قوم کے معمار اپنے حقوق کے حصول کے منتظر

چند روز قبل ہمارے گھر کی ملازمہ چھٹیاں لے کر گاﺅں گئی تو اپنی جگہ اپنی بہن کی بیٹی کو ہمارے ہاں رکھوا گئی ۔ وہ بچی جس کا نام ثمینہ ہے ، محض بارہ سال کی ہے اور گھر کے تمام کام پھرتی سے کر لیتی ہے۔ اسے کام کرتا دیکھ مجھے یہ خیال آیا کہ اتنی کم عمر میں جب بڑے گھروں کے بچے کھیلتے کودتے اور اسکول جاتے ہیں یہ بچی گھروں کے کام کاج میں لگی ہے، کیا گزرتی ہوگی اس پر اور کیا جذبات ہونگے اس کم سن بچی کے۔ لیکن اس سے بات کرکے یہ اندازہ ہوا کہ اس بچی کو تو معلوم ہی نہیں کہ اس کے ساتھ کوئی ظلم ہو رہا ہے کیوں کہ اس کے آس پاس رہنے والی باقی تمام بچیاں بھی گھروں میں کام کرتی ہیں اور اپنے گھر کو دو وقت کی روٹی دینے میں اپنا حصہ ڈالتی ہیں ۔ یہ سب جان کر میں سوچنے پر مجبورہوگئی کہ کیا اپنے حقوق کے بارے میں ناآشنا ہونابھی ایک طرح کی نعمت ہے؟ کیا لاعلمی انسان کو خوش اور مطمئن رکھ سکتی ہے اور ساتھ ہی یہ کہ ہم ان حالات کو بہتر بنانے میں کیا کردار ادا کرسکتے ہیں؟

ترقی یافتہ ممالک میں چائلڈ لیبر یعنی بچوں سے مشقت کرانا ایک بڑا جرم ہے جس کی سخت ترین سزا دی جاتی ہے ۔ ہمارے ملک کے قانون میں بھی چھوٹے اور معصوم بچوں سے کام کاج کرانا جرم ہی تصور کیا جاتا ہے ۔ قانون کے مطابق ۱۴ سال سے کم عمر بچوں سے مشقت والا کام لینا غیر قانونی ہے ۔ فیکٹریز ایکٹ 1934، ویسٹ پاکستان شاپس اینڈ اسٹیبلشمنٹس آرڈنینس 1969، ایمپلائمنٹ آف چلڈرن ایکٹ 1991 ، دا بانڈیڈ لیبر سسٹم ایبولیشن ایکٹ 1992اور پنجاب کمپلسری ایجوکیشن ایکٹ 1994وہ اہم قوانین ہیں جنھیں بچوں کے حقوق کو محفوظ کرنے کے لیے بنایا گیا ہے ۔ البتہ ملک کے دیگر قوانین کی طرح ان پر عمل د آمد نہیں کرایا جاسکا ہے۔ ایک سروے کے مطابق پاکستان میں گیارہ ملین کے قریب بچے جن کی عمر چار سے چودہ سال کے درمیان ہے، کارخانوں اور فیکٹریوں میں جسمانی مشقت کے کام انجام دے رہے ہیں۔

گاﺅں اور چھوٹے شہروں میں تو معاملات اور بھی خراب ہیں جہاں بچوں سے ناصرف انتہائی مخدوش حالات میں کام کرایا جاتا ہے اور اکثر مواقعوں پر ان کی مزدوری بھی انہیں نہیں دی جاتی ۔ کم عمر بچوں سے محنت اور مشقت کروائے جانے کی بڑی وجہ ملک میں بڑھتی ہوئی غربت اور بے روزگاری ہے ۔ گھر کا خرچ پورا کرنے کے لیے غریب ماں باپ کو اپنے بچوں کو مزدوری کرنے اور پیسے کمانے کے لیے باہر بھیجنا پڑتا ہے ۔ اس کے علاوہ شعور اور تعلیم کی کمی بھی ملک میں بچوں پر ہونے والے ظلم کی ایک بڑی وجہ ہے ۔


