If you remember Shaukat Aziz, then you you would remember the “bumper crop.” I still remember Shaukat Aziz’s funny smile, when he said with a stupid grin that Pakistan needs 20 million ton wheat, while this year (i.e. 2007) we have produced 23.3 million ton.
So have we Pakistanis grown so “Paitoo”, or what? I now feel guilty as I believed Shaukat Aziz and started eating 3 chapaties instead of 2. And now its getting hard to even get one for most of the Pakistanis.
Pakistan is an agricultural country and the meal of common man was to eat “roti with chutni”, and he cannot do it anymore. Very few could pay Rs. 7 or Rs. 6 for one roti. It is being said that various factors are responsible for this flour crisis. First the wheat production was exaggerated by the former government, then the estimates were wrong, then the wheat was smuggled, then it was hoarded, then it was again hoarded, and when things really turned nasty, only then government has started to something.
As the rangers have been deplyoed on flour mills, and they are trying to make sure that flour gets reached to the masses, it is also the need of time to really boil the asses of those who are real culprits behind these crisis. It is being said that lotas of PML-Q in Punjab are mainly responsible for this, and its a test for regime once again. A tough one indeed.
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