IN Sindh, roadsides and markets are dotted with tea shops called ‘hotels’. Men and children sit there for hours watching movies on television screens placed there. In contrast, most schools in rural areas remain closed. One would truly find government schools and colleges in towns and cities with thin attendance of both students and teachers.

Besides, while male and female doctors run their private clinics, only a few can be seen for a few hours in government hospitals. Moving on, government offices are established in ‘private dens’, mostlty in bungalows, and only a few ‘agents’ or well-connected persons are able to visit these dens to get something done, and this ‘something’ almost always is for the collective good of the stakeholders; the officer, the agent and the political patron of the officer who got the officer appointed.

The heavily taxed common people are left to whim and fancy of cruel market forces. They survive on substandard, adulterated and counterfeit items that are sold at prices that are much higher than the actual. The least said about Sindh Police, the better.

Unfrotunately, public services, say, for the last two decades have completely collapsed. Power breakdown and gas loadshedding are as common as the sight of broken roads and overflowing sewage. Access to drinking water is more of a luxury for the public.

The ruling clique lives in a world of its own away from the ground realities. One wonders why it would be bothered at all by the plight of the common man.

Gulsher Panhwer
Johi

Published in Dawn, June 21st, 2024