بچوں کے حقوق کے تحفظ کے لیے کئی نجی ادارے اور ویلفیئر سینٹرز اپنا کردار ادا کرنے کی کوشش کر رہے ہیں ۔ آل پاکستان فیڈریشن آ ف ٹریڈ یونیئن نے بھی نیشنل چائلڈ لیبر سیل تشکیل دیاہے جو مختلف پراجیکٹس پر کام کرر ہا ہے۔ ساتھ ہی غیر ملکی ادارے اور حکومتی مشینری بھی اس مسئلے سے متعلق بات چیت کرتی رہتی ہے البتہ ابھی تک اس مسئلے پر قابو نہیں پایا جاسکا ہے ۔ بچے ملک کا مستقبل ہیں ان کے حقوق کا خیال رکھنا ہم سب کی برابر کی ذمہ داری ہے ۔ ہمیں بھی اس امر میں اپنا کردار ادا کرنے کی ضرورت ہے ۔ حکومتی سطح پر مسائل کے حل ہونے کا انتظار کرنے سے بہتر ہے کہ ہم اپنے طور اپنے ماحول کو بہتر بنانے اور اپنے اور اپنے سے نچلے طبقے سے تعلق رکھنے والے لوگوں کو ان کے حقوق دلانے میں اپنی ذمہ داری ادا کریں۔

An absolution that would never come

Has anybody seen a revolution? How does it look like and what it affects could be? I haven’t, though have heard about it a lot. Actually I use to hear this term all the time. Faces have changed, so do the time, but the term revolution always remained stagnant. It seems like a good thing to me, may be it is the reason that everyone wants it. People starts following those blindfolded, who raise the slogan of revolution.

In real, it’s a fantasy, a lure to gather a mob. A mob of those who don’t know what they want, who are looking at each others pale faces, searching for any positive change, a change that would never come. Why it would? What we are doing for that? There are no quick fixes for the hoards of problems we have created for us. How one man can change the fate of 18 crore people? A magic wand he has that could change this valley of war into a land of fairy tales. Our leader is in ourselves. We have to find it in the inside before looking for any external revolution. It is an inside-out process and not the opposite.

The imported maulvi’s revolutionary saga is its open example. A script tightly woven come to its end. Is this something new to us?? No, every time before the elections we see these kinds of love-making-the-world-go-round stories, a full fledged flick, which begins with a lot of action, blood shedding and ends up with some tears, some smiles and a good whack on the face of the people in the name of justice, democracy and REVOLUTION…

Yesterday who were mocking each other…today hugging and passing smiles? And we like always consider their lie, a truth blindly with the hope that this time we will get the return of our patience, we think that the man standing at the rostrum seems honest, his agenda is in our favor and he’ll stand for us and fight for our rights…but that had neither happened in the past nor would in the future…and why would that happen, why some outsider who is not directly effected by our unjust system will cross the seven seas to save us from this misery…why would someone quit his luxuries to help us? One thing that we have to keep in our mind is that there is no quick fix to our problems. Why would someone stand for us and strive to bring our system on track? Would we do that for someone? No. Would we leave our houses and stay on streets for anyone else or to resolve the issues of the public?? Big No…We won’t do it even for our friend or our neighbor until or unless we have a good motive for that.

How long we will keep on becoming a bait, a title-holder of the tag ‘18 crore awam’, it is on us. How can we expect that we can have a system that other developed nations acquired if we are not honest to our work, if we are not literate, if we don’t care about the country. Revolution lies with in our own selves...and it is a slow process. We can do it by educating us and others, by being honest to our work and to the place we live in, by being liberal, open and absorbent and by helping each other in the process of progressing as a nation. That’s what we call a revolution. A revolution is what we can bring in the field of technology by making the best software…in agriculture by growing the best crop…in mechanics by making the best machine…and by not wasting our time in waiting for a miracle to happen!

The Great Fire of Karachi

 Words could never be enough to summarize the incident of such magnitude. An ever-worst national tragedy may it be called in which the ruthless fire caged, tortured and brutally killed a large number of working class of the metropolitan city. In a building entirely packed, where exit gates were locked, fire extinguishers were missing - for al least one and half hour as claimed by owner of Ali Enterprises, Arshad Bhaila - and had no way for the air to pass, how anyone could have found a way out of the burning hell. The result was a wait for the absolution of the destiny, the destiny which unfortunately had some other plans. Thus the deleterious wait ended up in mourns and anguish for dozens of unfortunate families. 

