The Right Stuff

FEBRUARY 2002 - Imran Khan’s heart is in the right place. While many question the wisdom of his single-minded devotion to fight cancer with state of the art facilities like the hospital at Lahore - the argument being that so much effort goes into achieving so little at the end of the day the genuineness of the effort notwithstanding, there are few examples in this land of teeming millions where singular effort has produced such excellent results.

The endorsement by the President earlier this week of Imran’s hospital and the new one he plans to build in Karachi, is refreshing and should provide the kick start the new project will need in the days ahead. Although the Mughals left some time back, you still require official patronage to get things done here and the President’s directive to the Punjab Governor to sort out the land matters related to the hospital obviously refer to a cancerous situation where heavy, plodding officialdom blocks the way and prevents things from getting done.

The President is a very busy man and has a punishing schedule. He was probably still suffering from jet lag – yes, even Presidents must suffer jet lag, and then rushing to Lahore to launch the hospital’s Endowment Fund must have required huge levels of energy, but he must be given credit. Like Imran, his heart too is in the right place. It wasn’t too long ago that the government of his country, then headed by the great Mian whose prowess on the cricket field every Saturday afternoon was applauded gratefully by more or less the entire bureaucracy of Punjab and a few score file-pushers from Islamabad in tow, had serious reservations about granting Imran permission to go on air and ask for zakat during the month of Ramadan. The hospital, then, as now, was facing severe financial constraints. It needed to air appeals on PTV – the government’s favourite concubine, but the hospital was Imran’s baby, so no one was giving airtime. This is the same mindset that had deftly deleted Imran’s triumphant lifting of the 1992 World Cup trophy in Australia from the titles that ran before the sports news on PTV’s 9 pm charade (the charade continues even during these quasi-liberal times!). Mr. Mushahid Hussain was not willing to allow airing since these would inevitably lead to a swell in Imran’s popularity numbers. By some strange deduction, Islamabad in those heady days of the heaviest mandate feared Imran. They saw in him, a threatening challenge to Mian Sahib’s glorious rule. Nothing could have been further from the truth as events proved then, but common sense and reason are not exactly surplus commodities in Islamabad. The simplest of propositions are viewed with the same suspicion that Roman kings experienced every time they were offered poisoned drinks. After receiving a pledge that none of the communication messages being prepared for airing would carry the face of Imran Khan or a message from him or indeed even his name, Mr. Mushahid Hussain’s all-powerful ministry granted royal decree. The messages were aired bringing in much needed revenues to the beleaguered hospital. Who could argue with the powers of the day that whether you took Imran’s name out of the equation or not, the fact was that he was linked irrevocably with the hospital. He was the reason people had come out and given him their money. In a country where there is a permanent drought of national figures, Imran occupied a unique position then. His politics have been a disaster, his pronouncements on women’s rights, tribal archaic customs, judicial systems and other issues in the past, comical if not wacky, but he has been and is still widely regarded as the kind of figure that multiplied by a few dozen would make us look at the stars rather than sinking in cesspools.

The fight for cancer treatment must go on but it is an uphill struggle. The mammoth fight to build another facility and modernize the one at Lahore and expand it to reach a sizeable number of the suffering people of Pakistan is a task that Imran will find very, very hard. He is an energetic man and one assumes that most of the sycophants that surround people like him must have slipped off in search of newer prey, but surely he is no longer the dashing young cricketer whose face launched the rupees to flow in. It is true that his mother fell victim to cancer, but one has always wished that had he channeled his vast energy and drive into building a string of child and maternity centers or even basic health units that we desperately need, how much more he and his team would have achieved for their country. Cancer treatment requires enormous funding and the hospital will always be in dire straits, even if some of the Jihadi funds find their way to his cause. But even as we speak, the hospital’s equipment is obsolete or getting obsolete and will require major refurbishment.

The disease has triggered off global research and new advancements in medicine – the new technology is very pricey and constantly changing. For a hospital located in the back of beyond like Pakistan, a very unique effort will be required just to stay alive. At the end of the day, the numbers who will, sadly, have to be turned away for lack of room, facilities and resources will far outweigh those who will secure a new lease on life. A basic health unit can achieve far more and reach out to far corners of our poor country. These could have still served Imran’s need to fight disease; it just doesn’t have to be cancer and symbolically, one cancer hospital was enough. Karachi’s problems are huge and the city’s teeming millions are frightening to behold considering the squalor and soul-destroying conditions in which they survive – live would be a euphemism. In many ways Karachi is the entire country compressed into one teeming mass of humanity without much humanity to go around. Building a cancer hospital here is like taking on the gods and they are not kind very often.

The city of Lahore had its share of aggravation on the day of the President’s visit. You couldn’t find an ant crawling within miles of the President’s route and there are critics of the extraordinary security measures that are taken every time the President moves, but it should be taken stoically. We have tolerated the same royal protocols for bald buffoons, twisted tyrants, bandit princes and quirky queens, so why not Musharraf? He is making decisions and doing things that are refreshingly different. With him there is some glimmer of hope for all of us, who were not too long ago considering throwing our razors away or buying sixty yards of heavy drapery and two inches of wire netting to plod about in the land of the pure. That he supports the right causes is evident and when he takes a commercial flight instead of what Zia, BB, Mian, Ishaq, Karrar and Leghari did every day; it is encouraging. Hopefully this and other good precedents will outlast his innings, but that is a fond and foolish hope. So the three decoy limousines are all right and so is the huge security apparatus. As for Imran Khan and his next venture, he has many supporters and has good chances of succeeding. A few more like him, wouldn’t hurt, but then if wishes were horses -------.