No Messiahs Coming

JUNE 2002 - As in most things, we have some of the best laws available in the books but since there is virtually no implementation, these laws are as dead as a dead dodo and the fact that they exist at all is therefore quite irrelevant. Not only the policy makers know this, but also all the people who make up the chain, know it too. No one is going to observe the laws, no one is going to enforce the laws and no one is going to be punished for breaking the laws. That completes the happy picture. Now and then, the EPA, which I am told, reads Environmental Protection Agency holds a seminar where people are invited to make boring, theoretical and rather pointless speeches on the importance of the environment and how we must care for it since our future generations --- you know the drill – it remains unchanged. Pious vows are taken, stirring resolutions are passed, effective measures are proposed and everyone sets to attack the tea and goodies – till the next seminar. From time to time, supplements are placed in the print media where all the country’s factotums issue more of the above drivel and wax forth on the need for environmental education. Long and largely unreadable articles on pollution are published by various nobodies, which are unique in the sense that no one ever reads them. The amount of pontification that goes on about the environment would require a ministry just to keep track of all the hot air that is let off by eminent folks. Of course, the curious thing is that the fall in our environmental standards only seems to accelerate with all these wonderful ‘efforts’ that go on all year round. Various ‘days’ are also popular and from the President down to the Nazims, everyone has a message to give. Very few countries print so many messages as Pakistan, which perhaps might explain why nothing gets done. Everyone opens with ‘It gives me great pleasure’ and ends with ‘I am certain that with the efforts, etc, etc, etc,’ and of course we are far worse off this year than we were the year before. Environment seems to be everyone’s favourite subject and no one’s responsibility. It is a disaster that is not waiting to happen any more. It is happening -gaining momentum every day, but the country is cool about it – our national thick skin coming in handy once again.

Lahori’s kill – I suppose slaughter is the kosher word, anywhere about 6,000 sheep and goats and about 400 cows every day. The average is between 5,000-7,000 sheep and 300-500 cows. Every now and then, we slaughter camels too and pass that off as beef. Alongside the abbatoir on Bund Road, is about 4 kanals of land that is littered with refuse, animal bones, insides, skins, plastic bags and every other kind of filth that you can imagine.

Looking at it is like seeing a wasteland of refuse and it chills the soul. The bones of long dead animals rise like monuments into the sky, heaps of wasting and disease-ridden trash that pollutes the very air that passes over this blighted tract of land. Two factories close to the abbatoir that produce the chicken feed from dried blood and crushed bones send out a stench that can quake the stoutest disposition – this is the same feed that feeds the chickens that you and I gobble every day or so. The abattoir’s stink is so foul that it is not possible to withstand it – except for those who work there who are immune to it by now. However, it is maintained that the most stringent hygiene standards are maintained in the abbatoir that feeds Lahore’s meat gluttons. A few pails of weak disinfectant can hardly qualify for stringency but then how much does it cost to bribe a sanitary inspector? To understand that this is the source of all the meat you and I consume in homes and five star hotels should shock the system, except of course it doesn’t. There is no drainage and an open gutter carries entrails, blood, and pieces of flesh, bones, waste and water into the surrounding localities where people live. Over the years, the complaints made by the residents who suffer from respiratory diseases and live out their lives in stench and filth, have elicited no reaction from the government. A new, centrally air-conditioned abbatoir once underway is now abandoned - when, where and how it will materialize, is another matter.

Perhaps there is no solution to places such as the Lahore abbatoir – other abattoirs in other parts of the country are probably even worse and perhaps it is foolish to believe that anyone will ever do anything remotely meaningful about such contamination. So what choice do the people have? Can they do what the residents of Gujranwala did when they stormed the paper factories, which had polluted their lives and their very breath, and dragged out the owners who refused to listen to their complaints? What could the poor people of Manga Mandi do when untreated effluents from wire making industries polluted their groundwater supply and caused hundreds of children life-long deformities? For a while it was the subject of everyone’s attention. Many drawing rooms reverberated to the sounds of earnest do-gooders who were determined to solves this horrible problem and then just as quickly, it was over and now the issue lies buried while the suffering in the villages continues just as the manufacture of that wire continues. And what about the abbatoir? Can you begin to even think of the kind of meat you are serving tonight to your family? Have you a clue where it was hacked into pieces and under what conditions? Have you any idea what was the state of the animal’s health before it was slaughtered? What about the professional integrity of the medics who certified the animals? Are they above board? If these questions bother you – if – what are you prepared to do? Take a two-day break from mutton and beef? Go off it completely? Turn to chicken, the lesser of the two evils? Can you even imagine the people of Lahore – or any other city where such horror houses exist, boycotting the purchase of meat for a week? No a week is far too idealistic – a day? The answer is of course not. Wash the meat thoroughly and in any case, we cook our meat really well, so that surely must kill all the germs. Right? Life can carry on.

The air we breathe (it is of course a moot point if we can still call it air) or the street where we live or work in is our responsibility. No one is going to do it for us and we should stop waiting – like we have waited for messiahs in every field, to come and save us. If we are not going to make a determined and united move in fighting pollution, things will simply get worse and seminars won’t clear the skies.

Yesterday, a family riding in an air-conditioned Rs 1 million car ahead of me, chucked out a bag full of lychee skins and stones and carried on merrily. It is scenes like these, which restore my faith in Pakistan.