer is a senior journalist. He can be reached at: [email protected]