Impact on the economy
VARIOUS agencies and experts have made a number of assessments of the impact of the earthquake on Pakistan’s economy. According to government officials, the targets for growth rate, budgetary deficit and revenue collection projected for the current year will remain unaffected. On the other hand, private financial institutions in their analytical reports have projected that the budgetary deficit will overshoot its target of 3.8 per cent of the GDP to over four per cent and the tax revenue will fall short of the target by about 1.3 per cent. They have also predicted that in the aftermath of the disaster prices of food and construction material will come under severe pressure as the loss of food grain stocks and livestock in the affected region, and the rush to donate basic necessities witnessed in other parts of the country, will create a serious supply gap. This will cause food prices to go up and the immediate construction needs in the affected areas will push up the prices of construction material.
Shahid Javed Burki, former World Bank vice-president who also served as finance minister in president Farooq Leghari’s interim cabinet in 1997, has assessed a loss of $10 billion to $12 billion to the economy which, according to him, will deprive Pakistan of an annual income of one billion to $1.25 billion. This in turn will reduce the annual GDP growth rate by about one percentage point a year in the next one to three years. He has added another quarter percentage point to this reduction because he feels the loss of human lives and injuries to working population also impact adversely on the overall economy. According to an ILO study, the earthquake has caused job losses to the extent of 1.1 million. Another rough estimate puts the houses destroyed at 400,000, almost equally divided between Azad Kashmir and the NWFP. The population affected by the earthquake is estimated to be about four million. None of these assessments are definite or final, of course. They would need to be revised periodically and fine-tuned to the real situation, which would emerge only after the relief work comes to its logical end, all the dead are buried, the injured are hospitalized and houses destroyed counted.
Early estimates of resources required to finance the gigantic task of relief, reconstruction and rehabilitation have been projected at about $10 billion. So far, the government has announced five billion rupees from the budget for this purpose. Another five billion rupees have come from local donors, and an amount of nearly Rs 700 million has been sent from abroad to date. Perhaps by the end of the month the total cash collection, both in local and foreign currencies, will go up to about billion dollars. On the basis of the pledges made and the financial concern shown by the world community, President Musharraf has announced an ambitious plan to turn the ravaged regions into those of model towns and cities. Even if only half of this proves to be true, not only will the affected have a better future to look forward to, but the economy of the country as a whole will also get an extra boost. In case the projected flows do not match the expectations and the final estimates of the damage to the economy turn out to be short by a significant margin, the country’s economy will face a very difficult situation indeed. This will also have serious socio-political implications for the country.
Children come first
UNICEF’s warning that 10,000 more children could die in the earthquake affected regions of northern Pakistan should alert the relief authorities to step up efforts and focus more closely on the young survivors. Tragedies, such as the one that has befallen Azad Kashmir and some districts of the NWFP, always have a devastating human dimension. On this occasion, the sufferings are greater because of the disproportionately large number of children affected. The under-15 constitute nearly 45 per cent of the population in these areas. The ratio of children (and also women) killed or injured is also high because quite a substantial number of men in these regions live away from home to earn a livelihood and therefore escaped the havoc caused by the earthquake. The crisis has been compounded by the helplessness of the young survivors and their inability to help themselves. Many of them have been orphaned or separated from their families and need looking after. With some areas still inaccessible, it is feared that the children will be the worst sufferers without food, shelter and healthcare.
Children are more vulnerable partly because of their age and partly because they do not normally receive the care and nourishment they need. They are also more easily traumatized. It is ironical that it needed an earthquake of such intensity to awaken the people and the government to the plight of the under-15 segment of the population. Quite a number of them are not vaccinated against childhood diseases, the expanded immunization programme notwithstanding. Many are under-nourished and are unable to withstand the rigours of winter and rain. Besides, they are more prone to fall victim to diarrhoeal diseases, respiratory ailments and infections of all kinds. Unicef is doing good work in bringing in relief goods and medical assistance into the country with the idea of helping the women and children. But obviously when the population affected is of all ages, the aid tends to be distributed to all. Humanism demands that children are prioritized, especially in respect of medical aid. If there is not enough to go round, as seems to be the case today, let the dictum “children first” be the guiding principle.
