The scale of the calamity that is currently unfolding across a huge swathe of the landmass of the country isn’t correctly being comprehended by most of the citizens in the major-tier urban metropolitan areas of the country. Yes, terrible video clips do elicit a feeling of sympathy and dread, giving way to an impulse to contribute money (something that our nation has, thankfully, been doing in every natural disaster.) But after a while, the clips seem to meld into each other, giving viewers the impression that only some areas are currently affected by the deluge. That is not the case. It is a significant proportion of the total landmass of the country that is inundated. There are the lives of stranded people to be saved, yes, but then there is also taking care of those people, then, the rehabilitation of the presently inundated areas, and, lastly, protocols to deal with the crippling food inflation that is going to play out as a result of the devastation of our crops.
All of the above doesn’t lend for a situation conducive to politics-as-usual. Yes, the very nature of democratic politics is adversarial in nature. Parties jostle for the public’s favour and try to make their case at the expense of the others. But when the scale of the calamity is so massive, there shouldn’t be any petty bickering.
Even though the ruling PDM isn’t exactly a prize on this front, it is the PTI that is clearly guilty of playing politics over the relief activities. First, there was the chairman’s statement that he won’t raise money because he didn’t know how it would be spent. A bizarre thing to say. Disaster management can be coordinated by the federal government, and mitigated through federal departments like the armed forces and civil armed militias, but it is the provinces that do most of the heavy lifting here. For the chairman of a party that runs two provinces, cumulatively more of Pakistan than not, to say he can’t think of where charity funding could be spent, not even, say CM emergency funds, is quite callous.
