Monday, 13 April 2020

Covid-19 and Rural Areas of Sindh

It was alarming for me to see some people from cities like Sajawal ( where some cases of corona tested positive) ,Hyderabad and Karachi (where most of the cases found positive) were visiting their relatives in villages near by mine and locals were meeting and greeting them warmly, following their tradition. But they were very less aware of consequences, if the epidemic gets ignited in rural of areas of Sindh which are far worse than the urban because of their illiteracy, direct contact with animals and unavailability of health system.

Social distancing message

First and foremost, challenge or factor which can make corona disease inexorable in rural Sindh is less educated or completely illiterate masses. Because of this, it's very hard to aware them about this dangerous disease and preventive measures. When I asked a person, who was meeting with his relatives when arrived from Sajawal by private car, that why he is allowing the danger for his beloved ones in his home? he replied " There is nothing like Corona but an agenda of government to get their loans forgiven". Matter of life and death is in hands of ALLAH, nothing will happen to us because of our Pir who is praying for us, he added. In addition to this, as their lives are relatively less affected as compare to people in cities that's why they don't take it seriously and don't follow prevention like washing hands, avoid going in crowded places and other necessary guidelines by WHO to follow. Even I didn't observe any doctor and nurse at nearby hospitals, police, and shopkeeper using masks and gloves as they are the people from whom chances of spreading virus are maximum.

Second, as villagers do come in direct contact with animals like goats, sheep and cows etc. Which can be one of main sources of transmission of virus from one body to another if a single person tested positive. And if it's transmitted from human to animals then it will be dangerous to be cured and its effects will last longer due to unbreakable chain as we have lack of medical facilities even for human, who cares for animals' recoveries. "These goats are my only source income, who will feed them, if I avoid going near to them?" a farmer questioned against my advice of avoid going near to animals.

Last but not least challenge is unavailability of testing centers in rural areas and lack of hospitals nearby villages. For instance, think about a person who got infected of this deadly virus but due to unavailability of testing center he or she didn't get tested immediately and he kept his movement unchanged then you can yourself imagine the situation.! In addition to this if infected person got hospitalized in a medical center where there is no prevention dress for doctors and medical staff, because of this, cases will be multiplied and then squared and these operation will go on

In conclusion, I want to advice people that they should not create difficulties for themselves by don't taking this current epidemic seriously and following preventing guidelines by state. Here some educated youth in rural areas as well as cities should act responsibly and educate the people in their homes and villages ( via mobile phone) about prevention measures. And urban people, who want to visit their relatives at villages must wait until it is all over, they should think about these helpless fellows. In the last government should keep its eyes on rural areas too. They should pre-plan effectively and efficiently to protect the unaffected areas.

Writer: Din Muhammad

Campaign: Dare To Write

The genuine Covid-19, and the funny Us

“See what just happened in Sukkur? You still want Sindhis or should Corona take them all with it already.

Please educate them for God sake, its not funny anymore,” I observed someone whisper it to me. He was obviously talking about those isolated men (rather some so called Ulemas) in Sukkur who tried to escape the quarantine center. In this hour of the deadly disease that sees no limits, I see my kindred Pakistanis bemoaning the absence of 'social-distancing among the majority. Many individuals proceeded to state that Pakistan needs to battle the pandemic as well as the overall stupidity. It's true, but it's not something that's confined to our country only. It's a global issue. Human ignorance is very real.

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."

—Albert Einstein

I was listening to some news the other day when a Reporter was nagging about the idiotic behavior of the American citizens who stayed calm in their homes for just two weeks and then started to come out and wander around. What is happening in the USA is not a myth anymore; the pandemic has spread there like nothing else. So no need to quarrel who is the most stupid, we all are the same. I remember here a poetic scene which says

کون سیکھا ہے سرف باتوں سے

“سب کو اک حادثہ ضروری ہے."

