Impact: Water, Power, Food

There were riots in Multan (Punjab Province) today over power outages in that city. According to Dawn News, workers of the Power Looms Association protested after suffering through 18-hour-a-day power outages. Since over 500,000 people reportedly depend on these machines for their livlihood, a scant six hours of power daily makes a mighty impact indeed.

In Balochistan Province, Pakistan Frontier Corpsmen got into a gun battle with Afghan military when the FC opened fire on some people who were smuggling wheatflour into Afghanistan.* (The drivers reportedly failed to stop when signaled by the FC.) Afghan troops came running and havoc insued, though at a later meeting between Pakistani and Afghan officials the shooting was said to be the result of a "misunderstanding," and the border was reopened after a ceasefire.

As in the rest of the world, the price of everything is going up, and in Pakistan supplies of many basics were already going down as well. Most electricity is generated by hydropower here, and the rivers are low. (And that's before we even get to the (non)availability of clean, potable water.) The wheat harvest was bad, so flour, which is essential for those most basic of Pakistani staple foods, roti and naan, is also in short supply. The price of gasoline (petrol) is shooting up, and while some rickshaws and private cars operate on natural gas here (which is cheaper), I think a car that uses CNG is more expensive up front. For a great many people a motorcycle is all the family vehicle they can afford, if they can afford one at all,** and I think motorcycles are all petrol-run vehicles.

So getting around is more expensive too, and of course that has an impact on food prices, as well as on the availability of power for those able to afford generators to tide them through the load-shedding. "Those able to afford generators" usually means very wealthy homeowners, upscale restaurants and stores (including US fast-food chains--in a country where 30 cents will buy you a filling lunch of naan and beans or fried somosas, spending $5 US on a Quarter Pounder Meal is luxury), and some of the shopowners in the bazaar, who have little semi-portable generators that they station outside their doors and which make a racket like a heard of lawnmowers as one moves up and down the rows of merchants. When I mentioned that Roomie and I don't have a generator at our apartment one (well-to-do) friend asked me, "But what do you people do until the power comes on?" My answer: "We wait for the power to come on." But I can't whine (though I do), since once the power does come back on I have a/c. I visited the family of one of the school drivers at their home--they had one table-top fan.

Consider also that "minimum wage" (if it's enforced!) is about $120 US per month. Case in point: One of my friends here makes minimum wage, with which he must support himself, his wife, their three children, and his mother. (Parents typically live in the same house with their married son and daughter-in-law.) Health insurance? What health insurance? Overtime? Hah. He's jazzed about the opportunity to go to Dubai next year and earn a whopping $425 monthly. Anyway, if you're making even minimum wage you're "lucky": not only is un/underemployment high, but I shudder to think what some of the day laborers, sweepers (janitors) and construction workers are making as they labor along in ferociously hot weather and without the protection of hardhats, welders' masks, or sturdy shoes.

Many low-wage laborers come to The Lovely City from villages to find work, in which case they've probably never seen things like hard hats where they're from and aren't used to working in cumbersome gear. Then again, I haven't seen any such gear in TLC either, which is saying a lot as there seems to be on-going construction everywhere. To wit: high atop the 3rd-floor scaffolding of one newish building squatted two hatless men in loose shalwar kameezes and plastic flip-flop sandals, working away. I use the term "scaffolding" loosely here to mean the metal poles and bars that form the frame of the scaffolding. Wooden planks to sit/stand/walk on are generally absent (very much so in this case). Apparently these men were balancing on the bar itself and somehow holding on with their toes, through the plastic sandals.

There are so many factors for this kind of economic hardship, and I can't claim to understand or even know them all, though long posts on Pak military spending, US military aid, the poverty inducing "assistance" of the IMF/World Bank, and the world wide increases in fuel and food would all be relevant here. (Also, if I wasn't already sufficiently grateful for the U.S. labor movement, I sure as hell am now.)

I should also acknowledge that those who make minimum wage in the U.S. also live hand-to-mouth and also do not generally benefit from health insurance or over-time pay. But neither am I interested in a kind of rhetorical leveling or "equivalency" between such disparate situations as American Wal-Mart cashiers and Pakistani janitors. At home I try to stay alert to the exploitation of working people in the U.S. Still, The Lovely City constantly places before my eyes (because it's more obvious or because I'm paying more attention?) glimpses of my/our dependence on the exploitation of impoverished and ferociously overworked people. And with things being as they are in this globalized but inequible economy, power is getting scarcer, fuel more expensive, and simple sustenance harder to procure for those who truly cannot afford to choose between bus fare and naan.

*Also according to Dawn News
**Even the smallest, most basic car can be $6,000 US or more, and that's without a/c in a country where temperatures stay between 80F and 95F for most of the year, and summer temps can get up t 117F.