BLOOD dripping from the wound in his head, the Lesco official posted at an office in Ichhra, Lahore, was the picture of helplessness on Wednesday. He had just been used by an overcharged consumer who wanted to vent his anger.

His colleagues sat around him, all vulnerable and clueless. They are the sitting ducks for whosoever next wants to carry their protest against the overcharging and inefficient power authority to a conclusion which appears logical to an ever-increasing number of Pakistanis.

Humiliation and injury is part of the package for government officials. They routinely come under assault from mobs enraged by an order these informally disempowered officials have the misfortune to adhere to and protect. The police, the most exploited of all departments in furthering their bosses’ agendas, have always been and still are the easiest target, which is not to say that they do not actively strive on their own to keep their most-hated title. But these are far too desperate times for anyone who is visible doing a government job to avoid and escape public scorn.

Humiliation and injury is part of the package for government officials. They routinely come under assault from enraged mobs.

The year can be divided into two parts. There’s a longish summer period with winters intervening briefly for a few months either side of December. In the books of officials most exposed to the public ire, the summer part can be a season where the people go on a hunt for Lesco officials. The fleeting winters are when Lesco is spared and the focus of the hunters shifts to those employed by Sui gas.

The foot soldiers belonging to Lesco and Sui gas take turns in facing the brunt of the popular outrage against suspensions of supply. The summers are for the gas officials to relax unless they want to use the period to brace themselves for the impending popular onslaught beginning in October.

Lesco officials have reason to feel relatively safer from a mob attack in the winter months where the shortfall in the supply of electricity is less likely to result in a violent outburst by an affected group. The rule, however, is sometimes broken — more frequently in the recent past. There is always an inflated bill here or an electricity transformer going silent somewhere to drag the Lesco officials into the firing line off-season.

In a prelude to the changing season, a few days ago residents of a locality in Multan captured a junior-ranking Sui gas official. By some standards, the young man was lucky to have found himself among a crowd looking to innovate rather than punish the guilty by applying the conventional methods involving the unbridled application of physical power.

All the considerate crowd did was to detain him in a cage-like cubicle long enough for his humiliation to be documented. The crowd accused him of colluding with the CNG stations in the neighbourhood and lowering the pressure of gas to homes in the area.

It is still early and winter will take time to set in, but the improvisation of the cage did indicate the level of frustration and the new lengths the people may be ready to go to in order to get the media’s attention and make their statement this season. It reconfirmed just how free they feel to inflict a humiliating punishment on an erring public servant. The audience could be in for a few original enactments of this popular theatre this year.

The officials who are at the forefront to ensure the writ of the government may have a few worldly medals to show for their careers but in the people’s gallery they are always the losers. They are the ones who are to be made fun of and not to be dreaded or respected as lawful functionaries tasked with the smooth running of affairs. There are always ways for the people to get back at the officials.

Recall, for instance, the famous booking of a nine-month-old boy by the police earlier this year. A clash between gas officials raiding a Lahore locality and resistance by the people living there was at the bottom of it all.

In the end, the police made a mistake by including the name of the infant among those who were accused of blocking official work, thus providing the ever-sympathetic souls present with an opportunity to effortlessly disregard all other aspects of the case. The officials were there, to be taken to task for their routine stumbling, blundering misadventures, accused by the people and offered as scapegoats by the rulers who sit above them.

This is just too dangerous a game to be allowed to continue. All those who publicly pledge to improve the system will eventually have to tackle these ground realities. They have to commit themselves to taking up the long-term challenge of gradually restoring the image of the government functionary at the level where he is exposed directly to the people’s aspirations, their foul moods and their demands, and where he frequently falls prey to their outrage.

Instead, what we have are examples where those who are assigned to mind the system and oversee the improvements in it are found to be promoting violence of their own.

In the latest case, in Sargodha earlier this week, a National Assembly member hailing from the ruling PML-N led the raid (and ransacking) of a Sui gas office. He was apparently incensed by the inability of the gas officials to restore a connection, and it was said that he himself was a gas bill defaulter of no small proportions.

The reporter was unable to get through to the MNA, but did manage to get an explanation out of his secretary. It turned out that this was no ordinary violation of the law; the lawmaker was on a revolutionary mission. He was up and about and raiding to ensure that the officials posted at the gas company’s offices — as elsewhere — were doing their duty just as he was doing his.

The writer is Dawn’s resident in Lahore.

Published in Dawn, October 31st, 2014