On the peculiar and enigmatic issue of Daylight Saving Time (DST), why is there evident an initial lack of compliance? Why is there this distrust of the putting the clock forward by an hour?
Is this a kind of defiance of authority? All day on Sunday (June 1) there came reports from across the country that various organisations of bazaars and markets had refused to open their shops that day, so as to keep them closed on Fridays. There also came the explicit announcements that they would not close their businesses at 9 pm on other days.
Does this not reflect the absence of the willingness and the attitude to consent to the government's larger, somewhat generously advertised plans of saving energy? Is the small trader, the shopkeeper unmindful of the energy crisis, and unaware of the loadshedding frustrations that he lives with? The answer is obviously in the affirmative, but he doesn't apparently agree with the government's way of going about it. But this is not all.
I have heard shopkeepers contend that the extra hours that when and if they keep their shops open after 9 pm is managed through their generators, and that is a cost they themselves sustain. How does the government, they added, explain the loadshedding during the day? And when the traders argue, in an environment of sustained consumerism, that consumers come to the bazaars after 9 pm especially in summer, what is being implied is this: that it is a lifestyle change that the government seeks to achieve. That is asking for too much, to say the least.
Can lifestyles change when the public is unconvinced about the quality of measures that this DST is supposed to bring about. The DST implemented in 2002 for some months failed. No explanations have come to date on what happened then. What was achieved? What went wrong? Surely all failures cannot be explained and accounted for by blaming the public. What was the contribution of the decision-makers, the concerned ministries, and the government as a whole?
I am distracted by the failure of the previous government for reasons to have anticipated the current energy crisis, and it makes one wonder what else should governments be expected to do if not look into the future? Who is to help this society look into the future, if not the government of the day? But let us not get into this aspect of our lives. There is much to regret and much to mourn.
The darkness in our lives is one of our growing frustrations, and it is a daily reminder of the failure of the men in authority in the last decade not to have perceived that an energy crisis was coming. When the government of the day wants the people to put the clock forward by an hour, it not a surprise that while the business community says no to the energy saving measures that affect them, the common man also quietly holds back his cooperation.
I have heard this dissenting comment from an expressive citizen who asked why he should change his lifestyle for three months. This one hour forward is to end on 30th August this year. And who knows how much of a success will this measure be? From the responses that have come so far, it appears that the results will be marginal.
I cannot but give in to the temptation of mentioning what the Federal Minister for Water and Power said over a major channel last week: that loadshedding will end by 14th August 2009. That is, 14 months from now. A political leader sitting alongside heard it and remarked who knows whether the minister or his government would last until that day. And it is a familiar story to hear from incoming and new decision makers when they disown the promises and the plans of the previous government.
Now that the DST has come there is familiar talk of new time and old time. Wall clocks are being moved forward by an hour, as indeed are wristwatches, and cell phones of wherever else time is monitored. Prayer timings have been changed, and this is one major segment of our lives where change of lifestyle is asking for too much, too soon, remarked one Namazi who likes to say his prayers on time.
The mood of the home, as indeed that of the workplace is going to be changed. And I am unsure of how convinced can people be about the meaningfulness, the efficacy and the need for this DST. One 14-year-old boy went about adjusting the wall clocks in his house on 1st June (Sunday) and was both excited and amused, and that is a teenager's delight, short-lived and short-sighted, perhaps.
This is yet another tough June in our lives I have no doubt about this. It is not only the suffocating darkness that loadshedding brings that makes me say this. There is the continuing, enlarging political uncertainty coming out of Islamabad, and I am not referring to the bomb blast on Monday at the doorsteps of the Denmark embassy. I have in mind the Long March that the lawyers have planned for 10th June, and which among others will join in from political parties and the members of the Ex-Servicemen's Society. I have in mind the larger issue of the restoration of the judges that reflects so many unresolved issues of our grim times.
There is also on our mind the worrying thought about the Federal Budget 2008-09 that is coming (now on 10th June) and from all accounts available there isn't going to be good news, given the state of the national economy. Prices today are scary, and the way they are rising is humiliating as well. What have we done to this country? Why the budget is being announced on 10th June, 2008 (on the same day the lawyers are planning their Long March) makes one curious, to say the least.
I cannot wait to write this in my TV column on Saturday that all the private TV channels are focusing extensively on the Federal Budget, and what the common man has to say. Not a single word of hope, in what they are all saying. Like not a single word of belief that the DST will do us any good. Just another official gimmick, said one bitter Karachiite.
The only good news, if that is acceptable, despite the prices, is that June has brought mangoes back into our lives. And the mango Qulfi (ice-cream) that I had on Sunday night was not only rich, excellent, but what was impressive was the sight of dozens of people, outside the large Mithai shop, sitting in leisure on pavements and in their cars enjoying it around midnight. This too is Karachi!!!
For those who are curious about prices always, this was Rs 35 per Qulfi. Let me end on this cheerful note.
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