However, we haven’t or are neither willing to learn from those mishaps that are perhaps caused by us. Squeezing fun out of everything, no matter it is a conundrum or a trifle is an art and we Pakistanis are the artist. No sooner did we report the first case in Pakistan the memers got a new job to do and that was to make memes about this. I enjoyed the idea; I mean they are making people engage in fun in this time of anxiety. I remember some of the very funnier ones and I will mention those here:

“I have no trouble finding you peeps when you hiding from me

I just say 'Jinne mera dill luteya'

And y'all be screaming Ohoo” and

“Lmao it's so easy to spread in this country all you need to say is *Mein hu* and y'all be opening your house doors,” telling the funnier sides of us. Like every other things here too, we got the orthodox and extremists giving Fatwas that making fun of this agony will lead us to astray like the previous Umahs before us who were never serious about God’s torment. Oh come on man, what is the need of poking religion everywhere. People are disturbed right now and if they feel good for a time being let them be. The world is different now. Moreover, the Umah of Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be upon Him) was promised that they will not taste any agony except the doomsday. So please, stay at peace and stay at home too.

social distancing meme

Since the government has declared a complete lockdown and we have been in quarantine for three weeks now, we have seen a lot of old friends coming back to our lives. Quarantine has now resulted as the after rain situation for most of us where we have got to see some insects, snakes and frogs coming out of their wells. To be honest they aren’t missing us at all, these are just tactics to remain engage in this lockdown and there is nothing wrong in that. This quarantine has made me do creepy things like counting on the tiles in my bathroom, video-calling my brother who was just sitting in the room next to mine, sending messages to 11 people just to have good news and many more.

Everything that comes goes by too. This pandemic will just be in memories of the past one day and memories fade away anyhow. Perhaps this is mending or healing process for the blue little baby Earth as we have got to see nature’s beauty once again. Perhaps he was right that we are the virus and corona a vaccine for the nature. Let us pray for this curse to the humanity to vanish for good and let us stay at home just to protect our loved ones.

Writer: Ayaz Abro

Campaign: Dare To Write

I am not a Writer

When I started reading fiction, I went deep into the characters, I felt like I am writing these stories because the books I chose to read had stories that were almost relatable to my observations and daily life. I started feeling like a writer and wanted to get fame like well-known writers.

Stressed Writer

To get fame, I began writing a story of my own experience in my teenage, I wrote three to four pages and left it till today. I was not able to go step by step and deliver what I wanted to share. But the feeling of being a writer didn’t leave me, so I started to write little articles on current issues of those days.  My articles were not concrete enough to be published. Another drawback of my articles were that I was not able to conclude them effectively. Even After getting some courses of writing and hardship, I cannot have my own useful write-up to show people or publish at any relevant platform. There are some factors such as ideas, content, emotional attachment and conclusion which play hindrance in writing.

Ideas:

When I think of writing, I am short of ideas to write on. I start giving time to myself to ponder upon the world and think of something to write upon. Several times, I don’t cross this step of writing.

Content and Emotional Attachment:

Once I get an idea/topic of my interest, Most of time, I have only emotional views on the topic. Emotional attachment to the write-up is not always acceptable by audience. Even when my content is free of my emotions, I don’t have enough content to organize it in such a way that it can be shared with people.

Conclusion:

Conclusion is of very importance in every format of writing. If the entire script is presented well but it is short of effective conclusion, reader gets annoyed of the writer. I am lacking this skill of concluding my thoughts in a systematic way so that reader gets moral from them. I have left writing on many topics at this step too.

Today when I look back into those days, when I used to think I am a writer, I smile on my adversity of worthless ideas, lacking concreteness in content-having emotional attachment to it, and poverty of sound conclusion. There is so much to work on these factors to become a writer. Till then, I can openly say I am not a writer.

Writer: Sheeraz Ahmed

Campaign: Dare to Write

Relearning the Climate Change

Climate change is very much on the agenda these days. Abrupt monsoon rains are causing floods and wreckage every year. Thousands of people are getting affected, hundreds other lose their lives; and the people in same number get displaced due to climate driven natural calamities. Climate change is a tragedy of commons that is it affects all the countries and regions of the world in same way and with nearly the same intensity as it affects Pakistan. With no doubts in mind, climate change does pose an existential threat to the world. And now is the right time to unlearn the previously held beliefs about climate change and relearn an entirely radical approach to fight this monster on the horizon.

