Rotti Kappra aur Makan

Yasir, a couple of lines in angrezi maybe about the article above for us less cultured souls?

It is about the terrible reality of poverty in Pakistan. The writer explores the political and historical roots of the governmental promises of food, clothing and shelter as innitiated by Mr Bhutto in the 70s. People believed him but nothing changed. All subsequent governments reiterated these promises one way or other but nothing changed. Even the most recent budget promised welfare but reality is changed. People can't even think of affording shelter any more, they can live in most basic clothing but they can't live without food and medicines. Then the writer goes on to show how the prices of medicines have gone up in this country. He goes on to give some horrible statistics.

* Pakistan has 90 million people living below the poverty line and half of them get only one meal a day. 3/4th of the population are not fully healthy. Pakistan is among the top ten countries with the rate of life-threatening diseases touching the dangerously high proportions. Tuberculosis has returned and at this time there are ten million people suffering from it. Pakistan has the fourth largest number of people suffering from diabetes, third, fourth and fifth among the countries with highest number of people suffering from cancer, Hepatitis and heart disease.

* In 1998 there were 2,858,715 old people in the country, now this amount has increased to 34,00,000. All these people are above 70 years in age and 95% of them are living on medicines. 15% of our population die before reaching the age of 40 and 45% of the population have no access to medical facilities. On the other hand Pakistan is the only country in the world where the prices of medicines have risen by 750% in last ten years.He goes on to illustrate this with examples.

* Talking about food, he says that out of the 174 poor nations in the world, Pakistan is ranked 38th from the bottom. It means even among the poor countries, 137 countries are better off than us. He illustrates how an average family needs at least Rs 15400 just to live a very very basic life with no luxuries whereas the starting pay for a 22 Grade officer is Rs. 22000 reaching the maximum of 40,000. Now this is what a very very high civil servant earns, imagine what an ordinary citizen would be earning! Price of a naan bread in Islamabad is Rs 5. He goes on to tell how his friend witnesses everyday children looking for food in a rubbish dump where a bakery and a private hospital through there trash and left-overs. His friend has seen kids eating stale bread and cakes soiled with blood and puss from the bandages and syringes dumped by the hospital. He gives the example of children falling over each other to pick and eat the bones left thrown or left by customers outside fastfood restaurants.

He wraps up this sad picture by saying that this is the real Pakistan where people have given up the hope for shelter and can live under the sky in there rags but they can't survive without food and medicine. He requests the government to not to take away people's roti and medicine, instead provide people with these needs as there is a God in the skies and everybody has to return to Him sooner or later.

Very sad article indeed which needs to be discussed in detail.

Ma Kasam Dil roota hai Mulk ki halat dekh ke.Allah mian reham kare in pe aur akal de humarey leaderon ko.
Ameen.

Akal humarey leadron ko?
As much chance as Henman winning Wimbledon mate!!

It's got not much to do with leaders. The whole society is selfish and thoughtless. You get the leaders you deserve.

Corruption at every corner, lieng and decieving at evercorner, we should fix ourselves as a nation before point fingers at the higher ups.

Agreed.

Agreed &

happy to see some column readers