While looking outside the foggy window from our air-conditioned cars, we indifferently pass by the slum areas. Seeing half naked kids with muddy hair and unwashed faces does not wrench our hearts. The child sitting right next to us in our car and the one outside on the road belong to the same human breed and the same childhood. How come we have accepted this painful contrast? As the sociologists say there are two cities in a city, one for the poor and one for the elite. But this contrast is widening and reaching a frightful situation.
The most considerable part is that the future for the poor seems even bleaker. As the basic right of clean water, food, education and medical facility is a dream for them. Pakistan is a country carrying a can of worms filled with extreme poverty, corruption, life insecurity, injustice, human rights, health and educational issues. The problem of unequal distribution of income exists in almost every country, from the poorest to the richest economies of the world. Income disparity is evident, but in our case there is no long-term education and health policy to cater to these basic fundamental rights.
The existence of such classes leads to prejudice. This discrimination has manifested into the scary class conflict in our society. In such a situation, we have the worst social welfare policies. The bigwig industrialists are getting away with paying minimum amount of tax; the salary class is over burdened with unreasonable taxes. Those who are making money are multiplying it without any check and balance system. There is no minimum wage, working hours and age limit implemented in actual terms.
This social discrimination is linked to racial, gender and ethical inequality. The class gap is leading to a frustrating youth. We get to listen to incidents where the house guard ended up beating his employee’s kids, when they paid two thousand rupees to pizza home delivery, as his family was starving and the luxury of such expensive food appeared more of a sin to him.
The frustration of an underage maid carrying the school bag for the children of her own age is beyond our understanding. A system where one child is working in the kitchen washing dishes and the other is studying, depicts how the prejudice and injustice is fabricated not only into our system but in our mind set as well .The vicious cycle is not breaking it’s momentum. The frustration erupts like a volcano when the tomorrow appears not better than today. This widening gap is leading to the endless comparisons, where price of one designer lawn jora is equal to someone’s monthly salary. The class difference is leading to class hatred.
When we see the son of a bus conductor being elected as a mayor , it highlights the fact that a well crafted social welfare system coupled with an access to free, quality education and merit is the only way out of vicious circle of poverty. Transfer of poverty from one generation to the other is the actual issue. The light diminishes at the end of tunnel when the system just supports the elites. This short sightedness and ignorance to foresee the eruption of volcano filled with hatred, deprivation and frustration will eventually lead to a devastation, where the social collapse is inevitable. The crime against the elite will sooner be considered a tool to snatch rights by the have-nots. These slums are breeding grounds for crimes and on the other hand we are nurturing insensitivity and apathy.
Society is the aggregation of people living together in an ordered community. Instead of waiting for big things to happen overnight with a magic wand, the change can also be brought by individual acts where these little steps will eventually get accumulated to bring a better tomorrow.
In the words of John F Kennedy “One person can make a difference and everyone should try it..” If we educate children of our domestic staff and channelize our donations for the social well being of the under-privileged, it will light the candle in the darkness of depression. The actual solution lies in teaching the hungry how to catch the fish. Let us all be a part of spreading the ray of hope and let the journey begin today with a first small act for there is No Tomorrow.
Nabiha Shahram is a children’s right activist and a former educationist
