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| Flour is expensive and cheap: Muhammad Hanif's column |
I have heard a lie so many times since childhood that I started to believe it. That is that no one sleeps hungry at night in Pakistan. The land is fertile and the people live so close to each other that they share whatever grain they have.
An elder once explained that poor and ignorant people may never have heard the name of Allama Iqbal, but the philosophy of selfishness has been diluted and drunk. Therefore, even if someone sleeps hungry at night, he will not tell anyone about it. He will wake up the next morning and go out in search of sustenance. So this country is not running on the generosity of our nobles but on the ego of the poor.
He has seen the fertility of the land with his own eyes. Those who cultivated two acres of land on lease also called themselves Chaudhris.
I have seen women marrying off their daughters by selling the milk of a buffalo. When the season of wheat harvest came, even the poorest family would collect grain for the year.
Even those who grew vegetables did not say anything to a passerby who picked up two potatoes or a turnip. Deharidar has been seen eating two rotis with onion and chili all his life since his childhood. But now these two pieces of bread have been called. People have forgotten onions and chilies too.
An expert in economic affairs was once asked that since he regained consciousness, he has only heard of one economic crisis after another in the country. So how does the economy of this country work? He explained like the great teachers that on wheat, when the wheat crop is good and when the harvest season comes, the land economy of the country is settled with a threshing floor.
How many millions of people get employment, and small and big farmers take out their year's expenses. The entire family, including the children, was involved in harvesting.
In the process of harvesting the wheat and then extracting the grain from it, each grain was collected in one's cradle. Within a few weeks, people would arrange for several months of bread. The artisans who had traditional occupations in the village also reached the grain of the year. Now for the rest of the year, there are a hundred problems in life, but there was no problem with bread.
Seeing such scenes, the advertisements of fertilizer sellers claiming that our soil produces gold did not seem too exaggerated.
God forbid some persecuted poet of the age should be forced to say that our earth is now beginning to sprout hunger instead of sprouting gold.
Economists point out that there is a war in Ukraine, the incompetence of our rich fathers in planning, housing societies built on agricultural land, and the misfortune of our farmers that they have not come to modern agriculture. But at the same time, the hearts of our ruling elite and their fellow Sith brothers have become too hardened.
An old driver met his brother and said, "He drives a Land Cruiser, but Seth, also Haji Sahib, has ordered his cook that if this driver asks for a third bread after two, he should bring his own from the oven." The hunger does not go away and the disrespect is also felt. But if I leave my job, who will give me a job in these circumstances?'
Our ruling elite has trapped the people in such torture of hunger and humiliation that everyone has put aside their egos and gone in search of bread.
In recent years, there have been huge natural disasters in Pakistan, after earthquakes, and floods, benefactors used to reach international organizations or suffering citizens with ration trucks. Some of our photographers used to climb on these ration trucks and take pictures of the forced people, in which we could see the sad eyes of men, women, old people, and children with outstretched hands.
Some of our senior journalist brothers also strongly objected that it was helping people or trampling their child's raw ego.
Our country has faced many natural calamities, but the real natural calamity is the ruling elite and its allies and we have not found a way to deal with this continuous natural calamity to date.