Going to the Dogs

MAY 2001 - Driving to Islamabad last week, around midday, we saw the beginnings of the Potohar Plateau and an awesome dust storm heading our way. It was dark brown and seemed to be a ferocious one, but as we neared it, we were surprised to see that the trees and bushes alongside the Motorway were quite still. A little further and the mystery was resolved. There was no dust storm. What looked like one was actually the pollution that lay suspended over most of what is Islamabad. It was a sobering realization.

Environment degradation may have been a drawing room conversation piece of the country’s chattering classes, the ones who could afford to talk about the horrific effects of pollution while sipping tea and eating delicate cucumber sandwiches. But it is now also very much a threat to those not into cucumber sandwiches. The country’s environment is taking a big hit and just about every one is guilty, from the planners who don’t plan to the folks multiplying in grave numbers, who spread the pollution without a second thought.

Just a few years back, it was considered fashionable to roll your eyes heavenwards and mutter dark words about the country’s atmosphere. The world had suddenly woken up to discover that all was not well with the planet and resources, taken for granted, were finite and perishable. While the western media began to highlight this new concern, having put fried eggs away to one side, the trickle down effect of this awareness build up, was slow to arrive into countries such as ours. Here, there was no such animal as awareness of the environment. Yes, winters were minus the cold and summers were hotter than ever before; seasons were no longer discernable from one another and everywhere, pollution was rising. There were still people in Lahore, who swore to more and more disbelieving fellow Lahoris that people couldn’t step out in Lahore on a winter evening, without the help of woolen scarves, overcoats and gloves. It seemed to be so far fetched and ludicrous. Over coats in Lahore? Neither was anyone willing to believe that it was not possible to drive from Charing Cross on the Mall to the Canal, without feeling a real drop in the temperature between the two points. As for sparkling blue skies and an air you had to breathe cautiously because it was so clean that it could actually trigger off a high, well these were stories that lay in the realm of fairy tales. About hot, clean summers and crisp, cold winters with woollies out by 1st October, the response was skeptical and as for spring or autumn being well-defined times of the year, few could recall that such was indeed the case. The younger lot simply smiled and shook their heads. Exaggerated folklore stuff they said.

It is indeed hard to imagine that we were, not too long ago, breathing clean air, drinking clean water and living in a clean atmosphere. With pollution pervading like a large and smelly blanket covering everything, the vision of yesterday shimmers like a receding ghost and is just as ethereal. In just a few years, we have taken to polluting Pakistan at a speed that defies description. The general public has taken a severe beating on many fronts and the bad news is that the beatings are going to progressively get worse. Tap water, as and when available, is so insidiously mixed up with sewage water that there is no distinction left anymore. The rivers and canals have been overrun by effluents and millions of gallons of poison pours from our factories right into our blood streams. The country’s once mighty rivers are largish streams and no living things are prepared any longer to stay in their infected waters. The famous river fish of Lahore now stand transferred to the archives of the past and are simply no longer in existence. It is not possible to reach Kamran’s Baradari without the aid of handkerchiefs to avoid the stench of the Ravi. Elsewhere in the country, the picture is more or less the same.

The rivers of the north, seemingly less threatened because these are poor and less ‘developed’ areas, are rapidly becoming dumping grounds for refuse. The river at Kalam, for example, has so many plastic bags that it has actually narrowed down and as for trout, whatever little is left of that, well you simply net it, eat it or better still, sell it. Large-scale erosion of rules and the grubby hand of commerce make sure that the environment, and all the things that make it beautiful, is compromised and in the process damaged forever. A friend who was in Sindh last week said that the Indus has to be searched at places to be located and as the river has decreased, the sea has gradually moved inwards, claiming more and more land and further depleting the fortunes of farmers. Of the polluted beaches of Karachi, the less said the better. Everywhere, from the lake at Saif ul Maluk, now home to the nation’s plastic shoppers, coke bottles, packets of chips and all kinds of refuse to the other end, the story is the same, the indifference and ignorance the same and over all of it, the apathy the same. Between the people and the government, the future lies sandwiched and manacled and no one to perform a rescue act. Of the departments and other functionaries, there is not much to say. Perhaps here and there, a few fight on a losing battle. The country’s leadership has far too many important things to attend to, like staying on in power and the army which never stops polishing its brass, painting its pebbles and stones red and white colours and marking lines with white chalk, is quite ignorant of themes we are already in. It is 18 months since Mian Sahib messed up the flight schedule of a PIA flight from Sri Lanka, but a call from the highest in the land to start a massive cleaning operation in the country, with everyone joining in, is yet to be issued and there is no need to hold your breath waiting for one. The country’s largely useless authority symbols, the governors and the president, continue to plant the traditional sapling, then piously sprinkle some water over it, raise their hands and offer a prayer and are then gone. ‘Weeks’ are celebrated with the same moronic spirit and lip service to causes at which we are past masters, continues with statements that begin, ‘It is indeed an honour for me etc etc.’

What no one understands is that what we are brazenly damaging today will take others years and years to set right if indeed that is possible. What all the people fail to see is that each one of us is part of the problem, that every time you throw out a bag, a tissue, a cigarette end, a carton – anything, you have taken another step towards oblivion. Only the people have the power to clean up Pakistan and the people are dead.