But the question lingers around is that, is it the only ill-fated building in Karachi which does have loops holes? We all know that there are hoards of buildings standing in the metropolis or candidly speaking in all parts of the country, which are not even close to the international standards of construction. These are the time bombs ticking on our heads persistently, but in the end the point is, who cares? Sad enough it takes an episode of this spectrum to be happened to turn few heads.

And as soon as the calamity occurs, the blame game begins with concerned bodies putting the ball in each others court. Government announces three lacs for each head and blames the factory owners for the massacre, the ones who always have their suitcases ready to leave for the airport, surely before the ECL is being sent to all the exit stations. Never too late for the building control authorities as well. Those who give thumbs-up to the constructions of additional floors and allow usage of sub-standard material for constructing buildings which couldn’t even guarantee a year to stand, then why they would even think of implementing house-building laws in the city. Thus, except few burned souls who were trapped in the building, everyone else would very conveniently find an escape gate for himself. 

During this saga, another revelation comes to surface. It was, that in 2003 (The Musharraf era), electrical inspectors were halted from inspecting electrical installation work of building, before issuing licence to the applicant. But the issues arise here is that why nothing has been done about it in so many years? What the labour inspectors’ job is? Why the environmental protection industry doesn’t make a concrete step to ensure that law for fire prevention are followed by all? Why the fire exits of such huge structures are being permanently sealed? And why local bodies like SITE ltd (Sindh Industrial Trading Estates) and civil defence authorities couldn’t play any role in preventing such disastrous incidents to be happened? So on and so forth. Hence, again we are left clueless who to put the blame on.

As per revolutionary-customary practice of suo-moto actions had been taken by the courts, investigation committees have been formed by the government; inquiries, hearing, notices, arrests, and bails, the tango would go on for sometime. Eventually, the file would be thrown into the piles of other brittle paperwork stored in any of the government’s data preservation centre. Alas! The crying faces of the ones who lost lives of their bread earners, could do nothing more than plunging TRPs of the news channels.

Is there any hope? That’s what we usually ask and see each others face to find the answer but the only silver lining is the one that lies inside us. We should change our own nature to bring up the change; the stubbornness inside us that evoke us to break rules and put other’s life on stake. That could begin by accepting our mistakes, our failures, and our wrong doings. It’s not cruel to commit a mistake; cruelty is to be obstinate about it. Lives of those who were left helpless in that factory couldn’t be restored. But we can make an effort to save the ones that are left.

Rules are made to be followed - but are seemed - meant to be broken in our dear homeland. Blaming the government is always a convenient option, but if we ask ourselves that do we make cautious efforts in our daily routine life to ensure safety of others, the answer would mostly be “No”. Living responsibly is the only way of living. Life is important; we should begin to give respect to it otherwise from where and when this fire would catch us no body knows!

Let Me Speak!

LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION and you are on to speak-up to the whole world. This privilege becomes headache when you are supposed to speak for an hour or two each and every morning on something NEW. A Morning Show host has a lot on his shoulders. One person running the whole program, where she or (on occasions he) is supposed to be entertaining, swift, cunning and affable at the same time, with the people she or he hardly knows. You need to generate topics, resisting any pause or a “moment of silence” during the conversation and also have to slot-in the audience in the process. Lots of work and one naive soul. A handy mean to ease the workload is to let the other person speak!

Anchoring is a completely different job from acting. A good actor could not necessarily be a good anchor. An actor is supposed to portrait the personality he is playing where as on the other side an anchor needs to depict the personality sitting before him. An anchor should keep his own self at a back and allow the other person to open up. A good host is the one with whom a person feels comfortable to speak. He provides an ambience where the guest feels free and safe to disclose his inner side. But these days the persona of the anchor himself is so swelled up over the show that it overshadows the pitied being of the guest, who despite sharing his own ideas, contentedly or discontentedly ended up nodding with the Anchor Almighty.

It is not that all the anchors of today are the same but most of the cohort is not doing what they are called to do, “to listen” to the person sitting before him. That is not always the fault of the hosts themselves, mostly the producers wish to hire well-known faces rather than well-learned people. Here well-learned means the one who is adequately trained in the genre of hosting. That’s why when they come in front of the camera they don’t have a clue of what they are supposed to do, so they start applying the tactics that they used in their previous old jobs.

Few things to remember which you should avoid while being a Morning Show host and that really infuriate the viewers are: 

·        Don’t interrupt the guest: it hurts when your favorite Caleb faced redundant and irritating interludes while he is about to reveal some attention-grabbing and unknown fact about himself.

