The deaths caused by power politics

The death of 11 women and children in a stampede in Karachi on Friday during the distribution of charity ration shows how inflation-hit people are prepared to risk their lives to get free food for their families. The composition of the crowd also underlines that it mostly consisted of women from white-collar families, underlining the reality that the rapidly soaring cost of living is now starting to bite people across the economic divide. Only the top quintile of the population remains insulated from the adverse effects of the rising prices on their life as middle-income families are now selling their assets to survive after having exhausted their life savings if they had any. The Sindh Industrial and Trading Estate stampede has been one of the several such incidents occurring from Karachi to Khyber ever since Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif rolled out his expensive, signature-free atta (wheat flour) distribution project from the start of Ramadan as despondency overtakes a vast majority of the 230 million people of the country suffering from one of its worst economic and financial crisis, exacerbated by the continuing political strife and uncertainty.