The scale of the flooding in Pakistan is difficult to grasp. An area equal to that of the United Kingdom has disappeared under water. Mercifully the number of fatalities (estimated at over 200,000 and still rising, with the threat of epidemics and starvation on the horizon) is so far lower than other recent disasters. But the number of people made homeless, and consequently more or less resource-less, is already greater than that of the 2004 tsunami and the earthquakes in Kashmir in 2005 and Haiti earlier this year, combined. Estimates of the damage to infrastructure – bridges, roads, railways, schools, hospitals and other public services – run to over $4 billion. The cost in lost output, crucially including food crops, is still too large to count.

Help from around the world has been inadequate and slow, which may be partially excused by the size of the disaster. But it has been coming in from all over, even if Thailand’s $75,000 doesn’t quite match the contributions of technically bankrupt countries like Greece and Iceland and is even less than Angelina Jolie’s individual donation of $100,000 to the UN.

And what of the Pakistani government itself?

Well, as the floodwaters threatened the 1.6 million residents of Hyderabad, President Asif Ali Zardari was taking a helicopter ride to visit a 16th century chateau in Normandy. Sightseeing? No, his family owns it.

He also spent 4 days in the UK, and was booked in at The Churchill hotel where ‘royal suites’ cost £7000 a night. (And it should be mentioned in fairness that his predecessor, Gen Pervez Musharraf, normally stayed at the even more expensive Dorchester.) This is not a bed and breakfast so meal packs were ordered from an Asian restaurant at £18 a pop. Then the Pakistani High Commission in London announced that the President would forgo the royal suite in favour of ‘the cheapest 5-star hotel in central London’.

Now a cheap 5-star hotel still costs but perhaps this lavish slumming could be justified if the trip had a clear and urgent purpose in alleviating the misery of the ordinary folk of Pakistan. Unfortunately, this does not seem to have been the case.

The highlight of the trip seems to have been a meeting in Birmingham of the Pakistani People’s Party (the Bhutto/Zardari political brand), to which leading members of the Pakistani community in the UK were invited. And provided with buses to take them there, paid for by the Pakistani government. As was the conference centre, at a reported cost of £40,000.

A fund-raiser for unfortunate fellow Pakistanis? Not quite. It was arranged well before the monsoons and seems to have been the latest step in the choreography by which Bilawal, the son of President Zardari and the late President Benazir Bhutto will eventually waltz into possession of the family inheritance – the presidency of Pakistan. He’s just finished his degree at Oxford and is all of 22, so the time is obviously ripe.

While President Zardari’s trip seems to have been an extended Marie Antoinette moment, his trip to Birmingham involved a George Bush moment. An outraged Pakistani tried to throw his shoes at him.

But could the President have been doing more if he’d stayed at home, putting assistance to his compatriots ahead of tawdry personal political ambition?

I’m not sure. The media pictures of Ban Ki-Moon looking like a distraught Canute may attract the world’s attention, and consequently more assistance. But phu yai are never much use in filling sandbags or piggy-backing the elderly and infirm out of the rising waters. And Bush seems to have been more hindrance than help in the Katrina debacle.

There are arguments that even the appearance of concern by national leaders is valuable, but perhaps President Zardari could help in a more direct way.

He is reported to be the second wealthiest individual in Pakistan with a personal net worth of 1.8 billion dollars. In a country where a few are impressively wealthy while millions are impressively poor (and just made poorer), a personal gesture, like a cheque for a few millions, could be very welcome. It might even provoke generosity among his fellow plutocrats.

But then again.

About author: Bangkokians with long memories may remember his irreverent column in The Nation in the 1980's. During his period of enforced silence since then, he was variously reported as participating in a 999-day meditation retreat in a hill-top monastery in Mae Hong Son (he gave up after 998 days), as the Special Rapporteur for Satire of the UN High Commission for Human Rights, and as understudy for the male lead in the long-running ‘Pussies -not the Musical' at the Neasden International Palladium (formerly Park Lane Empire).