Inflation?
what’s that?
Shakir
Lakhani
AUGUST
6, 2019
Inflation is, reportedly,
very high nowadays, principally due to the nefarious activities of those
parties that lost the last general elections and couldn’t form a government.
Despite being in the opposition, they seem to have so much power even now that
they are able to damage the country by raising prices of essential items. They
used the same tricks to keep the rate of inflation low during their last stint
in power, not allowing the dollar to increase by more than ten percent over
five years, which is why they were rejected in the last poll. At least, this is
what we have to assume since the present high inflation has not at all affected
the popularity of the current government.
Having spent so much time on this planet, I know all kinds of
people from every group in society. I know billionaires as well as paupers.
Among my acquaintances are those who are struggling to survive on their
salaries, as well as those whose only problem is how to spend the millions they
earned yesterday. Some are feudal landlords who don’t care if the price of
petrol shoots up to two thousand rupees a liter, and there are those who have
heart attacks every time the government increases the price of kerosene or gas.
I met a wealthy man last week who makes millions every month
from the many houses and shops he has rented out. He is a smuggler with friends
and relatives in all government departments. I asked him, “Are you affected by
the high rate of inflation?” “What inflation?” he asked, glancing at his seven
million rupee watch and getting up to go. “I have no problem with inflation;
this year too I’ll go for my four annual vacations and two pilgrimages to the
Holy Land. My only problem is whether to go with my second wife or the third
one, whom I married last week.”
Next, I asked a Customs officer whether inflation had affected
him. He cheerfully said that he has simply increased the amount of bribes he
gets from importers. Not long ago, he used to charge twenty-five thousand
rupees to let a container of refrigerators and air conditioners go out of the
port without looking into it, today he charges forty thousand rupees. And the
importer said, “I recover the extra money from shop owners, who in turn charge
more from their customers, who wouldn’t be buying refrigerators and air
conditioners if they weren’t rich”.
A construction magnate
said, “Yes, the increase in cement and steel prices will cause the prices of
apartments to go up, but hey, who cares? Buyers of luxury apartments can afford
to pay much more.”
Then I asked a few of
those who are known as the ‘middle class’. They are the ones who earn anything
from twenty-five thousand to fifty thousand rupees a month; they are comprised
mostly of peons, clerks, electricians and plumbers. This is the group that
should be badly affected by high prices of petrol, electricity, gas, medicines
and food. How do they plan to deal with inflation? Some said they would give up
going to cheap restaurants and dhabas completely, or restrict eating out to
once in three months. Others said their wives would not buy two new suits this
summer; they will do with old and second-hand clothes. Their long cherished
desire to go for Hajj will have to be postponed indefinitely. They will
transfer their children from schools charging a thousand rupees a month to a
madrassah charging three hundred rupees a month.
As for the sixty or
seventy million poor living below the poverty line, beggars and those who
depend on charity, they know their conditions will never change, whoever is in
power. They easily get free food at shrines and at Edhi and Sailani welfare
homes; they live in hovels and sleep out in the open, even during rains and
cold weather. They don’t have to worry about petrol, gas, food, medicine and
electricity prices. When they fall sick they simply lie down and die without
bothering anyone. They are the lucky ones because they don’t fear the future,
they don’t care if the stock market index declines by a thousand points every
day or if property prices go through the roof.
So the Great Khan and his
ministers should not worry about high inflation. The vast majority of
Pakistanis is quite capable of enduring even more hardships without protesting.
Those Pakistanis who are badly affected by high prices don’t really matter;
most of them won’t be around to cast their votes four years from now.
The
writer is an engineer, a former visiting lecturer at NED Engineering College,
an industrialist
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