HYDERABAD, June 3: Tharparkar started witnessing a phase of development mainly in early 2000 when retired General Pervez Musharraf gave Rs1 billion for the development of this least developed area in the province. This marked the beginning of a change in terms of infrastructure development and the Tharis benefited from the better communication and drinking water facilities.

This effected a change in Thar’s political landscape in the May 11 polls, breaking the myth that the Arbabs were invincible. Barring one provincial assembly seat former Sindh chief minister Dr Arbab Ghulam Rahim has won, the Pakistan Peoples Party has swept the district, including two National Assembly seats.

The Arbabs have been winning polls from Thar from 1985 to 2008, bagging the National Assembly and provincial assembly seats. Arbab Abdullah had first won the only seat of Thar, NW-176, in the 1985 party-less polls. Then Arbab Amir Hassan won it in 1988. Thar got another upper house seat, NA-230, in 2002. Dr Arbab Ghulam Rahim became CM from his hometown constituency PS-60.

He retained this seat alone.

Dr Rahim has been seen in different political colours, forming the Sindh Democratic Alliance to beat the PPP in early 2000 with the establishment’s perceived blessings and then merging it with the National Alliance in the 2002 polls.

The voter turnout in their strongholds has always been either close to or even over 100 per cent that enabled them to outdo leads of their rivals in other pockets.

“We suspect the veracity of the votes obtained by [Faqir Sher Mohammad] Bilalani (86,592) and [Arbab Khan] Togachi, 84,920. The elections were rigged. It was all about money, forcible occupation of polling stations and the misuse of state machinery,” said Arbab Ghulam Rahim while commenting on his group’s defeat. He admitted that wrong decisions might have a role in it.

“But [Dr Ghulam Hyder] Samejo would have been a weak candidate in the triangular fight, involving Pir Noor Shah Jilani and Shah Mehmood Qureshi on NA-230 that would be then a one-sided affair for them [PPP],” he said.

Razaq Rahimoon withdrew from PS-63 following that assurance that after wining NA-230 Mr Qureshi would retain his hometown seat and Mr Rahimoon would contest by-polls, he said. “We didn’t get time for electioneering and even we didn’t have money to meet the expenses,” he said.

Unlike the past, this time the PPP seems to have played its cards well by putting up locals barring Pir Noor Shah Jilani and Makhdoom Khalil, son of Amin Fahim, due to the Pir-Mureed following combination factor in the field against the Arbabs and it really paid dividends.

Otherwise, the PPP had been bringing people from other areas to contest polls in Thar. The PPP’s Sharjeel Memon won PS-62 and that too in a by-poll after the 2008 elections when MPA Arbab Abdullah, brother of Arbab Ghulam Rahim, died in an accident. Dr Rahim remained in self-imposed exile in Dubai throughout 2008-2013 after taking the oath as an assembly member and facing humiliation at the hands of a violent activist in the assembly building.

Tharparkar, a sprawling desert bordering India, has been the most backward area until a decade back when the Musharraf regime launched a countrywide Poverty Alleviation Programme and road networks were laid in this arid zone.

A potable drinking water line was laid from Naukot to Mithi — at a time when the region was witnessing one of its severest droughts that claimed so many lives and colossal losses to the livestock sector.

At that time the region had the highest number of TB patients. Road networks reduced, to some extent, the rate of deaths caused by childbirth complications among women and snakebites as people started reaching urban centres faster.

This was the area where Shaukat Aziz won NA-229 in a by-election in August 2004 to later become prime minister. The area attracted the attention of the media when the PPP government revived the Thar coal project.

Coming to politics, Dr Rahim formed his own party called the People’s Muslim League days before the polls, but merged it with the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz after he got a drubbing from the PPP in the recent elections. Before that, he lost his Sindh Assembly seat after the 2008 polls and contested it.

He returned to Pakistan when the election schedule was announced and his body language showed that he was too confident about his electoral success once again, claiming that the PPP had approached him for seat adjustments.

“The Arbabs used to rely on the non-Muslim Rajputs’ vote mainly where their forefathers had previously married but after partition Rajputs migrated to India and their numerical strength dropped substantially.

They started relying heavily on other communities such as the Samejos, Rahimoons and Nohris without giving much weight to the Meghwars, who outnumber the others,” said a social development activist.

They bank on these communities to ensure political dominance, arrange seat adjustments in a way that suits them. “The situation in the recent past has changed. People noted that a scheduled caste man, Dr Khatumal Jeewan, can become an MNA, why can’t they [scheduled caste] be elected,” he said.

The PPP this time fielded two Hindu candidates on general seats. One of them, Engineer Giyanchand, challenged Dr Rahim on PS-60 and Mahesh Malani on PS-61 with the former losing and the latter returning to the Sindh Assembly.

According to social sector activist Ali Akbar, communication linkages had changed the vision of the Tharis and they were now asserting themselves. “Those who used to migrate to the barrage areas to earn their livelihood always returned with a different vision.

The reality dawned upon them that Thar was not the end of the world. Their exposure to outside world expanded their political vision as well,” he said.

Apparently, the Arbabs did not play their cards well.

They accommodated only one Rahimoon — Razaq Rahimoon against the PPP’s Dost Ali Rahimoon on PS-63 — out of the six seats of the region but he was made to withdraw in favour of Ghulam Hyder Samejo. The other seats were contested by the Arbabs themselves.

Some political analysts view factors like the Arbabs’ attitude to the common man as the main contributor to what they have suffered. They remained indifferent to them, especially when Dr Rahim was heading Sindh as the CM.

Then Hameer Singh, who contested as a PML-F candidate, worked against him. The Arbabs fielded Arbab Togachi Fawad Razak instead of experienced Arbab Zakaullah on NA-229 against Faqir Sher Mohammad Bilalani.

According to Dr Sono Khangrani, a recipient of Tamgha-i-Imtiaz, the scheduled caste community’s vote, especially those of women, had proved decisive.

His take is that the subsidy in different shapes such as the Benazir Income Support Programme strengthened the PPP’s vote bank. “One must remember that Thar’s 45 per cent population is Hindu.

Their women voted freely unlike Muslim women,” he said. That’s why the turnout was being projected at 60 per cent in the June 1 re-poll, he said.