·        IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU! Avoid the “what I think” factor from the conversation; because in the rest of the programme, viewers are already forced to listen only about that.

·        Don’t be a Back Seat Driver: He or she has been grown up doing what they are telling you about. Your Fix-it-in-one-day therapy wouldn’t transform them into a new person as they get out of the studio.

·        Stop being controversial all the time: Though the news channels are earning their bread and butter by adding fuel to the fire, but that strategy should only be kept with that particular field.

·        Curiosity Killed the Cat: Provide an air where he feels comfortable enough to share things which he hasn’t expressed before, don’t pinch him to the extent that he gets screwed up!

We the “BAD GUYS”

This weekend, like any other weekend, I was doing my routine labour of switching over channels on TV. For an occasion, I hold my finger tip on an Indian channel. There was a late night comedy show coming over. I must say that the guy has something in him that kept me from pressing that button. He was an effortless comedian. Starting up with imitating Indian actors he came to the topic that became the reason for me writing this piece. He started making fun of “The Pakistani terrorist Hafiz Saeed”.

He took a forged Hafiz Saeed on line. The guy on the line said that because of the incessant bomb attacks and drone strikes in Pakistan even he doesn’t feel safe in the country and wants to come to India as soon as possible. Weird enough but that raised my curiosity to watch this show more. I searched YouTube to watch the previous episodes and find that most of his jokes loop around Pakistan. Another thing that I observed on this website was, when I searched for India, the top searches were: India joins the space race, Indian mobile industry booming etc. But when I moved over to Pakistan, the result was quite on the contrary. The searches came down such as Balochistan Insurgency, battle of Swat valley, Pakistan double cross on terrorism and so on.

This difference of attitude makes you ponder that is this way the outer world takes us and if yes, then why that is so. I mean alright we do bad things. We take bribe from every nook and corner; we lie, don’t follow court orders, ditch each other and yes, our debts are even bigger than our pockets. Moreover we break laws the way no one else can even think of. But, still do we deserve to be called a terrorist nation? Are we the “Bad Guys”?

The answer couldn’t be yes. Because when you walk outside your door you can still find people who are kind to you. People who work hard for their kids, people who are honest, not all of them but we can safely say that morality and genuineness has still not entirely vanished from this part of the land. Where on one side there are people who scoff at beggars and eunuchs passing by. There are also those who leave their seats for senior citizens. Yes, there are people who do eve-teasing on the streets but there are the ones as well who open a door for a woman.

Majority of us can not read and write but our youth has enough knowledge of the ongoing politics and social issues. The pain and suffering has taught us a lot. Our literacy rate is less than 10 percent but we know our own flaws and we can learn from them. Fantasy you may call it, but if we know how to tow the whole month in a meagre sum of money in hand and having the distress of load-shedding, shortage of water, wheat and sugar and other day-to-day crisis in bonus, we can work on our weaknesses as well.

We have problems but we know how to deal with it. Our system is plagued but it’s just we who have the cure. Only we can make the way out from this labyrinth. We know we have made this a mess but whenever it happened, we will be the one who clean it up. So, you can say that we are a careless, illiterate, fanatic, aggressive, and a bit cynical nation but you know that’s how we are!

10 Quick Fixes to Pakistan

1. Throw the garbage into a dustbin. I know we are not living in a state where we could afford or even think of having trash bins at every nook and corner of a street, but just for the sake of saving our off springs from some unheard and incurable diseases, maintain cleanliness to your extent. To start with something, bring home the cans and burger boxes with you whilst coming back from an outdoor exertion and give it the place it deserve.

2. No matter how stupid it sounds but yes switching off the light as you come out of your room can help in overcoming a large fraction of energy crisis we are facing.

3. Water hydrates the skin; it doesn’t mean that the water going into the drain unused will help in anyway getting that perfect glow. Realize that you are wasting a lifesaving resource that could quench the thirst of many, if you use it responsibly. Every drop counts so you better don't let the faucet run while you are soaping up.

4. We all know corruption has deeply seeped into every stratum of the society and is very much common in our daily lives but still once in a blue moon saying no to that under-the-table deal doesn’t really cost you much.

