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PAKISTAN: Experts Warn of Unrest Over Food Prices

Zofeen Ebrahim

KARACHI, Aug 15 2008 (IPS) - For Mohammed Bashir, a restaurant chef, it was galling to have to be standing in line at a langar (soup kitchen) waiting to be served a free meal. Bashir lost his job four months ago when he injured a finger in a traffic accident.

"Can you imagine how humiliating it is for a person who has never begged, or asked anyone for alms, to go to a langar?" asks a visibly distressed Bashir. He has been reduced to living on the streets and sleeping under bridges while waiting to find another job.

Hailing from Quetta in the western Balochistan, he refuses to go back home. "My wife and children are already living with her brother, I can’t go home empty-handed."

What upsets Bashir most is that there was no one he could turn to for a badly needed finger-grafting operation. Doctors at the government-run hospitals asked him to visit them privately and pay up for the surgery.

But Bashir is grateful to the charitable Edhi Foundation which feeds some 15,000-odd destitute people daily at the langars it has been running in this port city, to help them tide over recent inflationary trends.

With 325 centres across the country, Edhi is considered to be South Asia's largest private social service network. "We have so far been able to set up only 70 such langars in the last two months, serving around 300,000 people," Abdul Sattar Edhi, foundation head and Pakistan’s best-known philanthropist told IPS.

"No one is turned away," says Mohammad Bilal, who manages an Edhi soup kitchen in the city centre which serves around 500 people daily. "The idea is to feed the indigent but as such there is no screening."

According to Bilal, security guards, daily wage earners and even office clerks come and partake of a meal worth Rs 30 (40 US cents). "Everyone is feeling the economic crunch and if they can get even one meal for free, why not!"

Following suit, the Karachi Stock Exchange also initiated its ‘dastarkhwan’ programme for the poor, serving 3,000 free meals per day.

The United Nations World Food Programme, which estimates that the number of food-insecure people has increased from 60 million to 77 million in 2007-08, has announced inclusion of Pakistan in the 16 countries which will benefit from a rollout of a 214 million dollar in response to rising food and fuel prices.

Edhi, currently on a bheek (begging) mission across the country, has been able to collect Rs 300,000,000 (4,229,820 US dollars). But he needs Rs 1,000,000,000 (14,099,400 dollars) to be able to open more langars. "I don’t want people committing suicide or killing their children due to hunger. The idea is to rekindle the spirit of giving among our people.’’

Edhi warns of a "bloody revolution" that is simmering. "The signs are already there. Increased number of suicides due to poverty, unemployment and despair; lawlessness, people killing their own children as they cannot feed them… I’m not exaggerating.’’

"No, he's not exaggerating," agrees Najma Sadeque, a political analyst and a human rights activist. "History has seen that happen over and over again in different parts of the world, and for the same reasons. Hunger is a very real and agonising form of violence. Sooner or later, people will react. I hope it won't come to that, but the callousness, greed and cold-bloodedness of so many of our decision makers confounds the imagination."

Sadeque believes that governments can be extremely insensitive to the possibility of mass starvation. She cited the example of Bangladesh, once a part of Pakistan where ‘’they (the central government in 1971) didn't just shamelessly exploit East Pakistan, they starved them to death. The famine that followed revealed how high and dry the central government had deliberately left them’’.

Sadeque believes that unless there is a ‘’bloody revolution, or some drastic action that decisively removes corrupt leaders and feudals from the political scene,’’ things are going to turn worse.

Zaid Hamid, an Islamabad-based strategic thinker, believes that the price hikes are the product of "global economic terrorism" designed by "Zionists to starve us to death". He lauds the Edhi initiative as one answer. "The nation, at a collective level, should come forward and pitch in. In these times when artificial food, fuel and economic crises are being created globally, societies need to come together to prevent a social and moral meltdown.’’

Other experts see differently. "You cannot do much about commodity price spirals in world markets. Inflation is a natural and necessary process through which rising world prices are reflected in the domestic economy," says Haris Gazdar, a Karachi-based economist.

Gazdar, however, feels that there are a few things the government can do. "Keep a close watch on particular sectors – notably basic kitchen items – to ensure that domestic price spirals and shortages do not develop; protect the most vulnerable through targeted subsidies or untargeted but limited rations and secure greater foreign inflows. This will relieve pressure on the external account and allow the rupee to become a little stable, thus reducing some of the effects of imported inflation."

Gazdar does acknowledge that there will be "frustration, acts of desperation, even criminal violence". But he is not sure if a bloody revolution is in the offing. "It might happen if the [intelligence] agencies mobilise the jihadis to do something really silly."

Inflation jumped to an all-time high of 24 percent in the first month of fiscal year 2008-09 that started Jul. 1, as stated by the Federal Bureau of Statistics. Against that it was only 7.7 percent in the previous year.

Food inflation has now ballooned to a record 32 percent, the highest not only in the country but also in the region. In May, the figure was 28 per cent. Oil prices have been increased seven times this year and six times since the Pakistan People’s Party took over in February.

In reaction to the widespread hardships, the government plans to introduce, from September, the Benazir Income Support Programme with an allocation of Rs 34 billion (479,379,605 dollars). Under this initiative the minimum salary will be raised to Rs 6,000 (84.59 dollars) per month and five million poor households will be provided doles of Rs1,000 (14 dollars) per month.

According to Sadeque the rise in the prices of fuel and food internationally is not the only reason for Pakistan’s present woes. "The trend of widening poverty began long ago with the refusal to redistribute agricultural land to peasants and the turning of land into real estate or industrial agri-investment which has killed employment en masse."