Effects of climate change

For an average Pakistani, environmental deterioration unfolds because of continuously growing deforestation in the past few decades. Therefore, to combat the climate change, an average Pakistani, using his conventional wisdom, suggests to compensate this deforestation with equal afforestation and reforestation. In other words, to save the planet, plant as much trees as you can!

But can more and more plantation really heal the ailing planet? Scientists and climate experts stand polarized over this issue today. Many climate experts believe it is possible to mitigate the effects of CO2 emissions by planting more and more trees; but doing so might bring the 9 billion people on the verge of malnourishment and starvation (Since mitigating the effects of CO2 emissions requires biomass plantation at large scale and converting agricultural land into biomass plantation would mean less food production and higher chances of food shortage).

While the scientists and climate experts around the world do believe that plantation can help us reduce the increase in temperature by lesser fraction, this belief is widely dissented by a minority of hardliners among climate experts, who take the extremes instead. Nadine Unger, for example, who is an assistant professor of atmospheric chemistry at Yale University, argued in her piece published in The New York Times, that plantation would worsen the situation more than it would help us to combat the threat of climate change. In her opinion, we cannot reverse or even undo the global warming with the help of forestation only. She pointed out that trees emit reactive volatile gases which, when combined with fossil fuels from the cars and industries in the environment, form even more dangerous airborne chemical toxics and are health hazardous for human beings. Therefore, amid this climate emergency, plants can’t save the planet.

Today we are living in the decade zero, which means all our emissions in this decade will actually determine our environmental deterioration in the coming years. And as the large number of studies have shown the plants’ incompetency to fully combat the climate change, and also given the climate emergency we are currently living in, we should not waste any more time to react and address the main culprit involved in overheating the planet.

Today, economic activities are considered as the main culprit for environmental wreckage as opposed to deforestation, which only accounts for 15 percent of the global greenhouse emissions. Therefore, this calls for our urgent attention to be paid at reforming the economic system and not asking for planting the trees.

With the advent of globalization, the patterns of trade and economic activities have been greatly altered. The maritime transportation for exporting the goods across the globe has increased by nearly 400 percent over the years; adding more and more CO2 emissions in the environment.

The positive relationship between economic activities and environmental degradation can’t be better seen and measured than in the case of China. China, after its entry in the World Trade Organization in 2001, has witnessed a breakneck economic growth. In the years following its entry in the WTO, Chinese ambitions for economic growth touched the new heights and their indiscriminate burning of the coal for keeping the light ON in factories made them – as Andreas Malm, a Swedish historian on coal has rightly pointed out – “chimney of the world”. Today China stands as the leading polluter of the world. However, China started very slowly at CO2 emissions in the earlier years, but soon it started to gain momentum and by 2007, China was responsible for two thirds of the annual increase in global emissions. Many people believe that such increase in Chinese emissions was due to the massive infrastructure and development projects. But much of it is tied with economic activities. In one study conducted from 2002 to 2008, 48 percent of China’s total emission was related to producing goods for exports.

Free trade has also heated the planet to greater extent. In the neoliberal era, the emission growth had witnessed a decline from 4.5 percent annual increases in the 1960s to just 1 percent a year in the 1990s. But this millennium started with a dramatic increase in CO2 emissions, a big thanks to free trade. Between 2000 to 2008, the growth rate reached 3.4 percent a year. In 2009, however, due to financial crisis, the world witnessed a decline in the CO2 emission growth; but soon in 2010, the emission growth rate reached the record high increase of 5.9 percent a year. Such increasing trends in the growth of CO2 emissions forced Inter governmental panel on climate change (IPCC), premier body for advising governments on climate change, to acknowledge the role that economic activities play in driving the climate change and it highlighted in its fifth assessment report, “A growing share of total anthropogenic CO2 emissions is released in the manufacture of products that are traded across international borders.”

