SPOTLIGHT: Way forward with faith, courage and resolve, to turn calamity into opportunity, so help us Allah!: 'Unlimiting' the damage - the PPP way!

American history tells us about the "great depression" faced by that country in the early thirties. "The American dream had become a nightmare. What was once the land of opportunity was now the land of desperation. What was once the land of hope and optimism had become the land of despair".
Another quote: "Between 1929 and 1932 instead of advancement, survival became the keyword. Institutions, attitudes, lifestyles changed in this decade but democracy prevailed". There was widespread unemployment across the country with factories closing down, businesses at a standstill and all pervasive poverty. President Roosevelt hit upon the idea of huge labour intensive projects of which one example was the Tennessee Vallaey Authority's Douglas dam. The idea was to create employment, put money into people's pockets so that they could, in turn, spend it to turn the economy around. The President and his team worked round the clock and achieved what looked impossible.
Only a dream?
I thought back on the great American effort of some 80 years ago and my thoughts turned nearer home to the great calamity that had now struck our own country across its length and breadth and to how people were suffering, homeless, shelterless, facing imminent death, disease and worst of all feeling abandoned. Then as in a reverie, I saw great things happening. I found myself in a huge hall, which looked like an operation room I had seen in some World War Two films. The location was Islamabad. The Prime Minister, directing activities in the room, looking tired but alert was at the centre of things. Another important corner was occupied by the Corps Commander of the area. Some hundred odd telephone operators were hunched over their cell phones and computers in the huge hall, talking, taking calls, listening, making notes, answering. They kept moving from their perches to a huge map of the country fixed on one wall of the great hall. The map showed the entire country with the flow of flood water and key points displayed all over in colours and in numbers as ell as areas cut off and areas soon to be inundated. The cellphone guys kept updating the map with coloured flags with different colours depicting the urgency, the location of stranded people, places where food or doctors' attention or tents were immediately needed and places where the first batch of relief goods had been delivered.
MNAs, MPAs, Senators and volunteers
They were receiving calls from 1000 odd members of Parliament, Senate and provincial assemblies, who had moved bed and board to the constituencies they represented and were feeding data to the operation room and directing help and supplies to people needing it. They were being helped by some ten thousand volunteers and welfare organisations. Service above self, to please Allah and serve humanity was their motto and they suffered loss of sleep and ordinary comforts to mitigate the suffering of millions around the country. The Prime Minister and his team as well as the military people in the operation hall were absorbing data, consulting each other and giving rapid fire directions to the people in the room who were, in turn, passing orders and information about help down the line. A veritable beehive working with Allah's blessing!
Rude awakening
I woke up suddenly from the reverie to see a very discordant picture. The scene was an airport where a helicopter, fully laden with direly needed food and medicines was ready to take off to help people in desperate need of supplies the copter had ready on board. With engine ready and pilots waiting the helicopter could not take off because the President was sitting in a plane on the same airport, talking to his ministers after a photo session of watching scenes of disaster from high up and then touching ground briefly to distribute food and other items needed. The photo session done, the plane was back at the airport with the President, who was now in the plane talking at length to the ministers with him in the plane, perhaps unaware of the waiting helicopter. The helicopter was only able to take off after hours of wait after the Presidential plane at last flew off and the control tower allowed the helicopter to proceed on its mercy mission. This was not an isolated obstacle to movement of relief. All VVIP aerial visits tended to badly disrupt relief operations. Moral: leaders had better stay at one place but use communication facilities and focus on tackling the disaster and forget photo sessions.
Day dream the second!
I felt sad and was lost again in thinking what might have been. Sailing again into dreamland, away from the Operation Room I thought I saw a group of people comprising Ministers of Production, Industry, Labour, Planning and Social Welfare and their staff quietly working away on a vision of the immediate future. They were busy planning the recovery process. Houses must be rebuilt for millions, infrastructure and communications must be restored, money must be put in the hands of people to enable them spend it to feed and clothe themselves and to facilitate return to normal life.