An outdated system
THAT life goes on with its twists and turns despite a national calamity was proved true on Wednesday in the NWFP when, during a jirga convened at a mosque to settle a dispute, an irate man unsheathed his gun and fired at his opponents, killing three and injuring another. It is not unusual for violence to erupt during a jirga session but for a person — in his pursuit of justice — to disregard the sanctity of Ramzan or show disrespect for a mosque’s sacredness, is staggering. It is incidents like these, frequently reported in the press, that make it necessary to hold a national debate on the desirability of the jirga system of justice. Such councils may have, at one time, served their purpose in settling small disputes at a local level but in the past few years, their verdicts have exposed the darker side of the system. There are infamous instances where jirgas authorized gang rapes or child marriages or equally horrific punishments, largely against innocent men and women. Such inhuman decrees have caused more harm than good. Earlier in June, seven persons were killed during jirga proceedings meant to settle a land dispute in the Orakzai Agency. What good, then, is the jirga system if its sanctity can be ignored and violence resorted to at the slightest provocation?
Until people are made aware of the seamy side of the jirga system, it will continue to flourish, no matter what efforts are made to abolish it. In Sindh, the High Court’s ban on jirgas in April last year continues to be flouted with few prosecuted for their defiance. The government will have to display will and tenacity of purpose if it wants to abolish this antediluvian legal system which has long outlived its purpose.
Beyond this moment of self-discovery
HUMANITY, after all, is not dead. The way ordinary citizens have volunteered their time and resources to support the country’s largest-ever relief operation in parts of the quake-stricken Frontier and Azad Kashmir leaves one with courage and confidence. All is not lost, and there remains much to be thankful for, namely, humanity, that has managed to survive in our midst despite the daunting tragedy.
The spirit of selfless service shown by so many young men and women in the aftermath of the suffering endured by the victims of the natural disaster presents a ray of hope that must be garnered, channelled and taken into the future. Despite all the ills affecting society today, the spirit moving the urban, educated youngsters, with their hearts in the right place, to action can make a huge difference to our tomorrow. One needs only to approach anyone of the young men or women helping out with the cause to get one’s answers.
Politics and party loyalties have become irrelevant in the face of the natural disaster. The volunteers in Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Peshawar, name any city, are there to help not so much because their political idols have asked them to lend a hand with the relief effort but because they feel and share for the agony fellow human beings are going through. If this is the emerging, conscious and conscientious middle class in our urban centres, then the sky is the limit to what such dedicated young people can achieve when they come together and pool their energies.
Besides the many who are helping out in the affected areas, many more in the cities are busy with the relief collection effort. People have cancelled birthday celebrations and called off iftar bashes in trendy restaurants. In Lahore, a number of food streets and food courts wear a deserted look. So does the annual industrial exhibition which usually draws thousands of people. The swings at Joyland have come to a halt because parents have not been bringing their children to the place.
Many have altogether scrapped plans to take a pleasure trip this year, diverting their resources to the ones in desperate need. Shopping centres, especially the glossy shops, designer wear outlets and music stores that the younger people frequent, look like deserted places, with no customers buzzing in and out of them. The same is the case with the fast food restaurants.
Eid festivities for many seen collecting funds for the quake victims at the crossroads carrying money boxes, mean nothing anymore. Nor does time of day or the Ramazan fast. Young professionals, doctors, bankers, engineers, teachers and NGO activists have taken time off on a rotating basis among colleagues to donate a portion of their workday to fund raising. College and university students, too, are going around bazaars and shopping malls literally carrying a begging bowl in their hands. Art galleries have announced that their proceeds from on-going exhibitions will go to the relief fund.
You can hardly believe this is Lahore, where the cool autumn breeze sees people converge on parks in the evening to indulge in all kinds of fun and frivolity at this time of the year. The rich have donated their cars, and these are not old cars; auctions are being held, money collected and contributed to the relief fund. No one is clamouring, save the politicians, for their names being counted among donors. There suddenly seems to be something more important and pressing at hand that needs everyone’s undivided attention.
