■ One Parliamentary Alarm. Where Are the Guardians of the Public Trust? ■
No, Mr Minister.
I am not ready to lose another generation.
I was not even born when my grandfather and my elder sister were swallowed by the violence that accompanied the birth of this country. My two generations stood at the border and paid their price for Pakistan while I was still in the world before birth. I had not yet arrived to witness what they endured.
But I am alive now.
And I am listening.
So are 250 million other citizens.
We can hear. We can think. We can question. We can speak. And some of us still carry a pen.
When Federal Health Minister Mustafa Kamal stood in the Senate and told the House that around 400,000 children aged one to five die every year — roughly 1,300 a day — and that many of these deaths could be prevented through timely and effective healthcare, that was no longer merely a number in a political speech. It was a national alarm sounded from the floor of Parliamen
Roughly forty thousand children a month.
Forty thousand future citizens.
Forty thousand children being taken from their mothers’ laps before they can become the doctors, teachers, engineers, farmers, artists, workers, parents and citizens this country needs.
How many are being lost because of poverty? How many because of malnutrition? How many because of a health system that fails them? How many because of policies written far away from the mothers who must live with their consequences? And how many because bureaucracy has learned to turn human suffering into files, committees and waiting?
These are not questions that can be buried beneath another political speech.
The minister spoke from Parliament.
Then Parliament must listen.
The government must listen.
The bureaucracy must listen.
And yes — those of us who carry the pen must listen.
Because the tragedy is no longer merely the death of 1,300 children a day.
The deeper tragedy would be if 1,300 became normal.
Pakistan must not become a country where the death of children is counted more efficiently than it is prevented.
And the Punjab Healthcare Commission?
Must be careful, the regulatory body entrusted with overseeing healthcare establishments, enforcing standards and investigating failures within the healthcare system?
A regulator cannot exist merely to frighten hospital administrations, issue notices or impose penalties. Its real test comes when a patient lies helpless inside a hospital — particularly a child whose parents have no power, no influence and nowhere else to go.
If a registered hospital fails to provide the standards required by law, who was watching?
If repeated failures occur inside regulated healthcare facilities, who was inspecting?
Do you some hospitals never ever checked their emergency door’s rusty locks in years?
If warnings were ignored, who enforced the rules?
And if enforcement failed, who was accountable?
The public cannot be asked to accept the existence of a regulatory commission while being denied the protection that commission was created to provide.
This is not about one political party.
It is not about one minister.
It is not about scoring a political point against one government.
It is about the child who never gets a chance to become a citizen.
And now I have another question — this time for the Honourable Supreme Court of Pakistan.
Can the Court remain a silent spectator when a Federal Minister stands on the floor of the Senate and places before the nation a figure of this magnitude — around 1,300 children a day, approximately 40,000 a month?
This is not a rumour whispered in a marketplace.
This is not a political claim made at a rally.
This is a statement made by a Federal Minister on the floor of Parliament.
It demands verification at the highest level.
I believe the matter warrants suo motu judicial scrutiny.
Let the Court call for the official data.
Let the government produce the evidence behind the minister’s statement.
Let the responsible departments come before the Court.
Let the Prime Minister, the relevant ministers, health authorities and regulators answer — not as political opponents, but as constitutional office-holders entrusted with the lives and future of the people.
If the figure is wrong, let the nation know the truth.
If the figure is right, let the government explain to the Honourable Court — and to the nation — why approximately 40,000 children are being lost every month, what has been done to prevent those deaths, who was responsible for enforcing the safeguards, and why those safeguards failed.
The Court need not accept my accusation.
It need only ask the questions.
Forty thousand children deserve nothing less.
And what of the other Guardians of the Public Trust?
The Press must not look away.
The institutions of the State must not look away.
A country does not guard only its geographical frontiers. It must guard the ideals upon which it was founded — and, above all, the life, dignity and future of the common citizen.
The armed forces stand among the country’s most powerful guardians against threats to its geographical integrity, its national ideals and the security of its people.
So when the future citizens of the country are disappearing by the thousands, the alarm cannot remain inside the walls of a hospital, a ministry or Parliament.
It must be heard by every institution powerful enough to protect the nation.
Later that evening, I found BāBā-Tāl sitting at a small roadside dhaba in G-8, not far from PIMS.
At first glance, he seemed almost misplaced in the ordinary evening crowd.
He wore a faded nnavy-bluerobe, blue jeans torn near the knees, with loose joggers beneath it. His French-style beard framed a weathered face, while his black hair, still thick with colour, stood in quiet contrast to the deep lines running across his face — lines that looked to me like narrow mountain paths carved by centuries of wind.
