THE article ‘Will Sindh change?’, written by Zubeida Mustafa and published in this space several weeks ago, raises the question of changing the power structure in Sindh.

Her assumptions are based on her interaction with some social activists working in rural Sindh’s education sector. In her article, she concludes that “change is inevitable because the process of awakening cannot be reversed”. I wonder, though, whether the average citizen of Sindh is up to it.

Education plays a pivotal role in creating awareness. Are the province’s ruling elites committed to educating the masses? A report recently published by this paper said that though there are over 40,000 primary schools in the province, only 10,000 are operative. Teachers are posted to almost all the schools but classes seldom take place. The status of girls’ education is poor, even more so in the rural areas: more than 90 per cent of female teachers are from the towns, and most of them visit rural schools occasionally, merely to update the attendance registers. The situation in secondary schools and higher- education institutions is equally shocking.

The poor state of the education sector should be considered against the backdrop of the movement in the late 1960s concerning Sindh’s provincial status, led by the educated middle class. The awakening of the province’s middle class was perceived as posing a threat to the status quo. Reactionary forces colluded with the province’s feudal class to crush the rise of leadership from the middle class. Since then, active workers of student organisations and middle-class political groups have been targeted and there are reports of torture, disappearances and extra-judicial killings. Sindh’s ruling elites have not just kept the people deprived of education, they have also failed to take concrete measures towards human-resource development that could help people find work in sectors other than agriculture that is already saturated and can no longer withstand the pressure of unchecked population growth. Many consider government jobs as a source of livelihood but although thousands of people are appointed in these posts every year, most appointments are made without taking merit into consideration.

Indeed, many argue that most of these posts are not actually required but are created to afford opportunities to the ruling elites to strengthen and expand their vote banks.

This is the only province where direct recruitment to lucrative posts, bypassing rules introduced in the early 1970s, has not stopped. From time to time, the Sindh Public Service Commission (SPSC) is assigned this task but is reported to manipulate examination results to declare candidates that have failed as having passed. (An inquiry into such fraud is pending with the Sindh anti-corruption establishment.)

The process of erosion of the civil bureaucracy’s authority which started in the 1970s has reached such a pass that in the Sarfraz Shah murder case, the acting chief secretary admitted the administration’s failure before the Supreme Court. The administration of districts — the basic unit of governance in the province — is being handled by the ruling elites through a handpicked bureaucracy. Nothing moves without a nod from the local feudal lord. The helplessness of local government functionaries was witnessed in the aftermath of last year’s floods. There were even allegations that powerful landlords diverted the waters to save their own holdings, at the cost of the safety of millions of other people. Meanwhile, their role in the denial of water to small and tail-ender farmers is an old story.

Sindh’s rural economy is controlled by these elites. The majority of the farmers pledge their crops to obtain fertiliser, seeds, pesticides etc at exorbitant prices: the interest rates range between five to 15 per cent a month. The real beneficiaries of the boom in agriculture are not the tillers but the middlemen and their backers.

A province that has fertile soil and is rich in fuel and mineral deposits has a rural poverty graph that continues to rise. It has become a safe haven for the sale of spurious medicines and pesticides, and adulterated farm inputs and food items. The use of narcotics is growing, and the people are stalked by disease and despair.

A World Bank report states that “The deepest and most pervasive poverty in the country is in rural areas, and it is worse in the areas that have been considered ‘feudal’ such as Sindh”. In this province the landholdings of the feudal families have multiplied instead of having decreased. The conditions that prevail in lower Sindh’s rural areas are such that, as has been said before, it seems the clock stopped ticking here centuries ago.

Given this situation, is it possible that change will come? The educated middle class has either joined the elite in robbing the people or become disillusioned. The urban middle class, which historically spurs on the struggle for change, has mainly chosen to share power with the feudal elite. The masses, meanwhile, are caught in a vicious cycle of poverty. This has been so methodically engineered that rural society has reverted to tribalism, where the killing of women under the pretext of karo kari is justified as a tribal custom.

In order to perpetuate its own authority, the ruling elites have systematically undermined institutions, propped up status quo-friendly individuals and selected groups, institutionalised corruption and tacitly engaged the communities in ethnic tribal warfare.

According to social activist Tasneem Siddiqui, the fundamental elements for change are “effective social organisation, passion for change and the perseverance of ordinary people”. All these are lacking in Sindh. Can one still hope for change?

The writer is a social activist.

meer.parihar@gmail.com

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