It is happening all the time now. As Ramadan progresses, huge crowds at food distribution sites, sometimes ending in stampedes, are a common sight. In Karachi, 12 people – women and children – died recently as they were trying to get their hands on sacks of free wheat flour. The latter has become so expensive that for many people queuing up at distribution points is the only way to obtain this most essential dietary staple.
Similar stampedes have occurred elsewhere in the country during the ongoing month of fasting, such as in Peshawar, once again at a food distribution site. The curse of hunger and the desire to get some sustenance for one’s family is so strong that even risking one’s life in search of wheat flour seems a necessary risk.
Numbers keep telling a sad story. According to the Consumer Price Index, commodity prices rose 35 percent in March from a year earlier – the most since 1965. It was also reported that the cost of transportation increased by 50 per cent. In the backdrop of this mad rush is Pakistan’s ongoing drama with the International Monetary Fund.
Pakistan is in dire need of funds to release the $1 billion tranche. Without this amount, Pakistan may default and the consequences will be that the country will be plunged into conditions worse than those that are unfolding on the streets today.
When a country defaults, it finds itself constrained in the international market as creditors have no confidence in getting paid. If the poor are now queuing up for sacks of flour and cooking oil, a post-default future will mean queuing for everything.
Patients will be dying in hospitals because there will be a shortage of life-saving drugs—drugs are already in short supply, pharmaceuticals are raising dire warnings—leaving people in the vagaries of the black market to try and get anything Are.
It is noteworthy that most of those killed in the stampede are women. It is the women who have to deal with the hunger of the children and empty pots on the chulha which no longer works due to the gas crisis.
In the month of Ramadan, hunger and thirst during the day is part of a period of focusing on the spiritual through the hardship of the preceding sustenance. Imagine, the intense pain and suffering of an endless fast where the absence of food means the fast is eternal, the hunger constant.
They say that nothing is more painful than the crushing pangs of hunger cramps. It is their gruesome endurance that led to the deaths of many mothers in the recent Karachi stampede, mothers who died rather than face the despairing eyes of their starving children.
That mothers die rather than despair of their children is a special and new depth of human wretchedness. For their part, the police began arresting people the next day; Blaming a factory manager and some business owners for what happened.
It is common to give food in Ramadan. Business owners, factory operators and other people with money always arrange for the distribution of rations during the month.
But there has always been an element of dehumanization in these moments, the benevolent wealthy giving boxes or bags to the congregated poor, the suffering of one exposing the generosity of another. It seems important to be seen as needy, poor and desperate to get help; The shame of poverty is used to underline the arrogance of wealth.
Even those worries seem futile this year when there are so many poor, so many wanting that the light of wanting and generosity has been lost. In several interviews taken on one site, it was clear that the hungry were not only the desperate and very poor but also educated, even middle-class people – people working in textile mills or other workplaces that closed down. are because the owners cannot import the necessary materials.
These people, who have suddenly become poor, can no longer afford gunny bags, which cost more than Rs 1,000 for a 10-kg bag.
The news of more factory closures means that the lines will be even longer this month. Last week, it was announced that practically all mobile assembling units in the country have shut down. People working in these factories have been given half their wages and told that they will be contacted when production resumes.
The problems of mobile assemblers are similar to those of textile mill owners. The owners are unable to obtain letters of credit from banks which guarantee that the amount will be paid. Without those letters, it is impossible to continue with the arrangement of production.
It’s impossible not to wonder if this will ever end. Clearly, more needs to be done. The quantity of food being distributed at these places should be increased so that all the people gathered there can get something or the other. This should also be true for government distribution sites.
Governments, who are generally poor at managing a crisis of this type, can seek the help of private charitable groups who are generally more efficient and can make distribution more systematic.
Without the superhuman and unprecedented effort of both, people would die of hunger in the month when charity and sympathy are supposed to be the focus of all who fast to earn blessings.
Those who plan to deliver food need to ensure they have enough supplies to meet the increased need and to control the number of people who are allowed to line up. Foresight and some serious awareness of the acute deprivation faced by so many this Ramzan could have averted the disasters that claimed so many lives last week.
The author is a lawyer teaching constitutional law and political philosophy. Thoughts are personal. this article was Originally Don appeared on the website.