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analysis: Southern Punjab’s troubles —Rasul Bakhsh Rais

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analysis: Southern Punjab’s troubles —Rasul Bakhsh Rais

Although all cities of Punjab have been ******* for decades under massive political and bureaucratic corruption, the towns of Southern Punjab have suffered the most

Culturally, there is not one but three Punjabs, excluding the one on the Indian side. If we don’t consider religion and its influence on community and identity formation, Indian Punjab would culturally and linguistically be a part of Central Punjab in Pakistan.

Apart from the familiar commonalities that are found among the ancient lands and peoples of the Indus, their dialects and social structures are very different. So are the patterns of leadership, elite formations and power relationships in society.

Southern Punjab, much like other parts of the country, no longer represents any ethnic cohesion. The ethnic-linguistic mix has greatly changed with migration from the other Punjabs since canal colonisation. And the pattern of migration through various land acquisition schemes, particularly after the absorption of the State of Bahawalpur into Punjab, has continued.

Powerful civil bureaucrats with political roots in Central Punjab have allotted hundreds of thousands of acres state land to relatives, friends, and to those who could bribe them. This pattern continues in Cholistan and Thal (Layyah). Fake land claims by the migrants from India at the time of Pakistan’s creation, which continued to be entertained for decades, were another factor that robbed a great majority of local (Seraiki) landless peasants of their rights to own land.

In some areas, migration has even changed the historical demographic balance, particularly in major cities and towns of Southern Punjab. The region today represents a complex mosaic of linguistic and ethnic groups, including Baloch, Punjabis, Seraikis, Mohajirs and Pashtuns. The latter are in smaller numbers as a residual social class of the Pathan rulers of the Derajat (Dera Ghazi Khan and Dera Ismail Khan) and the Multan state before its conquest by Ranjit Singh.

Social characteristics of a region, complex as they are in Southern Punjab, are important to understanding which social groups control resources — land, political power and social influence — and how they affect social relations and development patterns.

The ever-expanding towns of Southern Punjab represent a very complex picture of ethnicity and culture, provide a common space for all and an opportunity for liberation from feudal bondage for the peasant as well as the middle income agriculturalist.

Although all cities of Punjab have been ******* for decades under massive political and bureaucratic corruption, the towns of Southern Punjab have suffered the most.

Just visit any town, including Multan, the seat of some of the ruling families of the region: the dust, smog and litter will hit you in the face. You will see broken potholed roads, leaking sewage and constant construction under special programmes by prime ministers, presidents and hordes of provincial and federal ministers from the region.

The villages and rural areas of the region are worse than the towns. At least in the towns, there might be some functioning public schools and a few colleges, but not in most of the rural areas. There is at least one ghost degree-college that this writer has observed in one of the southern districts. In town colleges, teachers do not attend classes or lecture regularly. The teachers of natural sciences run private academies and don’t devote themselves to teaching at the colleges.

The same is true of government hospitals where even the poor patients needing some surgery are driven to private clinics run by doctors on the payrolls of government hospitals. There might be a few noble exceptions to this practice that robs both state and society, but what this writer has witnessed over several visits to the region is heartbreaking.

What hurts more is that the ruling classes of the region continue to be elected by the same helpless peasantry that is hauled to the polling station every time to confirm political legitimacy on their lords. Democracy therefore has to go a long way to make the ruling classes accountable to anyone — the law, institutions or the common voting citizen. But this is the only route to progress; we have tried all others.

Great difference is visible in the quality of education delivery and some other social services among the rural areas of Southern Punjab between the native and the settler communities. The settler or migrant communities fare much better in terms of quality of education, particularly in areas where they have demographic strength.

The native villages that we have observed in more than one district of the region have seen very little or no development: their schools are dysfunctional or most of the teachers are absent; basic health centres have no doctors; and roads break down within a few months of their construction. This is no fiction; it is a cruel reality that is very visible in so many areas.

How do we explain these troubles of Southern Punjab?

They are primarily because of feudalism, semi-tribal social structure and monopoly of landowning families over political representation. This class has misused its power and continues to do so. There appears to be an unbreakable nexus between the civil bureaucrats heading different government departments at the district level and the elected representatives both of local governments and the members of provincial and federal legislatures.

Again, with few exceptions, they have joined hands to misappropriate development funds by spending very little on projects and pocketing most of the money. During the Musharraf years, Southern Punjab witnessed greater plunder than perhaps any other region of the country. Transparent and fair accounting and auditing, including quality checks of public works programmes in the region, would reveal the scale of this plunder.

Has any thing changed under the new elected government of Punjab?

No. Sadly, nothing has really changed in Southern Punjab. We have the same number of ghost schools — mostly girls’ schools — absentee teachers and doctors, and poor quality of public works.

Punjab as whole and Southern Punjab in particular has been in constant decline as a result of poor governance and an ineffective system of accountability. Regrettably, the greatest number of poor, landless and miserable people live in Southern Punjab. These are perfect conditions for alienation and driving people towards hopelessness and desperate actions.

Accountability of both corrupt bureaucrats and public representatives — past and present — may gradually restore some trust in governing institutions. The new rulers of Punjab need to understand the troubles of Southern Punjab and take remedial actions. Some of these actions are doable, like better governance through efficient and reliable service delivery. For change in social and power relations, we’ll have to wait till true democracy takes root.

Dr Rasul Bakhsh Rais is author of Recovering the Frontier State: War, Ethnicity and State in Afghanistan (Oxford University Press, 2008) and a professor of Political Science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. He can be reached at rasul@lums.edu.pk
 
Solution to these problems, in any areas, is formulation of new provinces on adminstrative groud.
 
