Pakistan Day musings

Pakistan Day, March 23, 2020, passed this year in novel fashion. The coronavirus pandemic caused the cancellation of the traditional military parade on the day as well as the proliferation of symposia to reflect on the importance of the anniversary of the passing of the Lahore (later dubbed Pakistan) Resolution passed by the All India Muslim League in its historic meeting in the Punjab capital in 1940. Being a national holiday, the day produced a 'natural' lockdown across the country.
Speaking of lockdowns, whose necessity and efficacy are now the subject of debate here and throughout the world, reference can be had to Prime Minister Imran Khan's second address to the country on the coronavirus emergency. He argued that given Pakistan's concrete circumstances and limitations, a total, countrywide lockdown would cause great hardship to the (at least) 25 percent of the population below the poverty line and critically dependent on daily wages. Instead, Prime Minister Imran Khan argued, people should voluntarily and responsibly exercise social distancing and eschew unnecessary coming out of their homes or indulging in panic buying of goods of everyday use.
The two main opposition parties, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan People's Party (PPP), critiqued Prime Minister Imran Khan's address as betraying the absence of any plan with the federal government to combat the pandemic. Both parties insisted there was no alternative to an immediate and complete lockdown.
This disagreement was overtaken by the Sindh and Gilgit-Baltistan (G-B) governments imposing a 15-day and indefinite lockdown respectively on March 22, 2020. Even the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) government in Punjab followed suit with the announcement of a 14-day lockdown the next day. These developments reflect the alarm in these provinces at the rise in cases of those suspected of being infected (5,650 according to Special Assistant to the PM Dr Zafar Mirza), confirmed (646 according to Dr Mirza, 799 according to media reports), and fatal (six so far). Against this stands the lonely figure of five cases of recovery from the infection.
Pakistan's figures so far compare with those worldwide of 188 countries affected, 300,000 people infected, 13,000 deaths and the recovery of 95,000 people from the infection. After the virus first emerged in Wuhan, China, Italy today is the worst hit country, having surpassed China's toll of infections and fatalities (the latter in dramatic decline due to the stringent lockdown and amazing healthcare mobilisation by China). The US is the third worst hit country, not the least because President Donald Trump as usual fumbled when the pandemic first hit. Europe, with the dubious distinction now of the centre of the global epidemic, has gratefully accepted the help in terms of equipment and medical personnel offered by China, Cuba and Russia. These humanitarian gestures will endear these countries to people all over the world.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) hit the nail on the head when it argued for rethinking our national priorities so that people, not profits, shape the country's economic system, keeping in view the coronavirus situation that demands an immediate increase in allocations for health, low income housing and social safety nets in the federal and provincial budgets (implying less spending on our war machine). The HRCP demanded rights-based economic measures without further delay. It also stressed the need for government to invest in providing protective gear to medical staff on the front line of the struggle against the pandemic. Further, HRCP demanded the testing for the corona virus to be nationalised and made free of cost, and small businesses to be provided non-collateralised credit and tax breaks provided they retained their staff.
HRCP's statement and its thrust can equally be applied to the world at large. Those arguing that China's model in tackling the outbreak cannot be reproduced in democracies offer at best a foolish argument, given that even democracies impose stringent and necessary measures in times of war or crisis. Better the suspension of 'normal' life and work for a short period than a contribution to rising fatalities as the patchwork shutdowns and voluntary social distancing fail to prevent the outbreak from spreading and the number of cases rising exponentially (as has happened in Italy, Spain and France, in that order of seriousness). As things stand today, 35 countries are in lockdown, with some one billion people worldwide confined to their homes. Perhaps much more is needed in this direction.
Self-medication is as useless as it could prove detrimental to people's health. Hence anti-malarial drugs that people all over the world started using in an effort to prevent or cure the coronavirus are now being discouraged if not positively banned. So far, there is no cure for the affliction, although scientists are working day and night in a number of countries to develop a vaccine. The most optimistic forecasts still speak of at least a year before such a vaccine could become available after clinical trials.
Humanity's capacity to overcome the pandemic should not be underestimated. In the past, and the Spanish flu that killed 50 million worldwide at the end of World War I and then died out naturally deserves special mention as the closest in living memory, the level of scientific and medical knowledge and technology available today is incomparably more advanced and hopefully will prove capable of finding a vaccine/cure that will banish the coronavirus from our collective lives.
However, no 'vaccine' seems capable of curing the undeniable questioning of the current dominant capitalist system as incapable of meeting the people's healthcare and other needs and wresting itself away from 'service' to the interests of the rich. It is at seminal moments like this in world history that revolutionary changes insert themselves into the consciousness of humanity, challenging all received wisdom and complacent arguments for the status quo.
Life, work, love, are all going to change immeasurably in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. The signs of this radical change are already there even before the virus has been defeated. With its passing, is it possible to imagine a world reverting to 'business as usual' in the interests of the global capitalist moneybags? In that intriguing question lies the terrain on which the struggle for revolutionary change post-coronavirus may well be fought.
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