Pakistan's northern areas were hit by a strong earthquake on the morning of 8th October and the 2nd day of holy month of Ramazan. Scores of villages were buried under mudslides, with human death toll figure running into thousands.
In Islamabad a high rise apartment complex Margalla Towers came down within seconds, while other similar housing projects suffered major cracks.
The astounding thing is that nobody within the establishment is talking about the persons responsible for building this project.
The receptionist of Margalla Towers stated on CNN, that this building had developed cracks prior to earthquake. Yet no action was taken by CDA or the Building Control agency.
The owner of this project is a retired major, who is son-in-law of an influential senior retired officer. Hundreds of innocent men, women and children were killed, buried under the debris of this defective building.
The other astonishing aspect that came to light was the absence of disaster management. Pakistan's capital city Islamabad, where the price of land is as high as in Singapore, lacked basic infrastructure or equipment to meet a major natural or man made calamity.
It was shocking to see the hollow charade beneath all the blitz and glamour of a city that housed the spacious Presidential palace that would shame 10 Downing street or the White House.
Capital Development Authority was found inadequate to handle the situation. It is one thing to build a food street or arrange Basant festivities, and another to head a city in a country, where real estate is a major pastime of those in power. CDA was too busy in chalking out yet another cantonment, which Islamabad never had.
The British colonial army build cantonments on preiphery of every big city and town to control the local population. 58 years after independence, Islamabad city developed as a new capital, to house the civil secretariat, supreme court, parliament etc, never had plans to have a huge area carved out for a virtual cantonment.
A tunnel is being built under the Margalla Hills, because of the commercial interests of real estate mafia. The New Murree project is another environmentally unfriendly project pushed through by powerful lobbies. In a natural calamity these projects would only multiply human losses.
It is time that sanity prevails. Nature has given us a shock, so that we can set our priorities right. Pakistan was created to be a modern democratic welfare state and not a fiefdom of a group of people or an institution.
We have invited the wrath of nature due to our arrogance, abuse of power and denial of basic fundamental rights. The legacy of our founding fathers has been abused by uniformed establishment for far too long.
Lessons should be learnt or else we as a nation stand to suffer. There should be rule of law and respect for the dignity of citizens.