THE poor have a problem: bad teeth. The poor can’t bite.

They can sweat and swear, make all the noise they want. But they just can’t bite. Since they can’t, they cannot bargain. I noticed this the day before the budget was announced. The heat was scorching in the way that makes dogs loll listlessly in the shade and birds hyperventilate with open beaks. At 45 degrees, it was the kind of day that makes a reporter want to give up.

Representatives of the All Pakistan Clerks Association (APCA) had gathered under a tent pitched outside the Islamabad Press Club. Processions of them — a chaos of clenched fists, fiery slogans — from as far afield as Charsadda, Khushab and Rahim Yar Khan kept swelling the crowd till the heat from bodies made the air sizzle, burning the throat and bringing tears to the eyes. On a public-address system cranked up to cochlea-killing decibels, the president of the APCA passionately declared low-paid workers as the machinery that ran Pakistan: “This government has fed us to the dogs. It has taken away our right to life.”

A man from Dera Ghazi Khan read out a poem about the excesses the poor have suffered at the hands of the ruling classes. His choice of expletives would have made Aunty Gormint proud. Done reading, he mocked the authorities: “I am a Baloch. Come arrest me.”

“We are dying of hunger,” said the APCA president, who is from Khushab. Like the others here, who were sitting with their feet bare, fanning perspiring faces with paper and cloth, he wanted the PML-N government to raise wages proportionate to the inflation rate. “The parliamentarians’ salaries have been increased by 200 per cent whereas that of the workers only by 10 pc every year in four years,” he claimed. “An MPA that earned Rs30,000 now gets Rs300,000 while we get Rs1,500 as house allowance. Can one even find a room with that money?”

There are eight million workers in Pakistan, including the labour and the salaried class, according to PPP Senator Saleem Mandviwalla who turned up in solidarity with the workers. Syed Khurshid Shah, the leader of the opposition in the National Assembly, told workers to vote for his party that gave a 135pc raise to the salaried class during its rule.

At the time of the budget, and in the run-up to elections, politics feasts on poor men’s hunger and frustration. The opposition PPP was here because workers are its constituency. The ruling PML-N was not because they aren’t. One clerk here said: “But my son will never be a general, a prime minister or an MNA.”

So the poor settle for crumbs to ease hunger pangs. “Even a mother won’t give a baby milk till it cries,” said Syed Sajjad Ali Shah, an APCA representative from Upper Dir, explaining why he was here.

Milk, as we know, is good for the teeth. And strong bones — another thing you need if you are a worker. The many here with bad teeth — emaciated by poor nutrition but stirred by provocative, political slogans — knew they will have nothing if they vote for the wrong candidate in the next elections. But they also knew that their choice will have little bearing on their condition in the long run.

By the GPO building, there was a vendor selling melons. He was tall, his sun-burned arms veined, his grin gap-toothed. He said he was from Manki Sharif in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the village of the provincial chief minister. The people there have voted for him “all their lives”.

What did they get in return?

“There is little you can get out of baray log [important people],” he said.

“It is a country where the rich get richer and the poor get pushed to suicide,” said a clerk at the protest.

A nameless government worker reported as being a naib qasid jumped to his death from the rooftop of the secretariat building in Islamabad on May 23. It appears he knew his son could never become the president, a general, or an MNA. Desperate as it was, it was strategic, his suicide: “He knew a government servant’s son will definitely get employed if the father dies in service,” said a clerk from Rawalpindi.

“Money meant for our health and education is going into development for the rich,” said a man at the protest. “Our medical allowance is Rs1,500, though doctors charge Rs3,000 as consultation fees.”

Add to that expensive dental care. The poor cannot afford it. Some might say it is lack of education, healthcare and hygiene awareness, and poor nutrition, that gives them bad teeth. It may be so. But someone out there wants the poor toothless, spineless and hopeless, lest they invite themselves to the feast of the ruling gods.

So when the government asks the APCA to come for negotiations, the workers dub it a victory. Because they have no bargaining power, they will settle for a “percentage raise” in wages that, given inflation, will soon fall short again. If microfinance covered dental care and broken backs, the poor could stand up and bite back to plead their case.

Published in Dawn, May 30th, 2017