5. Let’s accept the fact that bypassing meters, meter-tampering and direct hooking on the electricity poles or in common terms using “kunda” are all electricity thefts and a very serious crime. The fact that everyone else is doing it very conveniently makes it more irresistible to holdback. But if everyone else is going into the gutter that doesn’t mean that you are also ought to follow them.

6. Work, work and only work. This is not me; this is what our Quaid said before bestowing this land to us. But alright giving some space to our life-is-to-enjoy theory, at least just don’t sit idol in the parks for hours with your better or better-not half to watch the birds fly. I mean at the end of it you never know what she is actually looking at.

7. Stop behaving irrationally. We know that we are so exhausted and helpless by the never ending train of problems rushing to us that we never miss a chance to puff out our frustration. But that doesn’t mean that you set your neighbor’s car on fire just because your telephone bill exceeds your expectations.

8. Stop fighting on non-issues. Religion, ethnicity, caste, social values and political philosophy could also be followed without abusing the other person’s beliefs. Anyone who can see an angle other than yours is not your enemy. Give yourself a break. Think in a broader perspective and accept that we all are different and therefore we think and behave differently. If He can give us that privilege than who are we pointing out fingers on each other?

9. Start saying truth to yourself. Yes we are living in an “Islamic Republic” but that is not actually who we are. After thinking about all the above mentioned characteristics that we have, it’s hard to say that we are in any way better or any notch above than the non-Islamic republicans. It’s difficult to say that even after becoming accustomed to all worst possible ways of leading a life we’ll ended up in heaven. But to see the brighter side, it also doesn’t mean that nothing could be done about it.

10. Love and respect, that’s all we need from each other. No matter how vulnerable we are and whatever we have done to this place, we still belong to it. Your own cottage is always more contented than someone else’s kingdom. Stay here and make this a better place to live!

Truth, Lies and the grey areas

There would not be a single hand standing on the side which says that it is good to tell a lie. No matter to what religion, cast or nationality we belong to, in the end we all mutually believe and agree that everyone should speak truth. But then what about the third kind? The ridicule of the truth itself is that there are hardly any circumstances where we say either a truth or a lie. Delicacy of the situation, wrong timings, selfishness, fear, concern, love and hate are some of the reasons forcing us to mold the truth in a design that it doesn’t fit in any of the above category. We call it the Grey Areas!

Manipulating truth is sometimes as indispensable as breathing air. But how to decide that when it is necessary to do this expurgation and when it isn’t? That is something that could vary from one individual to the other. Generally the molding that we do for our own interests is considered to be unjust, but then again who is going to decide? Our politicians, bureaucrats, civil servants and even common people have their own grey areas. For people like lawyers, exploitation of truth is the bread and butter. Hence, from the ruler to the one, sitting at a fruit stall everyone feels it their astuteness to manage saying what sounds good!

We find many people who declare that they can not stand a lie. The question that is needed to be asked here is that are they really willing to listen to a naked reality and what if it is about there own self? The answer is by and large in negative. We want to listen what we like. From inside we hope and pray that it may turn out to be true and when that doesn’t happen we tend to start behaving irrationally. On the other hand grey areas suit everyone. It is a convenient option that makes us feel satisfied and glad at the end of it. The thing is that we prefer to pick the truths of our own choice.

A leader will sing odes of love for humanity and expresses his desperation to spread peace and justice on the land. He definitely wants to do that, till the time he doesn’t get a hold on the seat of his dreams. After then of course priorities are different. One party shout aloud to reveal the scratchiest facts of the rival party but ignores even the crystal clear realities of their own dark sides in order to gain sympathies of masses. Contempt of court, suo-moto, reconciliations, memo-gate and all the other ongoing hit numbers of the court rooms are also revolving around the stretching and molding of truth. They twist the fact in a way that it goes in there favor and neglect the one that is against their respectable clients.

Likewise a marketing head of a company tells you all the good things about his product, but what about the bad ones? No, they are sternly trained that the bad things are supposed to be discussed only in the board meetings and then are better being forgotten. In the same way a shopkeeper put all the fresh peaces on the top of the counter and once you get your eyes off, he’ll add few of the rotten ones in your bag as well. Hiding is not lying right!

And then the news channels playing tug-of-war with each other, philanthropically raising death tolls before proper substantiation and exploiting non issues to get their ratings and to claim the number one slot are also part of the game.

Thus, in the end we can safely say that we never lie, it is just the other way out to get things done!