Slumdog Paupers

With a single child, I keep on Chinese style family. Even though he is up and over eleven, I consider boys in all age clusters as my own sons. Not just that, as a concerned citizen, and what I have demonstrated in my writing work, I pin great hopes on the younger generation that will steer Pakistan out of the turmoil. Although in the post 9/11 era, religious fanatics have made human life worth nothing, I weep tears of bereavement on every death that any blast causes.

Many a time my son, Muaaz, feels lonely perhaps owing to being single. To counter this, every weekend either we drop him at his friend’s place or his friend spends the whole day with him at our place.

Only two weeks ago, after the dinner we (my wife and I) left Muaaz at his friend’s place and both of us decided to have after-dinner walk. We had hardly crossed over a busy road junction, that we heard a sound of a big bag flung by a high-geared Hi-ace van. Initially we thought that it was a vegetable bag but soon heard loud cries of a child. I leapt into the hustling traffic and picked the poor soul up. It was about a ten year old boy shrieking with pain. I laid him down on the side walk to have a random assessment of his injuries and found capacious scratches on his body and obviously their pain was unbearable. Being a sensitive person and an emotional father myself, I started crying too. We made a brief investigation about the boy and the van driver that threw him amid heavy traffic and opted for his one year older brother. To my dismay, the van driver was a child abuser and the boy was being sexually abused. Full of rage we decided to visit the parents of the boy and go at it tooth and nail. Carrying the boy in my arms and following his directions, I started walking towards his home. The boy seemed thin but was heavy. After some half a kilometer, we eventually reached boy’s home.

We entered through the door straight into a small open space of the house. The boy went into his 2 ft x 4 ft room—perhaps an abandoned bathroom turned bedroom. We later discovered that the boy and his elder brother (around 11 years of age) lived in that room. An old lady looked at us queerly. “Where are the parents of this boy?” I asked. Without waiting for the reply, I shouted with my dander up and vociferated, “Why the hell they raised this child and junked him in streets?” “Where are they?” Scared of my shouting, perhaps, the boy stopped crying, but his tears continued rolling down his skinny face.

The old lady was visibly upset. She assumed that the boy must have done some deviltry and we were hence visiting their place with some complaint. Trembling with mixed feelings of rage and fear, looking up the sky she said, “Liberate me of this miserable life, O God!” “These two boys have made this world hell for me. I am his luckless granny – has he once again done any mischief?”

I repeated, “Where are his stony-hearted parents?” Rubbing her eyes welled up with tears, she said, “His father succumbed to cancer and died a premature death at thirty, and—and his mother abandoned these two kids and married another man.”

The old woman later led us to the room that had a low quality and tottered sofa, a clock with wrong side out, a crumbling cot and, and damaged split A/C. This room depicted the underprivileged class of the slumdog paupers.

The old woman called her married daughters from the rooms on the right, left and top so that they might also listen what the new complaint I had brought about those slumdogs. Possibly most fashionable in their social class one girl spoke broken English. When I told them about the accident and the serious injuries that the little boy had succumbed, instead of demonstrating any concern they started scolding him. They did not even allow me to take him for the first aid. While the old woman was talking to us unceasing streams of tears were flowing over our cheeks.

The old woman, backed up by her daughters, asked us to help her grandsons admitted at some hostel or asylum.

During our stay at that wretched home, like any suffering dog the ill-fated boy kept on licking his wounds and imbibing his blood.

While I investigated about the probable asylum, I could not find any that could satisfy me to admit sons. Little or much all asylums have some sort of corruption. As social responsibility and for safeguarding and promoting welfare I am only ensuring child protection. This implies activity that is undertaken to protect specific children who are suffering, or are at risk of suffering, and significant harm. I hope to succeed in this epic cause.

This incident pushed us into depression and insomnia for a few days thinking that when these two boys would have born, their parents must have been very happy. The father of the boys must have dreamt high about their future. With the death of the father all such dreams smoked off. The mother found a new man to give birth to other children of darkness . . . . .

