Smog covered Lahore for the first time when PMLN was in power. It sustained during PTI’s tenure. And then continued through PDM’s episode. It’s been a decade; got uglier this season.
Today, it covers three divisions. Like 9 cities. Successfully.
Do you know who remained constant all this while when political pawns were being placed and replaced? Bureaucracy. The suited booted CSS babus. Looking nice, intelligent, philosophical, and literary with only an iota of functioning brain.
‘Hierarchy of Bastards.’ In simple words.
Every season, the Chief Secretary calls a meeting. Before smog. During smog. Afterwards. Meetings and more meetings. And they end up as clueless as they always are.
And every season, we have a new Chief Secretary who doesn’t know what the previous one said in golden words. So, the same episodes are telecasted each season.
It is like joining a new department after messing up the previous one without any strings attached. Working hard and hardly working. That’s what CSS is about and that’s why people aspire one to be. Have all the resources with zero output, ignominious corruption, and no punishment.
Sky is the limit.
But they do have a comedic sense to the crises.
For instance, if you ask these bureaucrats how are they going to manage this smog, they may come back with out-of-the-box comments. They can tell you it is their “Family Planning” initiative to manage the challenge of population in the long-run. They will elaborate how it will reduce 7-years of people’s life and how it will resolve issues of crime, pension, food scarcity, and obviously, population.
They will brief the timeline. Like it was in a pilot mode a decade back, and now it is in Phase-II with three divisions covered.
Jokes apart, they can utter the same in public if they are given such notes by their subordinates. Remember that speech in 3 Idiots? That guy on dice reading whatever was in front of him could have been the most suitable candidate for CSS.
Anyway. Do you know how bureaucracy is overseeing Smog?
Multiple projects for the elite are in progress. DHA Lahore will be connected to Gulberg and Jail Road – signal free. Cavalry is closed for an underpass. Walton Road is closed for a bridge near Cavalry, while the nullah of that road is flowing on the road along with the traffic. Looks so nice.
Akbar Chowk is all messed up with an under-construction bridge for months.
Central Business District (CBD) – or you can call next level real estate work of civil and military establishment – is in full progress. This should have been the Central Park of Lahore to mitigate smog, but boys thought to make money out of it. They even threw Walton Airport out of the city for this billion-dollar business. For elites. Not you. A new road will connect Walton from Packages’ side to Kalma Chowk.
More concrete is being laid in the city. More and more. Less space for trees. Less space for oxygen.
But worry not. The bureaucrats are managing it will. Some decades down the road, people will remember how population crises was handled. With smog.