As the growing consensus of scientists and climate experts shows today that it is not the deforestation which is driving the climate change but our economic system which is overheating the planet. Therefore, rather than focusing on the more obsolete, clichéd, and naïve idea of combating the climate change by more and more plantation, it has now become much necessary to direct our attention towards the role that economic activities play in harming the ecosystem.

Remember, the climate change is a fact and not a fiction. Therefore, if we didn’t stop the planet from being destroyed, it will ultimately destroy us!

Writer: Alley Haider

Campaign: Dare to Write

Nothing is Impossible

Almost everyone has heard this quote, nothing is impossible, indeed this is true. A person can do anything he wants, but sometimes people become discouraged and demotivated because they do not achieve what they want.

NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE

I do not know why people do not understand, to get success easily is not easy one, it requires a lot of efforts and hard work. Sometimes we humans blame God for our faults and mistakes and become frustrated on God. This is not God’s fault but this is ours because humans are not doing much attempts to get success and they are doing only one attempt and in only one attempt they judge their potential. Yes, this is another truth, potential of success matters a lot, every person has different potential, different energy and different strength to which they are blessed with. Potential of every person is God-gifted but people are not understanding this thing and they compare self-potential with other person’s potential. Comparison leads a person to the way of failure. If a person believes in God and his potential and put much efforts to achieve the goal then he will be successful in his goal. So, nothing is impossible! everything is possible in the world with hard work.

Writer: Kubra Hassan

Campaign: Dare to Write

Start Collaborating

Arouse your heart to contemplation, keep your side clear off the night, and be heedful towards your Lord,

With this I will start my write up.

Today’s world has become self-centered and to some extent narcissist too. Here, everyone deems his opinion greater than others and thinks that he has all the qualities of a scholar.

collaborating hands

We have lost the mentality of acceptance. Not to talk of acceptance, even we are not ready to listen what others have to say about a particular thing. When we are discussing things with scholars, we clarify doubts and we also come into solutions for our issues that are internally engulfing us. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is believed to have said,

“A single conversation across the task with a wise man is better than ten years of mere study of books.”

We should collaborate with others because it results in the enhanced creativity, insight and collaboration that happens when two minds focus together on a single matter. Create a short list of wise men and women that currently support or could support your personal mastery journey. There is nothing wrong in asking others to make you understand one of the myriads of mysteries.

اپنے سے اچھے کو تلاش کر

اپنے جیسے کے ساتھ تو عمر ضائع کرے گا (Shaikh Sadi)

Writer: Ayaz Abro

Campaign: Invest An Idea

The Other Creatures

Imagine yourself being engaged in snatching a bone from a dog, who has been starving and fainting from hunger for most of his life. What will be his spontaneous reaction? He will attack you as if you have put your foot on his ailing tail. He will tweeze your muscles and try to reap what you have done to him. That is what happens when men are thrashed and assaulted, they vent their frustration on the commonly known creatures known as ‘Prostitutes’.

These creatures are known as “Tawaif” in our Urdu. Urdu which has a pertinent word for the one who sell their bodies but, it has no swear word for those barbarous men, who knock at their door so much so that they don’t have to close those doors. This is not my lamentation from Urdu, but it is of Saddat Hassan Manto actually. It should have a word for the other hand because it takes Two to Tango.

Prostitution is not a chosen vocation it is rather an enforced field to work within. A woman doesn’t adopt this with her assent, but it is her compulsion to step her feet into this cirque. The society is to be blamed for this, it allows a woman to grow as a prostitute, but it does not want her to ride a Horse Cart for her living. Our society has adopted a ‘One Eye Rule’. It degrades a prostitute but adopts a deaf ear policy for the ones who use them as a flesh time and again in order to quench their thirst. One should never forget that not every woman is a Vaishya, but that every Vaishya is a woman.

Writer: Ayaz Abro

Campaign: Invest An Idea

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Monday, 13 April 2020

Covid-19 and Rural Areas of Sindh