Shoot the messenger, not the message

Connecting the dots in Pakistan is never as much fun as it is when the PPP is in power. Rahman Malik sees southern Punjab as the next front in the war on terror. The wayward and floundering careers of Mohammad Ali Durrani and Jahangir Tareen need an injection, of something--anything. The PML-N, weaknesses and all, continues to become an irresistible force in Punjab. Poof! Like magic, along comes trouble, dressed in Seraiki.

The formula here is not new. The timing of the demand for a Seraiki province, and the advocates and articulators of that demand, are really the latest scenes in the desperate and disingenuous final act of Pakistan's longest running soap opera--feudal enterprise. Feudal Pakistan shudders as it watches 100 million young Pakistanis embrace an urban culture that it just doesn't understand. Pakistani youth, disaffected and disenchanted, but not entirely disabused of hope, are growing up in an era of unprecedented economic and social change. Pakistan is transforming from a society of communities to a society and individuals. This society thirsts for a rational public discourse and is collectively disgusted by the misogyny and brutality of the Brahminism of feudals. Child brides, land grabs, water theft and general human misery have no legitimate seat at the table in this Pakistan. Facing certain and inevitable death, the feudal will do anything to stay relevant. Ethnic nationalism has long been one of the feudals' favourite and most effective defensive manoeuvres. And make no mistake, the call for a Seraiki province is a defensive manoeuvre.

Seeing the fate of feudal Pakistan in north and central Punjab, southern Punjab's feudals are getting smart. As Syeda Abida Hussain and her ilk become completely irrelevant in an economically democratised Punjab, the sons and daughters of these once proud families have to suffer the indignity of negotiating political space with commoners. These feudals have no natural advantage in the new

Pakistani politics. Feudals that win elections now have to compete with MBAs running industrial units. In many cases, these competitors are the off-spring of self-made millionaires--not pre-packaged billionaires. So the Syeds might indeed continue to enjoy power, but they do so at the mercy of an electorate that now votes on the delivery and distribution of patronage. Not on the last name of one family or the other.

Of course, delivering and distributing patronage among tens of thousands of key supporters is hard work. MNAs are often catering to a voting population of more than 150,000. Voters in rural Pakistan aren't sheep, waiting for the slaughter. In Southern Punjab in particular, they watch more than 30 channels of news television. They choose, democratically, between five behemoth telecom carriers, each with ever-sexier adverts. They don't choose the sexiest ads. They choose the cheapest and most effective service providers. . Voters want to stop being harassed by cops, by judges, by irrigation department officials and by taxmen. They don't call NGOs to help them. They don't call on community organizations, or on the complaint cells setup by civil society groups. They call on the people they voted for. Feudal or not, you had better deliver in the new Pakistan.

Politics in the new Pakistan is hard work. It is made even harder by a judge that has no remorse for standing up to feudal power--even when it is exercised by a soldier. The lawyers' movement to restore the chief justice is a reality that has not sunk in entirely for feudal Pakistan. A nation that rose on the call of ordinary kutchehri-waalas, without the use of religious symbolism? This is not Ghulam Mustafa Khar or Pir Pagaro's Pakistan. It is an all-out feudal nightmare.

In the face of such odds, and in the face of the inevitable hard work that the new Pakistani voter is making feudals do, It is not hard to understand why the feudal establishment has rallied to the cause of Seraiki ethnicity. Real service delivery is hard work. Crying ethnic wolf is easy. Where were these guardians of Seraiki culture when they were cabinet members, ministers that were burning up the airwaves with their paeans to the genius of Shaukat Aziz and the Gen Musharraf's Army of One? Not in Seraikistan, that's for sure. There is no Waldorf Astoria in Bhawalnagar, no Ritz Carlton in Rahim Yar Khan.

And, of course, the Seraiki cause is not the only one that is popular among feudals. In Balochistan, warlords appeal to Baloch nationalism. In rural Sindh, waderas enjoy perhaps the most sustained and unchallenged run of power that any interest group has enjoyed in any part of South Asia. Of course, Pakhtoon feudals are all about egalitarianism, unless it is their village and their women that are the subject of it. Feudals gravitate toward ethnic politics, because it is a convenient cover for the brutality of their ways and the illegitimacy of their claims to power. But that does not de-legitimise ethnic identity, or the aspirations of an ethnically diverse Pakistan.

Why are symbols of Punjab, and of the Centre in particular, so incredibly vulnerable to ethnic manipulation? Why does the façade of Pakistani nationhood crack so suddenly and so soon, whenever a feudal calls on his ethnic brethren to rise up so that he can continue to pillage and plunder in the manner of his forefathers? The country's vulnerability to cheap ethnic politics exists because ethnic politics is not, in substance, cheap at all.

Speakers of Hindko, Seraiki and Brohi don't have provinces, and don't have any representation in the national conversation. Neither do speakers of Urdu. Even those with provinces, the Baloch, in particular, are not exactly celebrated as vibrant and distinct elements of a colourful and diverse nation. Instead, the rest of the country takes their minerals and then calls them traitors for trying to understand what is in Pakistan, for them.

There are a lot of good reasons to support a Seraiki province. The debate, if it is conducted honestly, is a good one. A good debate about a Seraiki province will eventually lead to some kind of an endorsement by the Jatois and Khuhros of granting the MQM a fair discussion about the creation of a province in Urban Sindh. A good and honest discussion about two (or three) provinces in Sindh, would, of course, also lead to the Bilours and Khans of the ANP preparing to discuss the viability of the NWFP ceding its Hindko-belt to a new province there. Perhaps that would then also inspire an honest discussion about the Pakhtoon districts of Balochistan and their rightful place in the federation.

As we continue in a cyclical fashion, what we might find, to the horror of cheese-and-cracker enlightened moderates that want One Unit, and dates-and-milk Momins that want a Khilafat, is that there might be a whole lot more than just five or six new provinces. Luckily, Pakistan's first generation of DMG officers, back when they were called ICS stock, knew what lurks here in the separate homeland for Muslims.

The divisions that make up the provinces, already represent viable administrative formations (and partly viable ethnic formations too). And beyond divisions, of course, districts represent the kinds of bite-sized units that are reasonably manageable, if they are given a framework within which they can work.

Of course, decentralised and empowered local governments would make the existing political system have to turn on its head. MPAs would have to legislate, rather than collect patronage in the provincial capital to disburse in their constituencies. More than anything else, the 84,000 union councillors that would be directly elected to Union Councils would exact a fair burden on the closed system of patronage that feudals cherish more than their family mantle pieces.

Ultimately, Pakistan's survival will very much depend on local governments that work. Feudals don't want working local governments any more than they would want new provinces to work. They just want the space that they see eroding faster than the ozone layers. On its deathbed, feudalism will construct any number of arguments to remain relevant. A strong, decentralised and effective state would know how to respond. This one does not.



The writer advises governments, donors and NGOs on public policy. He can be reached through his website