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HOW is it that Sindh produces 32pc of Pakistan’s GDP, 70pc of its gas and 56pc of its oil, but only 50pc of the province’s schools have running water?
Clearly, something is very wrong with this picture. An outsider would have thought this anomaly was due to the province’s neglect by the federal government. However, considering that the PPP, a Sindh-based party, was in power at the centre for the last five years, the province was certainly not starved of resources.
The impression of the Sindh government being deprived of funds is further dispelled when you see ministers and senior provincial bureaucrats hurtling around Karachi in expensive limousines protected by cavalcades of police mobiles. So obviously, there are governance issues here that need to be discussed.
My old friend Aitzaz Ahsan tried to do just that in a recent meeting of the PPP high command when he pointed to the rapid development in Punjab, compared to the ramshackle state of affairs in Sindh. According to a news report in The Nation, he was silenced by Asif Zardari, the party chief, who reportedly said that Sindh had the best governance in Pakistan.
Really? One just has to land at Karachi Airport to see a city in terminal decline. And if the provincial capital is in such a mess, one can easily imagine how things are in the rest of the province. By contrast, when I was in Lahore recently, I could easily have been in another country judging from the clean streets and the relatively orderly traffic.
When I first moved to Lahore to work in the late 1960s after finishing university, it was the other way around: my new Lahori friends would ask about the big metropolis in slightly awed tones.
This turnabout is largely self-created: Karachi’s decline coincides with the MQM’s rise. But if law and order can be blamed for many of Karachi’s woes, what about the rest of the province?
The answer lies in the fact that it is the feudal class who contribute most to the PPP’s parliamentary presence, and they are some of the most regressive elements in the country.
The model of governance of these waderas is based on patronage: efficiency, hard work and accountability do not figure in their lexicon.
While I am no fan of the Sharif clan’s ethos, Shahbaz Sharif, the Punjab chief minister, is light years ahead of Qaim Ali Shah, his counterpart in Sindh, in terms of management skills and effectiveness.
The fact that the latter has been appointed for a third stint speaks volumes for the importance the PPP attaches to good governance.
While Sindhi professionals are as bright and hard working as their counterparts anywhere in the world, the so-called landed aristocracy is mostly dissolute and lazy.
Before I am flooded with angry emails, let me give a personal example. During Benazir Bhutto’s first stint in office, I was a joint secretary in the Ministry of Culture where the minister was a PPP grandee from Thatta. Never known to work except to sign the summaries prepared for him, he surprised me on a Sunday morning by calling me to his home for a meeting.
When he pressed me to have a drink, I politely declined, saying it was too early for me. He then came to the point of the summons: “Irfan Sahib, BB has asked me to accompany her to Turkey next week. I want to know if I can get a drink there, or is the country dry like Saudi Arabia? If it is, I will have to make an excuse to the prime minister for not going.”
I assured him that Turkey was not at all like Saudi Arabia, and he could get as much alcohol as he wanted. Relieved, he walked me to the door, thanking me profusely.
Luckily, he was in every way a considerate man, and was happy to go along with whatever my boss Khwaja Shahid Hosain and I suggested. Given my own weakness for the occasional drink, I am not making any moral point here.
But my experience is that most waderas, especially those in politics, happen to be hard drinkers. This may be a generalisation, so apologies to the sober members of the tribe.
However, it is a medical fact that excessive drinking does not make for a clear head and lots of energy the next day. Also, a dissolute lifestyle demands a lot of money. A perpetual hangover is not what management gurus recommend for good governance.
So until Sindh can vote these waderas out of office, I fear things will just get from bad to worse.
