February 10, 2013

This high handedness disgusts me

Earlier today Maryam N. Sharif, daughter of Nawaz Sharif tweeted this pic. Find anything wrong with it? Abhorrent? Disgusting? Sickening? Maybe you see that the "common" person is not "equal" to Maryam N. Sharif and that's why he's sitting on the ground? Maybe you see that Maryam N. Sharif is so high and mighty that she would never actually talk to such a man if it weren't for the many cameras? Maybe you realize the sickening irony of how these leeches have sucked us dry while they role around in moolah? Maybe you find that while this was happening, 200 doctors were arrested who have been on a hunger strike for seven days now? Maybe you found how fake this whole scenario actually is?

I did. So I tweeted this back to her.
She hasn't bothered replying yet.

The kid appears to be crying. He's sitting on the ground because of course, the mighty madame would consider it her insult to consider him her equal. Of course the common people of Punjab do not deserve to be treated as equals. When have they ever been? But such displays of bullshit make my blood boil. Why are they special and the rest common? Were they conceived by a gold statue? Lest we forget, this lady who pretends to be so humble, and angelic (getting a "common person" through to Nawaz Sharif is akin to a feat of heroic proportions) belongs to the same family who's other female member (daughter of Shahbaz Sharif) had the employee of a bakery beaten up because he told her the bakery was closed and the owner was not in. She sent her "official" thugs (policemen), had the poor sod thrashed and then had a case registered against him. When the media jumped on the bandwagon, Shahbaz Sharif instead of having his daughter arrested (which would have been the noble thing to do) ordered his son in law to appear before the police. Why he was ordered to do that, we shall never know.

The Metro Bus System will fail. And I will tell you why it will fail. It cost Rs 30 billion. It was supposed to be completed in 3 years, instead it was completed in less than 1. The problem with that is quality. They completed the ring road early as well, only to have a bridge fall on top of a truck. This is 8.3 km of elevated track. Quality assurances anyone?

It will also fail because people who use their cars will continue using them. They will not get up and get on the bus out of the blue. They tried this before. They launched the Lahore Transport Company (LTC) once. It failed. They tried to launch it again, this time with green buses which run on CNG. It failed again. In fact there were many instances of vandalism where students refused to pay the fare and thrashed conductors. Now they've launched this, a third time. You know what they say, third time's a charm.

But the biggest reason it will fail is this: The people were not educated enough to be able to use this properly. The people who use this service will be the "common" people. Who will break this like they broke all the other transit systems before. The rich will never use this because it is "beneath" them to travel with the "common" people. And since no one was educated about the benefits, this too shall be relegated to the annals of history.

Instead of launching this first, the Sharif government should have used that money to educate the population of Punjab. Inculcate in the children why Rapid Transit Systems are beneficial and why they need to be used. They could've used the money to set up power plants because now the provinces can do that on their own. But then they wouldn't have been able to show that off as readily as they can show off the red colored bendy buses now could they?

And here's the real irony (if the picture up there wasn't enough), Shahbaz Sharif, Nawaz Sharif, Maryam Nawaz Sharif or any of their family members will never use these buses to get from point A to point B. This was just for show. Show's now over. And they can just go back to living like kings and queens in their palaces, cut off from the rest of the world; the common world.