poor – My Bit for Change

Budget 2012 was being presented in National Assembly and it reminded me about my lab attendant. His newly born daughter died last month during labour at home in a far flung village of KPK . He was not able to afford the delivery expenses in hospital and therefore he opted for labour at home. I came to know about it when he had already left home after hearing the sad news of demise. When he came back, he told me that he is earning about 10K and the charges of a hospital delivery were not bearable for him as the medical tests and medicines were quite expensive. I was thinking that whats in the budget for him.

Finance minister tried to convince people that they are living in a heaven while when we look around, its totally a different picture. There is indeed a darker side which does not match with the claims of present regime. Are you confused in the budetary figures? That is why the budget does contain all this fuss. It is an attempt to show the brighter picture when there is dark all around. To cover up the bad governance and corruption of the government, people are trapped in heavy figures to show that the country is in best condition.

So what are these calculations all about? Lets make it simple, consider the following example. If there are only two persons in a place, one has earned Rs 100 and other has not earned anything. Now calculate their GDP, its Rs 100. Their per capita income is Rs 50. GDP includes the earnings /spending of all, in which the rich elite becomes a significant factor, but poor people contribute little to it. Growth rate of GDP depends more upon how much ‘richer the rich have gotten’. So even if growth figures are high, they are significant only for the rich elite. The facilities are available, but not affordable for the common people.

What is the real purpose of a budget then? Ideally speaking, the budget is an estimate of how much we are going to earn and how much we should spend. It allocates money for different projects. Its a document which reveals that how much of the previous targets were achieved and what are the new targets; that’s it. But the government tries to cover its ugly face by using heavy terminologies. A lot of time these figures are falsified, their impact is blown out of proportion, just to cover the mess the government has created.

Current budget is again a same budget with false promises. A huge part is being spent on defense, government expenditures etc. 70 billion rupees being spent on Benazir Income support program is a wastage of money. This huge amount could have been used for the better projects related to education, health, infrastructure and energy sector.These figures didn’t mean anything to the poor labourer who is trying hard to make both ends meet. It doesn’t mean anything for the person who is sick and spending all he could to get a proper treatment. Joblessness is becoming a huge problem in the country. Industry is closing down and millions are loosing jobs. Current Budget is in heavy deficit. It simply means that earnings are less and expenditures are more, government will not reduce its expenditures but will borrow more money. Rich industrialists are not paying taxes and common people have to pay tax on everything.

Now lets talk about increase in salaries. When salaries are increased by same percentage for all, it means peanuts for poor (low grade employees) and huge increments for high grade officers. It widens the already huge gap of rich and poor in the country. A grade 22 officer earning in six figures, with all the benefits and previliages cannot think about the problems faced by a poor. While price hike and inflation is same for all, increase in income is not similar. It makes the poor ‘poorer’ & the rich ‘richer’

So this budget is a budget for elite class. They will get benefited. Poor will not get any benefits unless we change the system. Only one budget so far has ever been termed as a budget for poor people, and that was presented by Liaqat Ali Khan in 1946. Other than that, whichever party was in govt, circumstances were same for ordinary class. The capitalistic economy needs to be uprooted and Islamic system of finance needs to implemented, which ensures flow of wealth from rich to poor; only that is the way out.

So many of the Ramadan have passed without benefitting the soul much. This could be a different one. The periodic break from reality is refreshing. Almost musical; mystical. To consistently be able to get up before dawn for Fajr prayers, timing your midday to slip in to the hospital chapel to bow down in prayer for Zohar, to joining a spouse in the post work Asr prayers, to rediscovering the joy of food and drink with sunset and Maghrib prayers and retiring to bed with a rough sketch of the next work day after Isha prayers.

This is not a claim to piety but an expression of amusement of deprivation bringing such content. Breaking away from the “givens” like food and drink is a hint perhaps to the “portable happiness” that human beings are capable of carrying in their very souls. Years ago in school I learnt of the virtues of fasting and could list understanding hunger and experiencing it first hand, understanding that what we take for granted being indeed a great bounty from Al-Ghaffaar (The Great Forgiver) and to bring discipline and subjugate the “free will” to what the Al-Kareem (The Bountiful) has willed for us. Mostly it was to pass the Islamic studies test. The gulf between word and deed registers meaningfully in the proverbial perfection of hindsight. Through the telescopic reach of it I pull out a seemingly random experience.

I watch the clothes being hung on the clothesline by the housemaid. Besides being entrusted with the task of cleaning a house teeming with children, she would also be asked to help with the laundry. I suspect the separate salaries that she would draw from the multiple families in the house served her sanity well. She starts at one extreme of the clothesline, which by evening would serve as a “net” for a badminton match between cousins, often earning the ire of an aunt or uncle for prematurely removing the garments hung out to dry. By the time she would reach the middle, garments of likely equal weight, would make the line sag just by virtue of their distance from the supports on either end. A much less perplexed mind marvelled at this being an analogy of the disparities in life in general. The clothes in the middle, sometimes the same weight, even shade, colour or fabric would be much closer to the ground, at times leaving them much more vulnerable to picking up dust from the floor when a bunch of teenagers would carelessly bundle them in to a corner for the evening sports. Years later, the simplicity of this analogy finds a reminder in the journey through Ramadan. It fits in to an emerging picture of who I am and where I am headed; still hazy but promising to reveal itself in its entirety. A picture that I believed was a complex mix of depictions, themes and subthemes, subtlety camouflaged as the obvious, turned out to be the creation of one master stroke by Al-Musawwir (He who designs all things). Infinitely simple.

The appropriateness of this analogy holds true as I reflect on the clothesline being this worldly life; confined in time, space, means, material, health and the journey lasting just as long as the body holds on to the basics of its physiology. How can some be left kissing the ground while the others sway freely with the slightest hint of a breeze? That too in a world created by Al-Adil (The Just)? I stared hard at the picture for a long time. No answers arrived and none will for many years and I know all too well the perils of claiming wisdom. I acknowledge the limits of my own vision. To sweep that corner of a sleeve off the ground I would need to make the line tauter and with that one simple answer came many others. The ends of this line extend to eternity, weighed against infinity ultimate and universal justice prevails. The Prophet Mohammed Sallallahu ‘alaihi wa sallam said:

Narrated Haritha bin Wahb Al-Khuzai: I heard the Prophet saying. “May I tell you of the people of paradise? Every weak and poor obscure person whom the people look down upon but his oath is fulfilled by Allah when he takes an oath to do something. And may I inform you of the people of the Hell-Fire? They are all those violent, arrogant and stubborn people.”

“I would not like to have gold equal to this mountain of Uhud, unless nothing of it, not even a single Dinar of it remains with me for more than three days, except something which I will keep for repaying debts. I would have spent all of it (distributed it) amongst Allah’s Slaves like this, and like this, and like this.” The Prophet pointed out with his hand towards his right, his left and his back (while illustrating it).

In yet another Hadith it is said that the poor will enter paradise 500 years before the rich as they had not been tested with wealth.

As I finally call it a day I hope to dream of the careless laughter as children play around a clothesline that does not sag.