Potemkin villages

Potemkin village or relief camp

ever heard of Potemkin villages? they were a myth.

but the PPP government set up something that could be called a potemkin village, sort of. so its not a myth.

how about a new idiom: Gilani’s relief camp

for those of you too lazy to click on that link, read the full story below:

UMERKOT: Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani visited a fake relief camp set up in Kunri on Monday only for the visit.

The prime minister, who was accompanied by federal ministers Syed Naveed Qamar and Syed Khursheed Shah and Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah, arrived by helicopter at the Benazir Government Girls College in Kunri where a `temporary relief camp` had been set up by the administration on Sunday night.

According to sources, the camp housed peasants belonging to areas of some PPP legislators. A number of rain-hit people, including women, who have been living on the road outside the school for the past few days, were barred from entering the premises and were allowed only when some journalists intervened.

The prime minister and his team waved from a distance to people in the camp and the rain-affected people. He shook hands with PPP MPA Nawab Taimoor Talpur and returned to the helicopter.

The people who were expecting to get some relief goods or an announcement in this regard from the prime minister received nothing except the dust raised by the helicopter while landing and taking off.

After the prime minister left the area, the affected people tried to pull out tents but they were attacked by PPP workers with sticks.

speedy changes dont work…

…atleast in the beginning, anyway. and here is one more ; the bigger the change, the bigger the confusion. and here is one more; if you try to change the lifestyles of people in one day, you will surely get  “f**k you”  from them.

atleast that is what is happening in NYC where a new speedy bus has been introduced by the Transportation Authority on the pattern of the European buses.

 

can we apply this lesson to something in Pakistan? hmm… lets see… how about the reforms in bureaucracy. they are still bewildering the people in this country. and the reforms have only lead to more confusion and chaos.

use energies for betterment

I was walking to my bank when i saw a group of people asking for demonstrating for the hanging of some person who probably had done nothing other than disagree with their preconceived ideas about life should be run.

I have also been looking at the news of one of the severest floods in the history of the country.

If only we could channel our energies to some positive things, we might be able to become a  better country.

who would do this?

I dont know how someone would just throw acid on passerby women and then escape. what is happening to this nation as a whole?

things like these just leave me speechless. i mean there are psychos in this world, but God, people doing these acts do not qualify as humans.

the whole episode is sickening.

Our General Psychology, our heroes, our villains

someone sent me this text message today:

a man died and went to heaven . there he saw a large wall of clocks.
Man: “what are these for?”.
Angel: ” these are ‘lie clocks’.every person has a lie clock. every time you lie, the clock moves.
Man:” whose clock is that?”
Angel: “that is Muhammad Bin Qasim’s clock. its never moved, showing that he never lied”.
Man: “where is Zardari’s clock?”
Angel: ” that is in our office. we use that as a CEILING FAN”.

regardless of going into the humor of this joke, I Was looking at it from another angle. it portrays the general psychology of our nation. it shows us several things about our nations attitude towards world in general.

the first thing is to thrash everyone and anyone who is running the country at the present moment. be it Ayub Khan, Nawaz Sharif, Musharraf, or any other person we have always criticised without giving any alternatives.the personality does not matter. had it been any other person other than Zardari, the joke would have simply replaced his name with that of the other. our whole energies are wasted on getting the incumbant out of the office and getting someone new into it. and once that has happened, the circus repeats.

the second thing is the way we dont really have any Heroes and we try to snatch them from other nations, usually Arabs. to become a hero, the test is simple. one, he should be an Muslim. two, he should have been an Army man.think about Ghaznavis, the MB Qasims etc. little wonder that  Armymen have enjoyed the most ruling time in this country. psychologically we are prepared for an Army man to be our hero.

the third thing is that we dont have heroes of our own. so we have to borrow them from other nations. and if we produced someone in this nation, we have made sure that they either go into self-exile (Dr. Salam) or are imprisoned ( Dr. Qadeer). I mean as far as the above joke goes, we could have replaced the name of Muhammad bin Qasim with someone who was much more relevent. I am going to tell you his name: Malik Miraj Khalid. he was from PPP, he had humble backgrounds, and he was an honest man. if you just want to see a former president, try  Ghulam Ishaq. whatever his flaws, the truth is that he was an honest man who never made single penny for himself while he was in the government. even his opponents his do not have anything bad to say about his fiscal responsibility. so we have our heroes. we just ignore them and dont give them the proper respect they deserve.

so, this in a nutshell, shows the dilemma of our nation. we have not been able to tell whether we are Pakistanis first or muslims first. we have not sorted out our priorities. we dont know whether we want to be secular or religious. and if religious, what kind of sect?  and i think that is the reason we have been behind all the nations.

certainly we have failed in helping to catapult ourselves to the top tier of nations. God has not been of much help either, because after all he says that he helps those who help themselves.

VVIP movements make a difference

the signs of a nation’s downfall are clear. one of them is that they VVIPs do not care what goes on. justice in every department is lacking. and public officials, past and present, use their powers to create ease for themselves at the expense of other ordinary mortal.

that problem is rather acute in pakistan. when the VVIPs move, whole cities come to a stop. and it does not matter if there are people in ambulances in critical conditions waiting to be taken to hospitals.

not only do the present caretakers ( sneeringly called undertakers by some) get the VVIP treatment but the former CM also gets the same treatment. he has been out of office, haven’t he?

“farq parrta hai purana CM honay say ” 

echoes from literature

i am sure you must have read many books. some books are so close to reality. and some sentences stick with you forever. so while the political turmoil goes on in this country, some sentences came to my mind from books like 1984 and animal farm. and i am going to put them here:

war is peace.

slavery is freedom.

ignorance is strength

and also  “some people here are more equal than others”.

we sure are living in an orwellian era. lets hope big brother here is not as watchful.

patriotism

even georgia did better and embarrassed us. they placed the emergency after Pakistan but they have been able to remove it so soon.  when will we stop loving our posts, and start loving our country instead? cant we just have a working constitution? or do we want to make this country like  Idi Amin’s Uganda and  Suharto’s Indonesia?

I am just sad where we are heading to.

after the private TV channels blackout

it has been many days since our private TV channels were shut down. the cable providers have been told not to show that to the people. only people who had Satellite dish are able to watch them. but not the rest of us. the only news source is the PTV and the internet.

it seems like nothing is happening. and it feels so calm as if nothing has happened. and it is not making us depressed. so it looks good one way.

but it just means that we have closed our eyes and our ears in this turmoil. does going blind and deaf make all problems go away. if it does than it sure is a very easy remedy for any problem. but if the problem remains there then one is only fooling oneself.

i am sure you will agree with me that we are fooling ourselves by becoming blind and deaf.

mobile companies in pakistan rip consumers

first of you had to pay for the pathetic service, if you could call it a service. now you can not even complain about it to their customer service department, if you can call it that too.

apparently due to the overwhelming amount of callers the mobile phone companies in pakistan have found a new way of milking their consumers. they have started charging their consumers for the so called customer service.

Mobilink, the largest carrier, was the first one to start jazzing up their customers. they have started charging their customers 75 paisas for each call made to their customer service department. how could the others miss the opportunity? so Warid also started charging their consumers 50 paisas for each call to their customer service department. Uphone will start it charging their customers from tomorrow.

who said competition is not good. it is good, but not for the consumers in pakistan.