From Murad Moosa Khan, professor of psychiatry at Aga Khan University, Karachi. Please see the source for complete article.
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Although by katchi abadi standards, Grax is better than many others, the village has many social, physical and civic deprivations. During one of our visits, the community health worker expressed concern about a girl who appeared ‘mentally disturbed’. She lived about a mile from the centre. We went to visit her at her house.
A small cordoned-off area with two small rooms, a small area for the kitchen and a toilet with open drains constituted the ‘house’ of 75 square yards, perhaps a little more. The father of the girl was unemployed, the elder brother suffering from some sort of ‘mental imbalance’. A number of semi-clad children were milling about — presumably brothers and sisters. Their only source of income was a buffalo.
The health worker was right. The girl did appear unwell, “for the past three years,” her mother told us, “since the birth of her son”. He died a month after being born. The girl talked to imaginary voices, was frightened of others, and laughed to herself. She had run out of the house many times. Unable to afford medicines or have her treated on a regular basis, the family kept her tied to a tree. The result: badly infected wounds with pus and blood oozing out from both ankles.
Long abandoned by her husband — older than her by many years — she now lay on straw matting in the corner of one of the two small rooms, oblivious to her surroundings. She appeared not to have had a wash in weeks. I tried to engage her in conversation but she looked past me, and I was unable to penetrate her secret world. I asked the mother the girl’s age. “Fifteen…,” she said; the words echoed in my ears.
While we read about the fabulous growth rate of seven per cent and higher, the Karachi Stock Market making a record 14,000 points, a Porsche showroom opening in Lahore and of the economic ‘miracle’ that is today’s Pakistan, the picture on the ground tells a different story. The story of the girl I related above is illustrative of the lives of millions of Pakistanis today.
Ismailimail 
What a tragic reality!! Unless civil society development and institutional involvement does not take place at the grass roots levels such stories will be repeated over and over again. Instead of teaching to memorize the message of God, the masses should be taught to understand and implement the message of Allah which is the civic and moral responsibility of every muslim, not just the government or the elite of the country, who are detached from such pits and holes in very fabric of the masses they reside in. Unless the intoxication of power and selfishness is replaced with the fear of God and love for humanity, these tragedies will fall on deaf ears and unsensitized minds.
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