Awam’s Equation

by Rameez Ragheb

As my dad took that extra turn to get CNG from a petrol pump selling it 3 rupees lower then the market rate I wondered how hardened have we become to the injustice we face, how shamelessly adaptive to whatever cruelty time has brought, how apathetic.

I wondered and I recalled an incident I came across some time back of a man who begged his friend to shoot him so that his family can payback their debts from the insurances he has applied for. I thought how strangled must a man be feeling to resort to such a step, how chained.

Our lives have sadly been immersed in so much problems, confusions and chaos that we have even lost the identity of our original problems. To us, load shedding out of schedule is a problem, not load shedding in the first place. We don’t feel troubled as long as the bomb blast is not in our town. American mercenaries attacking is a problem for us but not the corrupt civil and military leadership allowing them to roam freely in our cities and operate from our bases or more precisely using our army to attack our brethren, civilians in the tribal belt in the name of collateral damage.

Moreover, our routine is governed by electric, natural gas and water supply timings. Devaluation of currency plus debts, poverty plus inflation, corruption, foreign dictation, drones, disunity, lack of trust and injustice, unfortunately today, this is the Awam’s Equation. The dilemma that we have fallen in is so great that we find examples of eating dead cats and dogs for survival.

This Awam’s Equation is an open problem for which several solutions have been and are still repeatedly presented by our ‘intellectuals.’ These conjectures namely democracy, dictatorship, democratic dictatorship, dictatorial democracy and if none other is left, azaad adliya, have miserably failed to solve the Awam’s Equation.

Perhaps, with the wind of change which blows from North Africa and Middle East, it is time we set our course right and turn to a radical solution which liberates mankind from the slavery of men. A system based on Islamic Shariah, which is coherent with our belief and also the demand of more then 53% people in Pakistan according to a recent survey by MEMRB. A system which will cut Nato supply route and expel US mercenaries from Pakistan. A system where resources are public property and thus cheap and available to all, where woman is an integral member of society and not a commodity, where life is valued and defended by military and Raymond Davis is not given VIP stay by authorities. The solution is the system which made us sole super power for 1300 years, the Caliphate.

We must solve the Awam’s Equation soon or drown with the filth which dwells upon us right now. Waiting is not an option, the clock is ticking!