IMAGINE a small street vendor in Rawalpindi. He wakes up before sunrise, pushes his cart to the roadside and spends the day selling tea, snacks or fruit. Whatever he earns that day pays for food, school fees, electricity and perhaps a little medicine. He is not building an empire. He is simply trying to survive.
Then one morning, someone arrives and tells him that his cart is an encroachment. His place of business disappears. His daily income disappears with it. The children still need food, the landlord still wants rent and the school still wants its fees. The law may have been correctly applied, but poverty does not read government notifications.
This is where a recent study conducted by MSPH student Saad Hassan at the Health Services Academy becomes important. The study surveyed 240 small business owners in commercial Rawalpindi and also conducted detailed interviews with 18 of them. The findings are difficult to ignore. About 61 percent screened positive for clinically significant depression and 50 percent for anxiety. More than one-third reported suicidal thoughts. Almost 71 percent had at least one of the two conditions.
The study also found a strong relationship between the way business owners experienced enforcement and their mental health. Those reporting a high enforcement burden had much higher odds of depression and anxiety. Business owners described fear, uncertainty, helplessness, financial pressure and feeling that years of hard work could disappear overnight.
Of course, nobody is suggesting that laws should not be enforced. Illegal construction, unsafe buildings, tax evasion and encroachments can create genuine problems. The question is how we enforce them. A notice, a reasonable period to comply and a chance to understand the rules are very different from waking up to find one’s only source of income sealed or removed.
There is also something called the poverty disease cycle. Poverty increases stress, poor housing, poor nutrition and difficulty accessing healthcare. These increase illness. Illness reduces the ability to work and earn, pushing the family deeper into poverty. If an already struggling person’s livelihood is suddenly disrupted, this cycle can move even faster. A regulation designed to improve a city can unintentionally become another turn of the screw for those already living on the edge.
There is an old saying attributed to Lao Tzu: “Governing a large country is like frying a small fish. You spoil it through too much poking.” Perhaps there is some wisdom here for modern government. People do need governance, but they do not necessarily need to feel the government’s hand in every minute detail of their daily struggle.
There is also a beautiful story associated with Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya. A king once came to him wanting to understand the condition of his people. Nizamuddin gave him the cloth he used to dry himself after ablution. That night, the king supposedly learned in a dream about the lives and sufferings of his subjects. The next day he began arresting criminals. Nizamuddin was unhappy. The king had seen the hoarder and the thief, he explained, but had failed to see the mother quietly putting her hungry, weak children to sleep. That may be the real lesson.
Governments can count encroachments, violations, fines and sealed buildings. But someone must also count the families behind those numbers. If government cannot make a poor person’s life better, perhaps it should at least be careful not to make it worse. Sometimes the most intelligent form of governance is not doing more. It is knowing when to stop poking the fish.
—The writer is Professor of Public Health, Shifa Tameer-e-Millat University, Islamabad.
