Not exactly a positive article about the plight of Sindh.
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The soulful sorrows of Sindh
By Syed Shahid Husain
A perception has taken hold in Sindh that it has been given a short shrift by the federation both in inter-provincial dispensation and between the federation and the province.
The list of grievances is so large that it is difficult to list them in one piece. Absence of the NFC award is one, because in spite of Article 160 of the Constitution, ‘that the president shall constitute a finance commission’ the NFC has not been constituted, although provinces have conveyed the names of their nominees long time back. The nominee of Balochistan was not acceptable to the Federal government.
The other issue dominating the debate is the Greater Thal Canal. It has galvanized Sindh. Even the MQM has thrown in its lot with them. A project, feasibility of which has yet to come, has been started post-haste on the basis of wishful availability of floodwater, about a year back. In spite of two unanimous resolutions by Sindh Assembly, the work is proceeding apace with full speed.
A resolution by Punjab government, on the other hand, recommending the construction of Kalabagh dam elicited an immediate response of the prime minister who wrote to all the chief ministers urging them to examine the proposals with a view to taking immediate action.
The president issued orders to construct the project while inaugurating the first unit of Ghazi Barotha Hydroelectric project. The treatment meted out to the two resolutions of Sindh Assembly and one of Punjab Assembly are causing greater pain to the Sindhis.
In a recent article, Abdul Khalique Junejo, chairman, Jeay Sindh Mahaz, has highlighted some of the real and some perceived grievances of the province. One of the interesting instances cited by him is the Sindh demand that water resources to be apportioned among the provinces must also include underground water.
Punjab, which has the largest good quality underwater resources, has refused, because it claims them to be its exclusive property. When Sindh counters by claiming exclusive rights to underground coal, petrol, gas and other minerals, the same are declared to be the national wealth and therefore subject to the federal controls for sharing by the provinces.
Statements, like the one quoting Governor Punjab that it was the responsibility of the Sindh government to ensure smooth supply of water downstream of Kotri, compound the situation. A similar position was taken by Punjab Water Council when it said that the coastal areas are Sindh’s responsibility and Punjab had nothing to do with it. As for the ports located in Sindh, Punjab claims its right to use.
And to top it all are the political issues setting the people of Sindh apart from the federation. For more than half of our national existence we have been under overt or covert military rule. The hugely rigged elections of 2002 yielded a divided Sindh Assembly with Pakistan People’s Party still the single largest group, but contrary to the treatment of other political parties in other three provinces, every ruse was adopted to keep it out of the government.
An artificial coalition has been cobbled up to ‘run’ the Sindh government. The people of Sindh excluding the urban areas feel left out. The denial of political power presents a serious ache agitating the minds of the people.
**People talk glibly of a Pakistani nation and complain of lack of patriotism. It is easy to bandy such concepts when one controls all the levers of power. But they forget that national spirit evolves over a period of time as a result of common stakes and joint ownership of the country based on social contract as embodied in a constitution. **
**With the imposition of military rule with regular frequency and the emergence of artificial political leaders, it is futile to wait for a national ethos to take shape. The military rule is associated with Punjabi domination. The data on provincial composition of the army is hard to come by because provincial quotas do not apply to armed forces. No wonder that 56 years after independence we do not have a single Sindhi major-general in the army. **
This writer had an opportunity of raising the issue of Sindh representation, or the lack of it, with the then Chief of Army Staff, General Aslam Beg, in the context of national cohesion. He came up with the stock unconsidered reply that Sindhis do not want to join the army. That obviously is not true, with employment opportunities vanishing by the day. He was reminded that the US faced a similar situation with respect to its Afro-Asian community.
But then that government did not give it up as a problem of the black community, but devised a workable solution. Now 25 per cent of the American army consists of blacks, although their share in the population is only 11 per cent. They have risen to the highest rank in the military.
Rangers are another source of Sindh grievance. Karachi’s civic bodies continue to be hampered by the daunting presence of the Pakistan Rangers. Monthly ‘Herald’ in its issue of August 2003’ carried a lead story on the power of the Rangers deployed in Sindh ‘to control law and order’. On July 17 this year, the government of Sindh asked Islamabad to grant one-year extension. The official request contends that owing to the growing threat posed by the militants, the presence of the rangers is essential, particularly in Karachi.
Ironically, it was the PPP government which had summoned the Rangers in the first place, because according to Senator Raza Rabbani, ‘there was an insurgency like situation in Karachi at the time and the Rangers were called in to assist the civilians in law enforcement. But they later overstepped their mandate.’ The Rangers now effectively control each one of Karachi’s eight water hydrants.
A large number of tankers fill up at the Water Pump hydrant in Federal ‘B’ Area and deliver to other parts of the city even when local residents have been without water for days, complains an area nazim. The Jamaat-i-Islami (JI), which heads the capital city government, insists that the Rangers are doing little or nothing to address Karachi’s security concerns.
Initially the federal government bore the cost of requisitioning the Rangers. Since 1995, however, this financial burden has been shifted to the province. A staggering sum of Rs.405.33 million has been earmarked for the upkeep of the Rangers and Frontier Constabulary in 2003-04 provincial budget.
Acquiring land is another favourite hobby of the Rangers and Kehkashan Scheme is by no means the only outrage. They have occupied hospitals, sporting complexes colleges and universities across Karachi and have turned them into their private lairs. They occupied Jinnah Courts Building in 1993 to serve as their headquarters. This 500-plus-room building meant to house students has remained firmly under their control. The next order of business was to raise a massive multi-storied structure in breach of building control laws and the laws of antiquity.
Bus depots are also targets of their avarice for forceful occupation of civilian property. They have occupied almost all the depots. Each is located on prime land. For example, a 500-square-yard plot in Gulistan-i-Jauhar sells for anything between 2.5 and three million rupees.JI’s Karachi Amir asks, if they are here to enforce peace, what are they doing at the water hydrants? Why are they involved in contracting out bus depots in Karachi?"
They also control the fishing rights to the exclusion of all the others in two districts of Sindh - Badin and Thatta. They grant contracts to their favourites and deny the local population their right to fishing. The impoverished fishermen are trapped in a no-win situation. The Rangers are meanwhile raking in the bucks, for doing nothing whatsoever.
** On and off they raid their houses under the pretext of border security concerns. Sometimes they randomly search people entering or leaving the villages. They have created an atmosphere of fear in the area. They reportedly treat them as virtual Indian agents. ‘When confronted by an immovable force, the only judicious option for the powerless is to calmly accept your fate’, a young boy was overhead advising a friend. **
These soulful sorrows of Sindh can conveniently be brushed aside, but that would be at our national cost. It is facile to claim that geographical proximity to the ultimate source of power will yield an outcome different from that of 1971. It would be much saner to coolly consider all these issues dispassionately before we hurtle into vortex of another calamity. Fact ceases to be relevant when perceptions take hold in the psyche of a people.
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Syed Shahid Husain retired as an OSD, Establishment Div. in Dec. 2002. For the last three years he has been writing on various subjects in Dawn and The News.