Our constitution doesn't guarantee subsistence to the citizens. Nor does the constitution of the jungle. In a jungle, an animal must survive all on its own or perish. Likewise, a human animal in our land must survive all on its own or perish. Have we plagiarised the jungle constitution? One simply wonders Obviously, the jungle constitution was not written by the political representatives of the animals. It was written by Nature. If some of the animals keep dying of starvation, nature is the culprit. It must be put in the dock. On the contrary, our constitution is written by ourselves. If some of our brethren die of starvation, we are the criminals. If we have an iota of moral sensibility, we should put ourselves in the dock. According to a press report, on the eleventh of this month a young mother flung herself along with her two kids on to a railway track. The train crushed all the three to death in a jiffy. (Our trains are expert life-crushers). The mother and the kids relieved Pakistan of their burden. The police searched the mother's bag. It yielded a chit. The chit revealed that it was all because of extreme poverty. Perhaps, the mother was too poor to buy poison and die under her own roof - if she at all had a roof. The railway track cost her nothing. Generally, poverty kills a poor person millimetre by millimetre. Obviously, a day and night starvation agony is absolutely unbearable. Poverty must have been munching her for a long time. A time must have come when she had nothing more to offer to the monster. She killed herself. And when she killed herself if was not that she killed herself alone. By killing herself, she also killed her poverty. The mother's killing herself and her kids is not at all an unprecedented incident. Some poor Pakistani parents have been periodically killing themselves and their kids. In this regard, mothers have outclassed fathers. In the past, some mothers jumped into canals along with their kids. Some jumped into wells. Some poisoned themselves. Some used railway tracks. In a word some poor parents have emancipated their families from poverty by emancipating them from life itself. What a remedy Various international agencies have been regularly warning us about our formidable poverty growth rate. What the agencies are saying is all Greek to us. We think that the agencies are interfering in our domestic affair. They lack manners. Who is responsible for our poverty which has been regularly devouring so many of our poor families? Since we cannot discover the real causes of the epidemic, the epidemic must keep on flourishing unabated. What a pity The masses keep blaming the rulers for our poverty. Would that the masses knew that the rulers were as innocent as a dead-born baby. It is not that the rulers are insensitive to our poverty They are sensitive about it. But they have no time for fighting poverty. They have more urgent things to do. Unfortunately, the rulers have used all the available resources and their energy for solving problems other than the poverty problem. No wonder, our masses keep looking wistfully at the rulers with tearful eyes. But the poor man's tears are no remedy for his stomach agony. Instead of mitigating his misery, the tears make him more miserable. A hungry man's tears act as spears. They scrape his very eyes We regularly hold fashion shows. We regularly hold flower shows. We regularly celebrate the birth anniversaries of our heroes. We regularly celebrate our Independence Day. But we have been criminally indifferent to our poverty. Let's forthwith atone for this criminality. We must start holding poverty shows on a regular basis. The rulers have proclaimed that they are determined to deal with our poverty on a priority basis. May God help them But they haven't made public the devises which they intend to use for the purpose. Let's have the temerity to suggest a mechanism of our own. It might appeal to them. Here it is. The rulers must first provide the masses with the basic needs of life out of the national exchequer. The money left over they can use for whatever purposes they fancy to use it. They may even burn it for personal revelries. But they must first ensure that poverty does not burn the poor masses to ashes.