The Pounding Head of Poverty

Future trends show that the world poverty is decreasing and we are nearing the era when the poor of today will live the standard of the average rich of today. Contrary to this trend, in Pakistan poverty levels are going further up. Although many Pakistanis have greatly improved their standard of living since 1947, yet over 30 percent of them—around 42 million people—still live below the poverty line. The gap between the rich and poor has widened with some gaining financial comfort while others are finding it impossible to permanently escape from destitution.

Poverty is hunger. Poverty is lack of shelter. Poverty is being sick and not being able to see a doctor. Poverty is not being able to go to school and not knowing how to read. Poverty is fearing the future, living one day at a time. Poverty is losing a child to illness brought about by unclean water. Poverty is powerlessness, lack of representation, and freedom.

Poverty has many faces, changing from place to place and across time, and has been described in many ways. Most often, poverty is a situation people want to escape. So poverty is a call to action—for the poor and the wealthy alike—a call to change the world so that many more may have enough to eat, adequate shelter, access to education and health, protection from violence, and a voice in what happens in their lives.

For many, lack of access to income-generating activities, coupled with lack of basic services in education and health, is the determining factors behind acute poverty. In Pakistan, lack of access to credit, training in income-generating activities, basic social services, and infrastructure are critical factors behind the persistence of substantial poverty, especially in underserved rural and urban areas. Poverty levels also differ depending on where people live. The metropolitan poverty rate differs greatly between suburbs and the central city.

At the Millennium Summit in 2002, major development organizations looked at development goals, which had been agreed at international conferences and world summits during the 1990s, and distilled them into eight goals with eradication of extreme poverty and hunger at top. The Goals were formed in response to what was seen as uneven development progress, where globalization benefits millions, but poverty and suffering still exist.

This is scarcely surprising considering that those who live below the poverty line and that any supplementary income from working children becomes unavoidable for their families to make ends meet. We have to understand as why children go to work. If parents don't send their children to work I am sure factories will not be able to consume them. No mother likes her child to go for work. It is financial crisis, which forces. Our understanding should be little more practical as no parents want their children work at the age when children are to study and play.

The stress on a gradual approach towards eliminating child labor is the correct one. At the same time, poverty alleviation efforts must be stepped up, so that the loss of an earning member of the family is not felt, so actually and over an indefinite period of time.

Poverty is no longer just a matter of calories or of pricing a consumption bundle. It has to do with the poor defining and achieving their well being themselves and living a life in a participative society where the State is an enabling rather than a hindering institution. It is not that income or consumption level is unimportant. It remains at the core of any definition of poverty. But we must view it as an input as much as an outcome. It is an input which contributes towards well being. But just as important are public goods – health care, clean water, literacy, and healthy environment.

Pakistan's rural sector accounts for more than 70 percent of employment, and roughly two thirds of rural employment is in agriculture. Less than a third of rural households get loans, only 10 percent of which are from institutional sources. Pakistan's credit institutions are not helping the country accelerate agricultural growth and reduce poverty.

To improve performance in the rural economy and efficiency in financial institutions, rural credit markets must be liberalized.

Produce and price controls must be replaced by prudent regulation and supervision, combined with policies to stabilize the economy. Commercial banks must operate in a competitive environment. They must be allowed to set interest rates for rural lending that cover their transaction costs. Credit must be made available to support productivity growth for agricultural smallholders and small producers of the rural non farm sector, where Pakistan's growth potential lies. Credit must be made available to women and to the rural poor for consumption smoothing and for sustainable income generating activities.

Policy should be directed at developing a market based financial system for rural finance, but because of market failures to support disadvantaged groups, a special priority program may be needed to get credit to women, smallholders, and the rural non-farm sector.

Subsidizing interest rates is not the way to help marginal borrowers. Instead, they can be helped through fixed cost subsidies and self-selected targeting. NGOs should be encouraged to help, keeping in mind such success stories as the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and Badan Kredit Kecaratan (BKK) in Indonesia.

Pakistan needs to make the policy choices to help it translate economic gains into real poverty alleviation for its citizens. It needs social protection, human development, and a well-coordinated rural strategy. Issues of governance are at the heart of many of the difficulties encountered in mitigating poverty and broadening access to social services for the poor. Asif J. Mir, Organizational Transformation