Eating Grass
“We(Pakistan) will eat grass, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own (Atom bomb)…. We have no other choice!”
― Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
One can tell a lot about a country and those who have held the reigns of power in that country, by what it has achieved. More so, perhaps, by what it has failed to achieve. Of the 195 countries that exist in the world today, 9 are nuclear powers. Pakistan is one of 9 such countries.
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There is no state based ambulance service in Pakistan. Abdul Sattar Edhi, an exceptional personality, established the largest private ambulance service in the world in Pakistan building, with relentless effort what is today a fleet of 1,800 ambulances and a helicopter. Pakistanis boast their country holds the record for the largest private ambulance service in the world. What they fail to see is that this is only one side of the coin. On the other side, hidden from the sun, is the grimy face of the abject failure of a parasitically infected state focused on establishing the ultimate infrastructure to achieve efficient death rather than any semblance of a structure that supports life. Healthcare, emergency services — these are basic obligations of any government whatever its political leanings. Nazi Germany had an efficient EMS (emergency medical services) system too.
There is no functioning educational system in the provinces of Sindh and Balochistan in Pakistan. There is a network of barely regulated private schools colluding and acting in concert like cartels to squeeze the public for maximum money while trying to invest as little as possible on the infrastructure of the very institutions from which they demand their entitlement to ever increasing amounts of money. I remember the first time I went to my daughter’s school play — she was 4 years old. The auditorium or theater room or whatever one calls it, had a massive pillar smack back in the middle of it — right in between the audience and the stage! The burgeoning private school cartels have captured the space abandoned by the State where lay the gravestone of their obligation to provide education to its people — the ability to read and write, perhaps more too. Like the Sinaloa Cartel it is composed of individuals all of whom would love to sell cocaine to the entire country alone, as a monopoly — the thought gets them absolutely giddy. Like maggots in dog turd however, they are found together. It is a monster that is born in the vacuum and crevices of the land left fallow by the state. It metastasizes to protect violently its interests, as all cartels do.
What logic exists in starving oneself in order to create the world’s most deadliest weapon? What does it say about the political leaders who say it? It certainly does not imply that their next meal will not be an extravagant banquet as is 3 times a day prepared for the ruling classes including the speaker? It in truth means, YOU, you the people will eat grass as so many of you already do, you, my people will starve so that WE, we the rulers of this country, can have a nuclear bomb.
This statement elicits pride in some perhaps many — at least those who share a certain social class with the speaker. To me it brings abject shame.
