The Politics of Rain

The Politics of rain and Flash Floods

The Politicians feeding on the Misery of Residents of the Metropolitan

By Taqveem Ahsan Siddiqui

Karachi is Flooded with Rain and at the same time Political Point Scoring has served as a Double whammy to its residents.

If I remember correctly we had more or less the same situation in Karachi in 2006. Even the dates were more or less the same, started on the 28th of July and continued with a day or two's exception till the 7th August and beyond. And the residents' misery , well it was no different than what we have seen this time.

This years rain in Karachi is classed as worst than that one. I fail to understand how a city's INFRASTRUCTURE can become sooooo useless within 3 years that as soon as the first drop of rain came this year, a SUSTAINED campaign of RAIN politics started. 

A Glimpse of Karachi in 2008 Rain:

Source: http://www.chowrangi.pk/massive-power-failure-rain-hit-karachi.html

Some TV channels started posters and and clips like " Tum Bohot Yaad Aye (as if it has been 30 years since the demise of the political party from power corridors). Social media was flooded with posters of Mustafa Kamal by trigger opportunist jiyalas. All good and well but what I failed to understand is if we talk about infrastructure then why do we need personalities? And if the infrastructure is there then the only change is that there is no City Government (which to be fair, is quite detrimental to a city's administration failure or Success). But the Volunteers are still there, there is a brigade of MNA's and MPAs responsible for their areas (don't agree with it but it is a different debate and besides everything this is how it is AT THE MOMENT). So why is it that all of a sudden there is a sustained campaign about infrastructure failure without even realising that the infrastructure they are talking about, IF there was any, has only been there for the last 4-5 years and the city government just finished less than 3 years ago and on top of everything they have never been out of power in the last 12 years or so with majority of City's parliamentary seats occupied by them.

The infrastructure that is referred to is relatively new so either 

1) There was actually no infrastructure but A PERSON who along with his crew would " Shalwar charha kar " jump into the flood waters to SAVE the city.  OR

2) There was one but was of such a third class quality that did not last even 3 years OR

3) There is a deliberate effort to flood Karachi to do politics on flooded Karachi.

Rain in September 2011 (just a year after the city Govt)

What ever be the case since we have seen it ourselves that EVEN in those days when we had flash floods of same or lesser magnitude, the last resort was people helping themselves along with political parties and their workers as it suited the political parties at that time to be looked as helping out people and to avoid disruption.

So my dear politicians, The INFRASTRUCTURE is there (if it was there 3 years ago) you are all STILL ALIVE as well so stop playing the RAIN card and roll Your SHALWARS this year again do what you are supposed to do instead of MOANING about something which you could have easily got back (the city govt) if you did PRINCIPLED politics instead of power and greed politics in 25 years and PARTICULARLY in the last 6 years.

No denying of sincere efforts and hard work of Mustafa Kamal in his tenure but the way things are being projected at the moment for political point scoring just compels one to raise eye brow and is just misleading.

Roll your shalwars with your MNAs and MPAs and do your job because we know whats going on here. We know who is the main beneficiary of this situation and flooding of the city. So Get your brigade of parliamentarians n help out the city ... It is however true that city is now in better position to coup with little to medium magnitude of monsoon rain than it was 8 years ago but This is nothing new and nothing that has not happened before in THIS extra ordinary magnitude of rain and storm .. So stop moaning and get on with your job NOW... Roll your shalwars MNAs n MPAs n get on with it.