Yes Punjab consists of different cultures and even languages, depending on the area you go in Punjab but the same thing can be seen in other provinces like Balochistan.

The best solution is what Khalids has just said, make new provinces out of the 4 provinces we have. Also make Northern Areas (Baltistan and Gilgit) a province of Pakistan. The people native to that area are different from Kashmiris linguistically, culturally, and ethnically... they deserve to have their land be a province of Pakistan that they always wanted.
 
The new provinces should be formulated primarily on administrative grounds, if a specific cultural, linguistic or ethnic group becomes mejority in a new province then it should not be a hinderance in formulating the new provinces.

A simple way may be to divide each existing province in four new provinces with respect to directions, for esample, east punjab, west punjab, south punjab, north punjab and so on.

When I suggest that the division sould be primarily based on administrative grounds, it is to avoid opening a new pandora's box of ethnic bifurcation. As may be vitnessed in lower and urban Sindh in recent days that Swati Pakistanis were being denied any temporary accomodation there. No one wishes the future Pakistan to be like this.
 
This is not the righ solution.Not only punjab all provice can defeat their problems by reducing corruption.This the only way
 
To provide legisltive, administrative facilities close to the masses is a way to eliminate corrupyion.

Imagine a person who has to go to Punjab secretariate in Lahore 15 hourse away from his/her residence in Sadiq Abaad, he/she will try to avoid this fatigued and monye & time consuming travel. And will try to get his/her problem solved localy by offering bribe to any person showing capability to solve his/her problem. Just visit any provincial secretariate and abserve how much national finance has been wasted in terms of corruption just because people coming from far off places want their problems to be solved swiftly to avoid longer stay away from home.

Look this in an other way. Just compare how much provinces other countries have. What proportion of population and area they have in each province, then it may throw some light on the necessity of new provinces in Pakistan.
 
How do we explain these troubles of Southern Punjab?

They are primarily because of feudalism, semi-tribal social structure and monopoly of landowning families over political representation. This class has misused its power and continues to do so.

How about honestly implementing land reforms that were being enacted by ZA Bhutto. It would have a more dramatic impact in checking the power of the land owning class than any breakup of provinces. Otherwise breaking up of provinces will just make each feudal lord the king of his own province were before he had to share his power with other landlords.
 
Your point is valid EjazR, breack up of the provinces doesn't necessarily means that there is no other measure to take before this break up. Even if the land ownership is limited or Bhutto's land reforms are implimented, there is a corrupt middle class in Pakistan, especially in Bureaucracy that can be checked by this breack up. Lots of other problems are directly associated with leting less number of provinces to prevail. So, both steps may be taken. But only land reforms will not deliver, in my opinion. Because these problems are not facing only the people of southern Punjan.
 
Solution to these problems, in any areas, is formulation of new provinces on adminstrative groud.

Formulation of merely new states or provinces hardly helps on ground level, IMHO. Indian states of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh etc have emphatically proven that. These states still continue to be extremely backward & infested with maoists, as they were with their mother states. The only difference was made for their leaders, who literally robbed the people of millions of rupees.

Education & poverty reduction by means of economical reforms. The ONLY way out. Everything else will fall in place.
 
Well, PeacefulIndian, if this is the case (generalizing state of two states to the whole subcontinent may not sound rationale though), then would you please justfy the breack up of Indian Punjab into four states?

Education has a major role in bringing up the change but it dosn't mean that we must stick to primitive administrative or political arrangements.
 
i think that new provinces should be formed but feudal system should be eliminated from all parts of Pakistan
 
Another problem which is not even mentioned in this article is increasing religious extremism and sectarianism in southern Punjab
 
Another problem which is not even mentioned in this article is increasing religious extremism and sectarianism in southern Punjab

I dont think religious extremism is a problem in Southern Punjab or any place in Punjab. Most people in Southern Punjab are Sufis. Multan is the center of Sufism in South Asia, and many Punjabi Pakistanis follow the Hanafi school of thought which has lots of Sufi influence. Punjabi Pakistani culture itself has lots of Sufi influence. Waris Shah, Bulleh Shah, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan...they all were Punjabi Pakistanis (Punjabi Muslims from the region of Pakistan), also Qawwalis and Sufi Dhol has become our culture. Every week Pappu Sain makes his performance in Lahore and the crowd loves him each time he performs.

Sectarianism could be a problem especially in southern Punjab because Saraikis dont see themselves as Punjabis and there's a misunderstanding in Pakistan for Saraikis that they are a mixture of Sindhis and Punjabis, but they dont see themselves as mixture they say Saraiki is a totally different ethnic group from Punjabis and Sindhis, and some want a separate province for Saraikis.
 
Well, PeacefulIndian, if this is the case (generalizing state of two states to the whole subcontinent may not sound rationale though), then would you please justfy the breack up of Indian Punjab into four states?

Education has a major role in bringing up the change but it dosn't mean that we must stick to primitive administrative or political arrangements.

Creating smaller states may sometimes work and sometimes not. the theory that states need to be of an optimal size is sound, but whats the optimal size is a million dollar question.

BTW the division of punjab itself created so many issues of it own.
 
BTW the division of punjab itself created so many issues of it own.

The division of Punjab created many issues in the past specifically 1947 and prior to 1947 when Punjab was a battleground and saw the worst violence than any other place in South Asia, and when the British awarded Muslim majority district Ferozpur that was on the border with Pakistan to India.....but that was back then.


The issues today we see in Pakistan's Punjab have nothing to do with what happened in 1947, I'm sure everyone in Pakistan can live without Hindu/Sikh majority Indian side of Punjab and no one in Pakistan is asking for India's side of Punjab today.
 
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