A stumbling block
There were five new polio cases confirmed in Pakistan on September 25, bringing the tally for 2014 to 171 — and rising. There is going to come a point, and it may not be far off, when this year’s polio outbreak becomes truly out of control. The five cases are spread across the country — two from Fata, one from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, one from Karachi and one from Balochistan. So far this year Punjab has reported two cases. The cases in Karachi and Quetta are said to be in families where there is ‘vehement refusal’ to receive the vaccine. The family in Quetta believe that the anti-polio campaign is part of a Western plot to limit the growth of the Muslim population. There are also anecdotal reports of families allowing only girls to receive the vaccine, out of fear that the boys in the family may be rendered impotent if vaccinated. Of further concern are reports that the vial is not being maintained to keep the vaccines at an optimum temperature, and that some of the vaccines being administered are sub-standard. It is reported that there is to be an emergency meeting in Islamabad, chaired by the Minister of State for National Health Services, Regulation and Coordination, to be attended by the chief ministers of the four provinces. However, the meeting cannot take place soon enough. Outside of Pakistan there is growing alarm at the way cases are mounting. The Director of the World Health Organisation, Dr Margaret Chan, was blunt in her assessment. She commented that Pakistan was the single most important stumbling block along the road to ending polio’, and that nine out of 10 children in the world that have polio live in Pakistan. There is a meeting of the Independent Monitoring Board for Polio on September 30, and it is at least possible that further restrictions will be placed on those who travel to and from Pakistan. Travellers are already required to have a valid polio vaccination certificate before boarding international flights. The consequences of losing the fight against polio are unthinkable, and as of today we are not winning.
Elusive narratives and floods
Representatives of the Pakistan government are busy at the United Nations in New York. Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry was in action on September 24 when he addressed the fifth ministerial meeting of the Global Counter Terrorism Forum (GCTF). There were brave words saying that Pakistan stood with the international community in dealing with the threat posed by foreign terrorists. Foreign terrorists? Coming from the representative of a government that has singularly failed to develop a national counter-terrorism strategy that is owned by all stakeholders, this might be considered ‘a bit rich’ as the saying goes. He babbled on about the need to develop a ‘persuasive logic’ in response to radical narratives, observing at the same time that there has not been an ounce of visible effort to create a narrative that countervails that purveyed so effectively by the extremists within our midst. And logic has never played much of a part in the national skills-bank. In another forum the Adviser to the Prime Minister on National Security and Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz told the UN Climate Summit on the same day that climate change was ‘the unresolved issue’. Doubtless, thousands in Sindh and Punjab stood up waist deep in floodwater to applaud him. Once again we agree, and equally forced to point out that this and successive governments have managed to bungle, fudge, prevaricate and generally cock-up national responses to repeated inundations. Speaking in an unrelieved stream of broken-backed clichés, Mr Aziz wrapped up by placing the begging bowl for an additional five billion dollars annually to enable Pakistan to adapt to the impacts of climate change. He made a fair point when he said that Pakistan has a very low carbon footprint and suffers disproportionately from the effects of bigger beasts than us, but the dysjunction between words and deeds was painfully obvious — and both men were decidedly 1.5 litre engines for a three litre job.
India’s Mars mission
On September 24, an Indian satellite, successfully entered Mars’ orbit. It is, and ought to be, lauded as a spectacular achievement, one for which the Indian Space Research Organisation deserves full credit. After a crippling global recession and American disinterest in space programmes, Mars, a planet that stimulated our collective imagination for so long, seemed to no longer hold our interest. The Indian mission has reinvigorated that interest.
No longer is space the exclusive domain of rich countries. India should be proud of its institutions, its scientists and its government (the mission began under the previous Congress-led coalition) that made this endevour possible. It is an oft-heard complaint that money that was spent on the mission, $74 million, could have been spent elsewhere. The response to that charge bears repeating: it is miraculous that only $75 million was spent on this programme, making it the cheapest so far. Second, of course the money could have been spent on any other over-burdened sector in a country where 300 million people still live below the poverty line, but there are certain things that cannot be quantified that easily — self-esteem and national pride, for example. The collective pride over this achievement transcends all those barriers — class, religion, caste, language — that have hampered India’s progress since its inception. Almost a billion and a half people can declare themselves to be amongst the newest members of a very short list of countries with a viable space programmes. Of course this gives Pakistan plenty of soul searching to do. Our own nascent space agency, Suparco, still occupies itself with weather patterns and tracking natural disasters, which should be overseen by a separate body. Given the litany of Pakistan’s problems, the country hardly looks at the world outside of itself — other worlds, in this case. These problems keep Pakistanis in a constant state of crisis management, always worrying about the immediate rather than the future. This seems unlikely to change soon.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 26th, 2014.