A blueprint was taking shape. Cement plants should begin round the clock operation, 7 days of 24 hours. Labour must be hired at decent wages to empower them to spend and help restart the stagnant economy. Steel Mills would start producing steel for downstream industries to produce steel goods needed for houses and infrastructure projects. The mills would likewise work round the clock. Brick kilns (Bhuttas) would be activated through the length and breadth of the country to augment employment and produce bricks needed for millions of housing units to be built. And so on for plans for other labour intensive projects as well as a blueprint to save the crops that could be saved and to arrange seeds and fertiliser for the next crop. Another group was working on plans to build dams and reinforce existing barrages and protective walls.
Back to reality again
Then came the second awakening. Will our luck change, I wondered, now fully awake? There is much talk of asking Allahs's forgiveness for our personal and collective transgressions and of doing something beyond verbal expressions of regret and resolve. Will people at large recall the vision, which was the driving force for creation of Pakistan and keep the promise they made to Allah and the people at the time? Will our leaders serve as role models I wistfully asked myself? Will so-and-so offer some of his billions for the recovery effort? Will so-and-so come clean about why he spends most of his time away from home neglecting his party and his country and would he bring some part of his business home to help in the recovery effort? Will so and so heading a so-called religious party stop his hypocritical policies of hunting with the hounds and running with the hares, ever ready to dump principles to make earthly gains? How many of our indecently rich would come forward with a contribution of, say a billion rupees or more? Will the major part of the contributions come as before only from middle and lower middle class people contributing a good part of what little they have? Will liars and cheaters in position of power in authority pray for forgiveness of Allah and the people and atone for their misdeeds by admitting to their corruption and make amends through concrete action with promise to henceforth lead an honest life. Will the PPP government stop protecting and even promoting brazenly the hugely corrupt? Mere words would not be enough.
Unlimiting the damage - the PPP way!
After all no one apart from the people present at the ill-fated meeting in a Birmingham hall saw "it". No footage of the actual "leather-product" missile was ever seen by the people at large even if one exists, for example, one possibly caught in the cameras the organisers may have in place for the meeting. It is said the footage recorded by PTV showed the incident in full gory detail but the offensive portion was edited out by the government channel. The only concrete evidence seen by all was in the half minute clip of a (self-proclaimed) lady worker of PPP, who was present on the occasion. She was shown in the footage to be very agitated and saying (though not in these exact words): I suddenly heard this man shouting and throwing shoes in the direction of the stage and the attention of the audience turned from the stage to the man and I shouted to the security people present to take the man away which they did. That is all there was as evidence of what could easily pass as a non-event with not much grist for the media mill except for a broadcast or two. There the matter would and should have ended.
No Credibility left to lose?
But this was not to be. First of all every one from the PPP side from Farhatullah Babar down denied that any such incident had taken place. The channels were thus egged on to produce more evidence and to lionise the shoe thrower by interviewing him in detail. PPP jiyalas in Sindh then allegedly went on a rampage attacking vans, carrying Jung and News for distribution. Hawkers were beaten up. Copies of the two newspapers burnt in bulk. Geo and ARY the two channels, which aired the shoe episode went off air. All the while PPP people Kaira, Fouzia Wahab, Babar Awan, Sharmila Farooqi and others claimed the PPP government or the party had nothing to do with what was happening in broad daylight with newspapers targeted and TV channels forcibly closed. They did not appear to be worried about the loss of what little has remained of their credibility in public perception. They appeared to wash their hands of the government's responsibility towards preventing what was happening in broad daylight to muzzle freedom of expression. One PPP leader was reported to have even lauded the hooliganism as an exercise of people's right to protest against what they saw as biased reporting! The event became a major headliner as time passed with more and more of Western media making scathing attacks on the government's non-action in the matter. Finally the Judiciary had to pass strict orders for setting things right and even then there was only very slow and reluctant action by the executive. Will PPP ever recover from the happenings of the past fortnight?
Damaging footage
The footage showing the President's liesurely flight to his father's holiday home in Paris (who had paid for the palace by the way?) grandly named Manoir de la Reine Blanche (Manor of the White Queen) for a two-hour stopover in the 16th-century chateau, built for the widow of King Philippe VI, while floods devastated lives of tens of millions at home has stuck in peoples consciousness and will come to haunt PPP for years to come no less than the shoe episode.
"Journalists were kept at a distance from the elegant property" said a report, "which is surrounded by two hectares (five acres) of lakes and wooded parkland and is listed on France's register of historically significant monuments". The President is obviously not well served by people he has chosen as his confidants and advisers. ([email protected])