Singer Wahab Bugti’s voice is like food for the soul. I listened to him on Coke Studio and was instantly mesmerised. Therefore, I was heartbroken when images of the folk singer holding his child standing next to the wreckage of his mud house circulated around the internet. A man with great talent was at the mercy of Mother Nature. The image that also displayed submerged fields show the miseries of the Baloch people amid the torrential rainfalls.
To make matters worse, it has been forecasted that a fresh spell of rain will begin in the coming days. Pakistan has been blessed with extraordinary amounts of rain this year. Well, it would have been a blessing if we had proper infrastructure to contain the flood waters, and put it to good use. 800 people have died and thousands have been displaced since the monsoon began last month.
People have lost their children, their crops, houses and hope. But the real tragedy is that the losses of people have not affected the politicians in any way. Political parties are engaged in a troubling power struggle. Granted rainfalls and inundations is an annual event for Pakistan. Every year thousands of acres of land is submerged due to excessive rainfall.
But the problem is, our politicians and leadership never took any significant step to manage the disaster. Pakistan is already a water scarce country, with acute power shortages. The flood water is a blessing in disguise that we need to exploit. In the past fifty years not a single dam has been built in Pakistan for storing flood water, and making sure it does not harm any villages in the surrounding areas.
Instead, the capital is busy with arresting politicians, journalists, and filing cases against the opposition. No one is concerned about the common public, the poor, the ones who actually brought the politicians into power in the first place.
by Amna Sheikh
(sheikh_amna@outlook.com)
