Air Blue plane crashes near Islamabad

The Air Blue aeroplane travelling from Karachi to Islamabad crashed over the Margalla Hills near Islamabad. All 152 people on board were killed and according to some reports there were three travelers from Giligit-Balstian as well.

NDMA workers, Rescue 15, the Police and workers from various humanitarian NGOs based in Islamabad responded very quickly to the disaster. People were brought in body-bags to PIMS hospital, and gruesome scenes of sorrow could be witnessed as the tormented relatives came to find out the whereabouts of their loved ones.

While the Pakistani government has announced a day of mourning to remember the dead, the Indian External Affairs minister Mr S M Krishna has expressed his condolences to the unfortunate victims .

According to media reports the black box of the aeroplane has been found but the reasons of the crash have not been established yet. The investigations will continue and there is suspicion that the plane crashed because of technical faults.

Food for thought

Air travel, telephone and now the internet all of these are establishing a world without borders. Since the Industrial Revolution that started in England in 18th century, there has been a constant annihilation of space, and in a sense also a contraction of time. Technology has changed us to rethink our assumptions, our relationship with nature, the methods of our social organisation, value-systems and time-tested traditions. The world of economic growth should have created opportunities yet there are far fewer out there in the world, with stark contrasts of poverty and wealth, living side by side. Take the example of Mumbai, and Karachi where Katchi Abadis are overshadowed by high-rise buildings. This is not a South Asian phenomenon but one can also see the same pattern in big African cities like Lagos, Nairobi, and Cape Town, so is the case in the Latin American Soweto where  poor live next to rich. Why is there so much difference? To answer that question we are putting a famous quote below for you to think, from JM Keynes the 2oth century British economist, who attempted to make sense of modern economic change.

”The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, aremore powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”. John Maynard Keynes