News reports about the Punjab Government demolishing irregularly constructed houses on land illegally occupied by a politician, with links to opposition, are encouraging. There should be a nationwide drive against all such encroachments, with no exceptions.
This culture of grabbing/allotment of state lands is a legacy of British Raj, who used allotment of state lands to buy loyalties of those willing to betray their motherland. Quaid referred to this as the curse of corruption and bribery which we inherited from British India.
One former parliamentarian from AIML while addressing the Unionist Premier in the Punjab Legislature told him that God Forbid, if Hitler were to land on the shores of Indian Ocean, people like him would prostrate on the shores to kiss the feet of Hitler’s generals.
Unfortunately, Quaid died soon after independence and remnants of British Raj, in nexus with paid civil and uniformed bureaucracy, trained to serve an occupation force, took over and derailed Jinnah’s vision of a modern democratic welfare state.
Pakistan today suffers and no lessons seem to have been learned, even after humiliation and defeat of surrender in 1971. We continue to be hostage to this insatiable greed of few. There is hardly a State funded department or institution, whose regular employees paid for 24/7 service to the people, are instead involved in administering and operating housing societies, built on state or private land acquired for this purpose, under the garb of welfare. This endless greed for commercial profiteering has resulted in the evil nexus of few within paid bureaucracy to work in collusion with Land Mafia Dons which have occupied even forest land and amenity parks like Kidney Hill in Karachi with no fear of accountability. Blinded by greed, even agriculture land within sterile zones, near the border, is up for grabs.
Malik Tariq Ali
Lahore
