The insular brand of self-inflicted ignorance wallowed in, with sickeningly obvious, pitiful to observe, delight, by the vast majority of Pakistanis who are never, apparently, happy unless they have something to moan about, is, all things considered and taken into account, heading for epidemic proportions over the coming months when everything, including the weather, is set to go with a humungously satisfying - for self-professed victims - ‘bang’!
Electioneering shenanigans, followed by the possibly farcical, elections themselves when, if ingrained ignorance rules as usual, only a very small percentage of those eligible to cast their vote will actually turn out will, as always, add nothing but grist to the rumble grumble mill of discontent. That could, if a miracle happened and voters bothered to vote, be a platform for active, positive change in a sustainable direction.
But that, it goes without saying, is asking way too much for the currently negative mindset to comprehend, let alone act upon. Yet, like it or not, the elections are going to be nothing more than a side show as compared to the impending calamities of everyday existence, which are building up to make their presence well and truly felt. And yes, it is unavoidably correct, to lay all of these at the feet of self-imposed ignorance in the extreme.
Take, as a prime example, that taken for granted liquid without which life simply cannot be: water.
Everything we do, or attempt to do for that matter, is, somewhere along the line, based on water. This increasingly precious ‘commodity’ - for this is certainly what it has become and, truthfully, has always been - is an essential ingredient of survival, necessary as it is for drinking, for food production, for power production, house construction, clothing and shoe manufacture and right on down the endless line to the nitty-gritty of personal hygiene.
Yet, even though warnings, some of them extremely severe indeed, have been issued about potentially crippling shortages to come, the majority have, quite ridiculously, chosen, out of purely selfish ignorance, to completely ignore them.
And, this is equally ridiculous, simply to expect someone else, maybe even one of the criminally negligent governments the country has suffered since its inception, to do something about it whilst they, themselves, perpetually bleat about shortages and the cost of tankers and then, immediately more than a single drop of water trickles their way, rush around wasting it as if tomorrow is not another day.
Wasting water is one of the many things - corruption, greed and downright hypocrisy being three others which immediately spring to mind - at which Pakistanis excel, be it at industrial, agricultural or household level. And much as water efficiency ideas are regularly kicked around, very few people, let alone organisations or government departments that are, as they have always tended to be, highly conspicuous in their absence, transform these ideas into action. Those who do, however, are largely ridiculed by the society as a whole. That scoffs, openly, at sensible inputs like rainwater harvesting systems and the recycling of ‘gray’ water for garden use.
As of now, although rains, perhaps heavy, have been forecast, there has been extremely low precipitation over the winter months. Thus, water levels in dams are way down on average for the time of year and, even if there is a few days of torrential rain, this situation is unlikely to be rectified to manageable levels as much of this forecast rain will simply go to waste one way or another.
One weather forecasting station goes as far as to indicate that Pakistan may suffer severe flooding sometime this week. Yet, much as it is hoped that this will not occur, even if it does, existing water systems will not be able to cope, let alone efficiently store such a badly needed bounty. And, before you know it, people will be shouting ‘water scarcity’ yet again.
This increasingly vicious cycle of short-lived water ‘feast’, followed by increasingly prolonged ‘famine’ is, according to long-term meteorological experts and climate change scientists, expected to increase not, as ignoramuses may wish, at some far distant and unspecified date in the future. But starting from right now and has, if people can get their heads around reality, been clearly evident over the last few years at least.
Waiting, in expectation that the situation will resolve itself without a helping hand from every single person in this rapidly exploding population level of 190 million plus, for things to revert to ‘normal’ is sheer ignorance at its stupid, self-destructive best. Yet, this is exactly what Pakistanis have, on the whole, chosen to do.
Staring directly into the face of impending disaster, on a scale never before experienced in this part of the world where agriculture has, until now, always kept starvation at bay, and still blindly refusing to take remedial action in every conceivable way possible is - aside from being unimaginably suicidal in the extreme - so unbelievably, unutterably stupid; as to defy all previously recognised definitions of wilful ignorance, which have, or ever will, exist - go to the top of the class Pakistan and claim your gold medal, while you still have life in you to do so.

n    The writer is author of The Gun Tree: One Woman’s War (Oxford University Press, 2001) and lives in Bhurban. Email: zahrahnasir@hotmail.com