By Zeenia Satti
Distribution management is a science. Are Pakistan’s relevant government functionaries not educated in this science? Why is distribution of free flour frequently turning into a riot, a stampede, a brawl or a violent event which leaves some of the needy maimed for life, or injured for a long period, or dead?
The other day, TV news showed us that while collecting a sack of flour for her family, a woman was shoved around so violently in a crowd gathered for collection of free flour that her arm broke. She was not even interviewed by any TV channel, simply shown as a statistic of one injured. She may be a worker whose salary is entirely reliant on her arm being functional at all times. She came only for a sack of flour to relieve herself of the unbearable expense of having to buy one and left with a limb of her body she needs to earn a livelihood with permanently crippled or weakened beyond repair. Affording critical medical care for a long time is obviously not an option for the poor. The government too cannot guarantee it.
The occasion to collect free grocery should not become an occasion for poor citizens to turn on each other or irreparably harm each other. A caring act of the government should not become an indictment of the systemic hunger forcing humans to behave like desperate animals. Deprivation is a bond. The deprived should be allies helping each other instead of shoving and pushing each other in bid to be first past the goal post, convinced they will be returned empty handed if they don’t make it.
Instead of collecting the needy at a distribution point, government should issue plastic cards with a certain monetary ceiling operative throughout the month and either mandate all local grocery stores to accept these from customers in the same way they accept credit cards, as payments for whatever the government intends to provide free of cost or at subsidized rate, or suffer fine and closure of their business. Most grocery stores have CCTV surveillance installed at the premise to deter looters and provide security to shoppers and shop keepers alike. In addition to CCTV cameras, most poor people have cellular telephones they can use as evidence of wrongful rejection if the shop refused to accept their plastic card as mode of payment. The government must make prompt payment to the stores to make their program credible and sustainable. The needy will be able to procure the flour they want, when they want, in a safe and hassle-free environment. The bureaucracy will not be able to embezzle funds earmarked for the purpose, at least not easily, and nation’s poor will not be turned, with regular intervals, into a tragic spectacle of want.
The current exercise of distribution of flour provides an enabling environment for corrupt individuals throughout the supply side of operation. Nepotism can thrive when bureaucrats buy from ‘select flour mills’ and keep their cut in return for giving business. Knowing the item is meant for free distribution to the poor only, a callously corrupt businessperson can stuff bags with substandard flour. Ingredients can be counterfeited for greater profit making. Transporters can siphon off desired portion from each bag before delivery. Such practices cannot thrive when plastic cards are issued for purchase of flour bags from any store where other consumers also come to buy the same and where provider is accountable for quality of all merchandise in his store. This ensures proper nutrition, the primary goal of free flour policy.
The current practice is counterproductive from the end user perspective in multiple ways. It endangers health and safety of citizens. Instead of making the needy grateful to their rulers and cheering them in their adversity, it alienates them from their government because it is psychologically stressful and physically dangerous for them and makes them suffer humiliation in the process of procuring something they want so much.
Plastic card management is far less costly than bearing the logistical cost of delivery of each sack of flour to each needy citizen. Cost of warehouse, cost of transportation, maintenance of vehicles, employment of manpower at each juncture of chain of operation, not to mention the carbon emissions from diesel or petrol-driven trucks, are unnecessary burdens on treasury and environment both. For the deserving, the time spent waiting in an inhospitable climatic environment threatening to get increasingly more so due to climate change, the cost of medical care to each needy citizen who is exposed to the hazard of sustaining bodily injury each time he or she tries to avail the opportunity of free distribution of flour should also be factored in. Special times like the month of Ramzan add further difficulty to needy citizens’ collective ordeal of procuring free flour by assembling in a designated space during finite hours.
The socio-political cost of promoting a belligerent polity with repeated provocation that renders a community mutually acrimonious must be re-examined. Government’s job is to promote harmony and maintain peace among citizens. Is the current distribution policy achieving this goal? The answer is no. It must be transformed. Mass food insecurity is already a potent driver of unrest and violence. Policy aimed at providing for people should not also result in violence. The current system of food distribution is reminiscent of the archaic system administered in the ancient Roman lepers’ colonies. Civilization has since acquired far more sophisticated practices of giving to the needy. Pakistan too needs to change ways and adopt materially advanced and culturally sophisticated practices.
I plead with our decision makers and policy executors to study how systems aimed at preventing hunger are conceived and administered in modern states and follow the best operational strategies available to us. The internet age has made learning a lot easier but internet cannot implant curiosity to learn in the minds of policy makers and executors. The culture of governance must promote curiosity to learn and adoption of innovation must be exhibited at all times by government functionaries, instead of sticking to old and unsustainable practices that defy the very goals a policy is aimed at fulfilling.
Author’s bio:
Zeenia Satti is CEO at Pakistan’s People-Led Disaster Management. PPLDM is focused on disaster risk reduction and rural poverty alleviation. Email zeenia.satti@post.harvard.edu. Twitter @Zssatti
Pakistan's People Led Disaster Management - PPLDM 