Data Durbar: Food Crisis

Adil Najam

These photographs were taken at Daata Sahib (Daata Darbar), Lahore, on Sunday, May 4, by Associated Press photographer Emilio Morenatti. The suggested photo description reads:

Pakistani[s] struggle to get a piece of bread during a food distribution outside the Data Durbar mosque in Lahore, Pakistan, on Sunday, May 4, 2008. World rice and other grains prices have risen sharply this year because of growing demand, poor weather and rising cost of petroleum in some grain-producing countries. Some Asian countries, including India and Vietnam, recently suspended rice exports to guarantee their own supplies.

The current – and future – food crisis (in Pakistan and elsewhere) is something that I spend a lot of time thinking about in my professional life these days. And Daata Sahib is a place I have been visiting for longer than I can remember. Based on this, I can say that had the photographer gone to Data Sahab at just about any time he could have taken such photographs of people who come to get food being distributed as charity by the devotees. That fact notwithstanding, the pictures are poignant metaphors for a food crisis that is real and shows all signs of becoming ever more real for ever more people. And all over the world, including in Pakistan.

In the case of Pakistan, the food crisis comes hand in hand with an energy crisis and in an environment already rife with political uncertainty and extremist threats. Food and energy shortages could become worse this summer. Food shortages do not make a companion to long periods of energy outages (load-shedding). This is a dangerous mix and those currently engrossed in political shenanigans might soon find that their best laid political plans would come to naught if these basic needs remain unmet.

Passions flared by empty stomachs and load-shedding induced restlessness can be a terrible thing.