This is nothing short of a silent revolution, of consciousness, of taking up one’s social responsibility, that is visible in the streets of our cities. Truckload after truckload the youngsters pack and get rolling to places where medicines, clothes, tents, blankets and money are most needed today. There is no reason to believe people elsewhere in Pakistan are doing otherwise.
The response in Karachi has been overwhelming, as has been reported in the media, and donations in cash and kind just refuse to stop rolling in. In Lahore, people have put up handwritten messages in supermarkets and shopping centres in affluent neighbourhoods, asking for volunteers to come to a certain address, a private bungalow or a warehouse, to help pack and load the relief goods on to the trucks.
We’ve collected enough and more keeps coming by the hour, so please don’t bring anything; just come and help us pack and load the relief goods off to Azad Kashmir, reads one no-nonsense message — without any frills of morality or ideology thrown in — pasted on the entrance of a supermarket in DHA. The address follows, with a hand-drawn map, guiding you as to how to get to the location. Similar individual requests are posted on the educational institutions’ notice boards.
Had anyone seen anything like this before? Certainly not the under-25 generation that is spearheading this silent revolution — not in their living memory. So from where have they picked up these very human qualities, of whose apparent lack in them many elders often complain? These may be questions for sociologists to probe in depth, but from a layman’s point of view, our youth’s response to the tragedy at hand is simply awe-inspiring.
For instance, take the imaginable oddest one out: you see the jean-clad youngster with tattooed arms, pierced ears and flaky hairdo, and you marvel at his waywardness. You imagine him to be a reckless driver or a psychopath in the making; at least that’s the gutt reaction among the elder generation. But look at the heart of gold that he carries in his chest. Many a stereotype lies shattered and a change, a positive one at that, is definitely in the offing.
Maybe it is sheer excess of consumerism all around the small, affluent class, but also many wannabe middle class youth, that has created a void in the youngsters’ spiritual life, and which they are crying out to be filled. There has got to be some such explanation for the new, caring consciousness and accompanying confidence that these young volunteers exude in the face of the terrible tragedy that has sprung them into action.
There must be something that these very charged up youngsters were doing right that slowly but steadily inculcated this new conscientious behaviour in them. It’s surely not their schoolbooks; nor the sermons in classical morality that many of our self-righteous TV show hosts and neo-conservative rightists give with such airs of importance and self-consciousness about them. You can talk to any volunteer — girls included — and he will tell you it is the consciousness that he has acquired through globalization of knowledge, accessible via the powerful digital media and the myriad of IT tools.
Such practical knowledge of universal human goodness is there for all who seek it. There is no packaging of this emerging consciousness in terms of what a given religion or creed teaches you to do. There is not even any namedropping of the variety that tells you that because such and such great man or woman had said this and therefore that’s the way to be.
The urge not to seek any historical or religious sanction has made the new consciousness a coercion-free choice to which your hearts and minds, if they have an inclination towards the good, are naturally tuned. Ideology in the classical sense is all but dead for these energetic, on-the-go young men and women.
This also explains the waning public interest in the redundant and rustic brand of politics that our leaders continue to practise. A vast majority of the new urban, middle class generation cannot relate to this outdated, self-serving politics. If anything they are disgusted by it. At the individual level, today’s youth strives to achieve what he believes he is capable of achieving. Unlike the previous generation, the youngsters’ hands-on practical approach to life tells them that they have to earn what they feel they deserve because of their acquired abilities, and not claim the goodies as some philosophical, inalienable birthright. At the collective level, they also know how to pool their resources, as seen in the aftermath of the quake tragedy.
How can this enormous goodwill and sense of social responsibility be turned into a lasting spirit? An enduring reality that would work to heel the wounds inflicted by death and destruction in the immediate days ahead?
By polarization caused by politics of hate and revenge? Of distrust and deceit? Of ignorance and poverty? Of lack of justice and gender inequality, to name only a few evils ravaging society today?
Where is that one leader who could help garner this very positive, emerging awareness, and give it continuity in the time ahead? Those in power or even those sitting in the opposition need to pay heed.
They can either turn this impeccable powerhouse of consciousness among the youth into a positive national asset that can take this nation out of the wood, or they can simply continue with their habitual apathy and reliance on hollow ideological and patently false nationalistic rhetoric.