For those who religiously follow current affairs and have an eye on the daily topics being discussed in our TV talk shows should agree that there was a lot of hue and cry over the Kasur child abuse scandal (early August). Media channels devoted a lot of its airtime to the issue. 

Four high-ranking police officers including a DPO were suspended. Five accused by the ATC were sent to 28 days physical remand. CM Punjab formed a five-member JIT. KP assembly went on and passed a joint resolution and declared the incident “more harrowing than the APS massacre”.

With the passage of time, the subject lost our attention until another came up. In the mid of August, Punjab Home Minister Col(r) Shuja Khanzada (may he rest in peace) was attacked by a suicide bomber in his hometown. He lost his life. Condemnations poured in. National leaders rushed to the scene. Day in day out, TV talks shows discussed the attack. Columns were written and social media was abuzz with the eulogy. With the passage of time, the subject lost our attention until another came up.

Late in August we shifted our attention towards the infamous Pak-India NSA meeting. Sartaj Aziz made presentations about the agenda of the meeting finalized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Nawaz Sharif approved the agenda. Kashmir got highlighted. The Blame game started on both sides of the border. A lot of hoopla was generated but the Pak-India NSA meeting did not even materialize in the end.

Then there was no less attention given to the Peshawar airbase attack in the mid of September. National leaders rushed to the scene again. Media swung into action again. Later civil society started a campaign for Nishan-e-Haider for Syed Isfandyar Ahmed Bokhari. Gradually, the campaign lost the vigor. Like before, people lost the attention in this news as well.

Lest we missed: in the middle of all this, other developments and issues also attracted our attention. NA-19 Haripur by-election, Independence Day, Iranian foreign minister’s visit, MQM resignations, LoC skirmishes, attack on MQM’s Rashid Godil, crane crash in Makkah, Nandipur project, NAB investigations and others…

And the latest eye-catching issue which the media has latched onto, for quite a time now, is this NA-122 melodrama.

I met this fruit vendor in Lahore’s Ichra Bazaar (in the heart of NA-122) recently. Like everyone else asking each other here, I asked him, out of curiosity, the same question: “Who do you think is going to win NA-122 election?” And like every other reply, I was not expecting a reply other than a curt “Ayaz Sadiq” or “Aleem Khan.”

I was left flabbergasted when he counted on his fingers almost all the incidents mentioned above and assured me that there was nothing at all for a common person in all of this. There never has been. This by-election is just another melodrama. This is the business of the elite. This is a contest of their egos. We, the common people, have no say at all. We have nothing to do with it. His helplessness was obvious. He asked me rhetorically “Why are you so excited about the election?”

About the incidents mentioned earlier, he continued: “Haven’t you noticed in all the incidents, tragedy after tragedy, there is no method in the madness here. Every damn time, a JIT is formed, some officials get suspended, and victims get some money to shut up. The dust slowly settles, audience loses its interest, vigor is lost and finally the issue gets swept under the carpet for good”.

I was stunned by his awareness and saddened by his grievances at the same time.

There is a moment of realization here. What is missing is a wholehearted effort on part of the government and us – the common people. The tragedy is that we tend to forget too early. We have all got an attention span problem. We have become too cold hearted to even pursue anything to its logical end. We condemn, we mourn, we start a real hue and cry for the time being and move on just like that without doing anything concrete to prevent the next tragedy. And it happens again and then again.  And for the fear of losing its audience, media too – instead of following up on the issues and sticking it to face of those responsible – tends to move on to the next “hot issue”. And the dilemma, in this so fast-moving of a life, is that this callousness and carelessness has become our new “normal”. 

Our emotions and knee-jerk solutions have to be done away with in a way that long-term policy initiatives are taken. Institutionalization is the key. With an eye only towards the next election, we shall continue failing ourselves. Our democracy has gotten too many of politicians already and there are few leaders out there with a vision.

And finally, we can never afford the disillusionment of a common person. Only when a fruit vendor is internally convinced that his vote carries a value and he is a part of the democratic process, we would know that we are making our way towards a developed and delivering democracy.