And then there were his eyes.
Deep.
Unsettlingly deep.
Eyes that seemed to have watched governments rise and fall, kings enter their courts, marble corridors of state houses fill with footsteps, and sacred rooms of courts where the fate of ordinary people was placed before those who held power.
A familiar fragrance which always comes with him — something I could never name, but always recognized.
And, of course, there were the bells.
Small brass bells sewn into his robe.
They chimed softly whenever he moved.
He sat quietly, holding a steaming cup of tea between both hands, wrapping them around it as though warming his fingers against the evening air.
For a while, he said nothing.
Then came that familiar little chime.
“Bacha!”
I looked at him.
“In a healthy and legitimate society,”
he whispered,
“the Supreme Court stands higher than the government quarters.”
He paused and took a slow sip.
“Not because judges are kings. Not because courts rule the people. But because the ordinary citizen must have somewhere to stand when every other door is closed.”
His eyes moved towards PIMS.
“The Court is the custodian of the citizen’s rights. It is one of the guardians of the nation’s integrity. When the machinery of the state fails the weakest citizen, the Court must be able to ask the state: Why?”
He lowered the cup.
“And remember, Bacha — the guardianship of a nation does not end at its borders.”
I waited.
“The armed forces guard the country’s physical frontiers,” he said.
“But they must also guard the principles upon which the country was founded.”
A pause …..
And yes, they must keep watch dag eyes inside lines, to provide …..
happy mornings,
hopeful days,
beautiful evenings and
restful nights to the people of country.”
The bells on his robe barely moved.
“Then tell me, Bacha…”
He looked towards the great walls of the hospital.
“When a Federal Minister places before Parliament a number as terrible as this — when the future citizens of the country are disappearing by the thousands — is it not the responsibility of the Chief Justice to ask the first question?”
He lifted the cup again.
Not loudly.
Not angrily.
Almost as a whisper:
“Who is responsible?”
The weight of trust . . .
BāBā-Tāl looked down into his tea.
For a moment, the dhaba disappeared.
The traffic disappeared.
Even the walls of PIMS seemed to fade into the evening mist.
Then, from somewhere beyond the noise of the city, came the words of the Quran:
“Indeed, Allah commands you to render trusts to whom they are due; and when you judge between people, judge with justice.”
— Surah An-Nisa 4:58.
—
BāBā-Tāl listened as though the words had been spoken directly to him.
Then he said:
“And the Holy Prophet Muhammad [Peace and blessings be upon him] reminded those who hold responsibility that every one of them is answerable for the people placed in their care.”
Sahih Muslim 1829a — The Book of Government.
He let the silence return.
“Then what is a government, bacha, if not a trust?”
I had no answer.
“What is a ministry?”
No answer.
“A hospital?”
Silence.
“A court?”
He smiled faintly.
“Even a uniform,
a chair,
a seal,
a file,
a signature — all are trusts when human lives depend upon them.”
For a moment, another voice seemed to enter the dhaba from across the centuries —
Shakespeare’s courtroom, where mercy and justice stand before power.
Then came Alexander Pope:
“For forms of government let fools contest,
Whate’er is best administered is best.”
BāBā-Tāl wrapped his fingers around the cup.
“Bacha…”
The bells on his robe trembled.
“Perhaps the question is not who governs us.”
He looked towards the lights of Islamabad.
“Perhaps the question is whether those who govern remember that they were entrusted with us.”
Somewhere high above the city, in my “Eyrie”- the Eagle’sNest, my roof-top studio apartment at F-10 markaz, I imagined my pen waiting on the table.
Forty thousand names without names.
Forty thousand futures without tomorrows.
The number had begun as a statistic.
Now it had become a wound.
I wanted to write.
But for a few seconds, the pen would not move.
What could I write about forty thousand mothers?
What word could carry forty thousand empty cradles?
What sentence could bring back forty thousand futures that had never been allowed to begin?
A tear fell onto the page.
Then another.
I looked at the ink running beneath them.
And suddenly I understood what my pen had been searching for.
These were no longer merely tears.
They were “Poetears” — where tears become poetry, and poetry becomes tears.
I lifted the pen.
BāBā-Tāl whispered:
“Bacha…”
I waited.
“Now write.”
And I did.
Forty thousand future citizens.
Who will answer?
Because 1,300 children a day are not merely dying.
Pakistan is losing tomorrow — one child at a time.