GOVERNANCE

UTTERLY BLAND GRAFFITI

By: Nasser Yousaf 

It would appear that officialdom, in Pakistan in general and in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) in particular, has reduced itself  to relying more on wall-chalking and graffiti and less on substantive work to achieve its ultimate objective of good governance. 

A couple of years ago the prices of tomatoes 🍅 🍅 🍅 rose countrywide, which indeed is a seasonal phenomenon. The KP department of agriculture, to ingratiate itself with an incompetent government, hung banners at conspicuous places in the premises of its department across the province to announce the sale of tomatoes at less than the market price. 

The banners read, "another revolutionary measure by the present government," flattery of a routine nature in Pakistan. 

It's not just the agriculture department; it's the norm in the malfunctioning bureaucracy all around. The practice is rampant in the development authorities and, of course, the forest department which has the advantage of  trees 🌳 🌳 🌲 🌴 whereon it affixes its medallions of good governance.

One such card affixed to a tree on the mountaintop at Nathiagali could be seen crying in disbelief, "killing me in the name of development, how will you live without me." Now, this is stupendous phraseology, perhaps conceived in a state of fits induced by guilt 😔. 

We ought to know that Nathiagali is the mountaintop that the present KP government under the leadership of Imran Niazi is targeting for development to fill up Pakistan's empty moneybox. Nathiagali is a very small mountaintop, not a hideout anymore as it used to be in olden times. With its small bazaar, a few dozen colonial- times bungalows and the all-pervasive scent of conifers, few hip-hop tourists would prefer it over the hustle and bustle of Murree.

Not any more since it appeared on Imran's radar as the panacea for pakistan's economic ills. The Imran-era, if providence doesn't bring it to an immediate end, will see the construction of not one but two five-star hotels on the once serene mountaintop. And that would in effect be death throes for the ecology of the entire Himalayan belt that falls to the share of KP.

This last June saw bush and wildfires in some forested areas of KP. Some naive accounts attributed the same to foul play on the part of officials to cover up the billion-trees project launched by the present KP government. 

We all know that conifer needles are excessively combustible, and easily catch fire when sun blazes down on the mountains in summer. Therefore it wasn't wise to impute foul motives to what is but a natural phenomenon. 

The billion-trees project on the other hand is such a mega scam that its stench would rise to high heavens if the lid from the can is removed by some conscientious folks. The biggest lie of the project lies not in any forested or non forested area but in fact in the PC-1 of the project. 

It is truth of this kind that can tell about our love for trees, and not some silly highfalutin graffiti. But the problem with us simpletons is that we don't care to read.

Our love for water is similarly vacuous. Had we been sincere, our water courses and rivers would not be running thick with refusals of all unmentionable types. River and streams in Swat, Nowshera, Charsadda, Peshawar, Mansehra and Abbottabad have been turned into hotels with absolute impunity. 

The existence of some development authorities, with hundreds of employees on their payrolls, could be found out only from the garbage bins placed by them. This perhaps is poetical justice.