Practical Jokers | Talat Hussain

Syed Talat Hussain

Back in the college days, a group of jovial rascals, who habitually bunked classes and had nothing to show for their studies, would place themselves at the cafeteria doorstep and invite freshmen to join a free tea party. The cost of that cuppa tea was a complete demolition job of the sanity of the new-comers. They were told that they had made the worst decision of their lives coming to the college. They were then walked through the high-way of high achievements the group members claimed they had under their belts, which were endorsed by the waiter and a few other standing nearby. 

They were then let go, bewildered and bemused, with the parting advice of not taking their studies seriously. The more studious the victims looked the bigger the deluge (or should I say tsunami) of gibberish directed at them.

Needless to say the waiter and the bystanders were all part of a set-up and were pre-booked cheaply for a meal. The list of the trophies of the practical jokers was a figment of their imagination. Most of them ended up getting chucked out of the institution for being total wasters.

Now many decades later I am witnessing a modified version of that crass college prank in government and state level decision-making. A bunch of clueless guys do the bidding of the head honcho and are telling the nation day in and day out about their own achievements, pretending to be masters of everything they survey. They tell magical tales of glory and glamour and bring up fairy tales about the future.

Their advice to the nation is akin to that of the useless tricksters in the college---no need to take the normal route to success like normal nations; instead let’s keep on digging the hole we got you in and soon we will all reach the center of the earth.

So we have it. We claim that Covid19 is totally under control as infections spike, and even a most egregiously under-reported death rate continues to ring alarm bells. We claim good governance all around when in reality the two food baskets of Pakistan, the Punjab and the KP, face long wheat shortages that the government has been pretending to address since January this year. Now we are importing wheat! A government that cannot even manage food stocks and calculate need and supply of this staple produce---something that this part of the world has been able to do for at least 3000 years----needs to hang its head in shame but instead it is insisting, like the college wasters, that it is on top of things. 

Consider security also. Apart from an appalling rise in crime like murder, theft, snatching, dacoities and kidnapping for ransom, terrorism has made a strong comeback. Balochistan and the KP are witnessing organized attacks at a scale that the nation has not seen for at least three years. And yet there is no urgency in official quarters. It is business as usual. PM Imran does not feel the need to call a national security committee meeting; neither does anyone prompt him to do it.

CPEC, which is often tom-tommed  as “vital national security concern” has become a football between General (retd) Asim Bajwa’s ambitions to dominate the decision-making landscape and resistance from the likes of Asad Umar.

It is a vicious turf-battle right in front PM Imran’s eyes but he either remains blissfully ignorant of its repercussions, or blightfully disinterested in this affair, or derives wicked pleasure from the mayhem.

These are just a few examples of an expanding, growing, strategic chaos. It will have strategic consequences. I have seen better men than the present lot being swept away by the flow of happenings far smaller than what the country is faced with at present---a broken economy, a clueless government very few have faith in, and a security environment in flux. This makes it a very dangerous chaos. 

Pakistan cannot be made into a college cafeteria where idle mischief-makers sit and cast palls of doom and gloom over its inhabitants through insane actions. The joke has gone a bit too far. So has the pretension that we are in safe hands.