A possible narrative against inflation

Shah Rukn e Alam

(Disclaimer: This essay is basically an attempt to frame inflation in terms of class war and in a way that teaches people to hopefully see it, along with other economic policies as something that is screwing them over.)

The duty of a state, its sacred promise to its nation, is to do justice and prevent injustice. It is to bring the nation together, in the collective pursuit of an order that protects her people, especially her poorest most vulnerable people, from the economic, political and social injustices that emerge in this trying, complicated world. So what are we to make of this promise when the leaders of our nation, uniformed and otherwise, have pledged to spend less than a three hundredth of what they spent on subsidies, an amount that could at most afford 400 ventilators, in the face of a disease that promises to kill 6 million of our nation’s citizens, and make another 25 million in need of medical assistance before publicly begging the IMF to write off their debts? An empowered nation would bring our state to fulfill its sacred promise; she would protect her elders endangered by corona. But our nation has never been allowed to come into her own.

Our nation is on her knees, she was put there by a leadership suspicious of its own citizens, she was kept there by Ayub’s military dictatorship; brutalized, her wings torn, in her own name by Yahya, and nailed into the earth and shattered by Zia. A begging bowl was shaped from the bones and faith of her poorest children and housing schemes were erected by her uniformed protectors, in her own name, with American funding.

But now the bowl’s run dry, the Americans are leaving Afghanistan and bones and faith no longer sell like they used to. Their walled palaces, their housing projects their subsidized businesses in danger, our spendthrift leaders, uniformed and otherwise, prostrated themselves,  for the 22^nd time in the name of the national interest, prostrated themselves in front of the IMF and put us and our children into debt.

Debt that destroys our ability to protect the vulnerable in times of disease and calamity, debt that leaves us in the mercy of the IMF as our elders die by the millions, debt that eats into our children’s education, that destroys our ability to pay for the medical care our loved ones need,  that starves the poor, the orphaned, the old and the weak, that dehumanizes the most vulnerable with the agonizing choice of doing difficult, dangerous, degrading, low paid work and starvation, between paying for medicine and feeding their family.

Debt that will, as it always been used to pay for housing schemes, for loans to the rich that will never be returned, that will pay for fighter jets that only serve to distract us from the truth, that the war that has destroyed this country, that dismembered it in 1971, that has claimed more lives than all our wars against India put together is the war that has been declared on the poor of this country by its leaders, uniformed or otherwise, and the true national interest has never been allowed to get in the way of its conduct.

The war on the poor has a long legacy. It involves the military operations conducted on the Bengalis who fought for the making of this country; it involves sending men with flamethrowers into Bengal’s Kachi Abadis, it involves the razing of Kachi Abadis in Karachi and Islamabad that displaced hundreds of thousands of the most vulnerable people dispossessed by war and economic need. It involves dismantling our healthcare and then insisting on treating Corona like a sideshow rather than an emergency greater than all our military threats put together. This war was conducted in Ayub’s era, it was conducted in PMLN’s era and then conducted in Imran’s.

This is what this inflation is, the latest expression of violence that has been wielded against the disenfranchised exploited working people of our nation. The foreign exchange sent by hard working Pakistanis was being used to pay for the cars, the imported chocolates, the designer clothes of the rich, till it ran out, till there was none to pay for the oil and gas and medicine so the prices went up and our leaders, uniformed and otherwise ran to the IMF, and pledged to pay back the debt by taxing tomatoes, sugar and wheat, knowing that it would shift the tax burden on to the poor.

The poor are being made to pay for the excesses of its leaders; a choice has been made. The pain of the mother who can’t take care of her sick child, the pain of the mazdoor who can’t pay his daughter’s dowry, the pain of the son who is unable to care for his sick parents, the pain of the parents who have to make their children leave school and send them to earn, the pain of the worker whose savings are losing value, the pain of the father that can’t buy his children sweets anymore, the pain of the tenant who can no longer afford his or her rent, the pain of those rendered homeless, the silent deaths of those who can no longer pay for their healthcare and the pain of those who love them, has become acceptable so long as the rich can continue to import cars, and clothes, perfumes and chocolates from abroad.

And this unjust choice, that would make our prophet weep bitter tears at the state of his ummah, has become acceptable because the ordinary citizen of Pakistan had had his voice systematically stolen, and his spirit broken by the leaders of this country, especially the uniformed ones. The trade unions that once gave the citizen pride and dignity have been stolen, it’s right to strike stolen. Violence and torture, fire hoses and bull dozers, tear gas and lathis, thanas and katcheris, unjust imprisonment and disappearances, guns and tanks, lies and propaganda have stripped and silenced the citizens of our nation. And as the price hikes silently eat into our wages, into our ability to afford medicine, and cuts so many lives short, as mental illness takes root from the traumas of our unjust system the nation does not stir, she remains silent and listless, nailed into the earth.

When a father of five took his own life because he could not deal with the pressures of supporting his children in our system, we know that he another victim of this war against the  poor, he is a victim of a state policy subordinates the need of ordinary Pakistanis desires of the rich to maintain their privileges. Privileges to not be abused by the police, the privilege to not be abused by the courts, the privilege to be presented in civilian courts, the privilege to live in houses that won’t be torn down, the privilege to live in communities safe from violence, the privilege to not be a casualty in this war against the poor and the privilege of exploiting a cheap voiceless class to pay low wages, to hoard their profits, the privilege to plunder the treasury, and political system of a voiceless nation, the privilege to face no consequence for their abuses of power.

This inflation hurts you if you are poor. It doesn’t matter what your religion is it doesn’t matter what your biraderi is, it doesn’t matter what your connections are; it doesn’t matter who you voted for, this inflation hurts you because you are poor. The bones that shaped our nation’s begging bowl are the bones of the poor, of the powerless, and the only way out is systematic change. Change that reclaims the state form its abusers, uniformed and otherwise, that dismantles this corrupt bureaucracy turns this vain institution that insists on calling itself the civil ‘superior’ services into true public servants, it comes from dismantling the corrupt parasitic economic and political empires that our leaders, uniformed and otherwise have created to preserve their privileges. And this deep change that throws these DCs, SPs these generals these corrupt MNAs, these ministers is through true political engagement. Engagement that does not stop at the road outside your door, but realizes that whether you like it or not the changes at the highest levels of power can transform your world or destroy it, these changes can transform the lives of your children or put them in debt, that they never meant to take on, that pays for the housing schemes of the rich, that will take generations to pay off. Changes in the highest offices will put you in prison for decades for crimes you did not commit; these changes can leave you unable to pay for food and to pay for your medical bills.

And so whether we like it or not our future depends on asking the questions we have been taught to fear asking. Are we not spending too much on fighter jets and too little on healthcare for our elders, and education for our children. Are we not better served by investing in industry, in creation rather than selling this nation and her children’s futures to American wars?

We must end this war on the poor; we must see it for what it is: a war on the nation. We must fight to revolutionize the bureaucracy, to revolutionize the prisons, to revolutionize the army to revolutionize this political and economic system, we must revolutionize what it means to be a citizen, to reclaim our voices as citizens, to organize to agitate, to bring back our trade unions, to bring back true informative journalism that does not fear our leaders, uniformed or otherwise, to break the chains of the nation and bring life back into her broken body, to reclaim her power against her protectors, to assert herself truly as an independent sovereign nation.

And to this end we must organize, and fight for the local and the national. In this spirit we call you to fight against this theft, on the poor, to cut the sales tax, to stop this exploitation of the vulnerable, we call you to join the AWP in our struggle to reclaim the nation.