June 05, 2008

It is a world of contradictions we live in. But this is not a new phenomenon. Dilapidated grimy katchi abadis creeping up to the palatial mansions oozing luxury have for long been a familiar sight in Third World countries — including Pakistan. They remind one of the stark contrasts that have become a part of life here. Ours is a country that is the proud owner of locally manufactured nuclear bombs, but we are required to import our paper pins from China. We have produced a Nobel laureate of great merit in physics — the venerable Prof Abdus Salam — but we have failed to teach half of our population to read and write the alphabet. Contradictions abound.

The grey areas have been shrinking and the contrast has become sharper — and even more vulgar. Switch on your television — that is if your power supply allows you — and the surreality of what appears on the screen will hit you full blast. There is the artiste who rushes to her air-conditioned home after a hot and hectic day at work to declare, ‘Life is good.’ How many can afford that split AC – even loans have to be repaid. Many don’t have bread to eat and others don’t have electricity in their homes for 14 hours a day. The irony is that banks do not give loans to buy atta while the loans for ACs have to be repaid even if you cannot use the machine because you don’t have electricity.

What about the man in the TV ad who is upset to see his restless children in a home without electricity. The credit card offered to him is the solution to his problem. A smile lights up his face. But no one tells him that credit has to be repaid.

The examples are unending. It is the immorality of it all that is distressing. How else would you describe a situation that allows some people to throw money lavishly on ostentatious living while others starve and die of lack of health care because they do not have enough money to buy atta that now costs Rs30 per kg or pay the doctor’s consultation fee, let aside purchase the medicines he prescribes. The injustice of it all is appalling and leaves you aghast.

But the fact is that the system in place now has distorted the state’s priorities. It has also brought out the base instincts of man and destroyed the noble and beautiful side of his character. While chasing the marketplace and the capitalist mode of production we have ended up attending to the desires of those who supply the capital – a small privileged minority – and neglecting the basic needs of the multitude.

Economists and academics will argue endlessly about the growing inequities in society and how they can be eliminated. They will lament the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few that has resulted in the rich growing richer and the poor becoming poorer. But what worries me is the social impact of this phenomenon. Can inequality exist without any dire consequences in a world that has been made so politically aware? In a system devoid of social justice, the message going through to the people at large is that violence offers the only means of winning one’s rights.

Is it possible to turn the clock back? Social scientists say ‘No’ as someone said there is no reverse gear in the march of time. But the pace can be slowed down. It is also time for the privileged, the main beneficiaries of this unequal distribution of wealth, to realise how vulnerable they are becoming in a society characterised by income disparities, especially when the wealthy flaunt their wealth as the poor starve and die because they cannot afford food and healthcare.

Thus the situation offers a perfect recipe for civil war. Paul Collier, an economist who worked with the World Bank and has spent 30 years researching poverty in Africa, writes in his book The Bottom Billion that a civil war is one of the six traps a poor country can fall into. Unfortunately, inequalities in society make a civil war more likely as they breed greater discontent and frustration. As the slice of the cake shrinks while the number of those clamouring for it grows, conflict becomes more likely. And if the more powerful grab bigger chunks of the cake, the civil war that Collier writes about will become more vicious.