Back in January 2007, I wrote about beggars on the streets of Lahore, Karachi and the growing indifference in our society towards these extremely poor and forgotten people. Hundreds of organized gangs are operating in almost every big city of Pakistan who amputate the organs of little kids, old and young people and then leave them on streets to make good money for them. But what about the unfortunate beggars themselves?
We see them every day at traffic signals and footpaths from our car windows and most of the times just throw a coin at them and try to ignore them as they don’t exist. This level of indifference in our society is sad. May be we were put on this side of the car window for a reason, to be able to help those on the other side.
Our courts are too busy solving the legal and constitutional issues, the law enforcement agencies are occupied keeping an eye on politicians or arresting and deporting them, and all of us are too busy debating all this … but, for whom? Maybe it is those who are debating the ‘big picture’ who are really missing the big picture that can only be seen in the small pictures.
The photograph above by Jawad Zakariya, once again reminded me of the miserable life of these unwanted people in our country. Society rejects them and police harshly beats them on daily basis, adding to their misery.
Jawad writes with this photograph on flickr and I can totally relate to him as many times I must have done the same:
As I was taking photos in and around Data Darbar. This old man asked me to come over.
“Will you print these photos in the newspaper?”, he asked. Before I could explain that I wasn’t affiliated with any paper, he continued. Tell them how the police brutally beat us up all the time….and he showed me the injuries on his arms and legs.
“Why do they do that?”, I asked.
“Because we sit here begging. This is Data Darbar ! where else can I go.”
… and he started crying … print this in the paper maybe then they’ll stop … then he thought for a moment …
maybe if you print it they’ll get more angry….
another pause …
print it, maybe some higher up will see it and make them stop.“They hit old crippled men”…..”shameless animals”….”Is this why we made this Pakistan”…..”Is this Why ???”………..he kept asking as he wept.
I had no answer … I got back into my Civic … turned on the AC … and started driving away.
“Is this why we made this Pakistan?” I have asked myself this questions many times and never found an answer. Can you think of an answer?
While beggars are the visible face of poverty in the country, the real crisis is the growing disparity between rich and poor. The gap is continuously increasing and the new benefits are accumulating in a very small class. Recent UN and other reports suggest that this is a global phenomenon but the rate is even greater in Pakistan. In fact, I think this is one of the contributing factor to rising extremism also. It is a serious issue worth careful analysis and action.
The question by the beggar and by Jawad Zakria and by Darwaish has nothing to do with the creation of Pakistan. It has to do with the inability of the Pakistani society to take care of its own people. What beggar is questioning here is the ‘promise of Pakistan’. The promise of Pakistan was that once we have control over our own destiny the perpetual economic domination of Hindu Bhania over our poor peasants will be removed and the lives of our poor will be improved. There will be social justice, equality of man kind and possibility of better life regardless of one’s status at birth.
Even though creation of Pakistan has improved economic conditions of millions of our people, our society has failed to take care of our bottom poor and the disabled. The place of our poor and disabled is not the street crossing or Data Darbar but a home for poor and disabled. It is the indifference of our effluent and middle classes that is in question here and not the creation of Pakistan. Those Pakistanis who question the creation of Pakistan are an un-thankful bunch. The real question is when are we going to fulfill the promise of Pakistan to our unfortunate ones.
I commend Adil Najam and his teams consistent efforts to bring p these real issues of how we evaluate our efforts as a nation. There is a string of posts on this here about how we have to measure our achievements not by how tall our buildings are or how many cell phone users we have but also by how the poorest Pakistanis live. Similarly this is a good reminder of our bigger challenges, we all like the drama of military and courts and politicians but ultimately if the lives of people are not made better all these topi drams are not worth anything.
It is sad to see that we are mostly a nation of tamashbeens full of slogans against this or that and fighting over words in a headline, but silent on the real issues like poverty. Thank you Pakistaniat for constantly reminding us of this. If each one of us does a little against poverty we can all achieve a lot. People like Edhi and others have actually shown that some of these problems can be handelled and we should follow their examples.
It’s said a society can be judged based on how well it treats its weakest members. By this standard, how well would Pakistan fare? Not very well.
I know many people from Pakistan who are convinced that beggars really have second hand cars and nice apartments and that they go home and change their clothes and everything is hunky dory. It’s this level of mental cruelty and indifference to what they can see with their own eyes that is really pathological, and is a discredit to the country.
Adnan Siddiqi, I did not follow your link, so I don’t know if you were referring to the total worth of the begging industry (for the beggar pimps, I might add) or some belief that begging is really better than having an IT job. If the latter, then I have nothing to say. You are an example of what I am talking about.
Why don’t you try it if you think it is so great?
Really some of the responses here are so cold blooded they must have been written by reptiles.
Such images of modern day Pakistan make one’s heart bleed. I wish I had the resources and power to change the course of events in a better direction and get rid of corrupt generals and the politicians. Long story short, today’s Pakistan is nowhere close to what Jinnah had planned for us.