Day 11: Lost in a power maze

Locations: Mittha Tiwana, Rooda, Nurpur Thal, Aeno, Tetri, Bullo, Chak 7, Atthara Hazari, Jhang

(Click on images to enlarge)

At Mittah Tiwana, I stayed with a friend who works in an orphanage run by an organisation, Society for Human Empowerment and Rural Development (SHER) with the support of an international charity. I knew little about the place where I had decided to spend the night and it was a pleasant surprise to meet someone doing such good work in this far flung and most 'interior' of the Punjab.

As I travelled and met many people in this area, I was pained to see hundreds of thousands of children living in the most miserable of conditions. It sounds cruel but I would not hesitate to say that being in the orphanage appeared much better, to a visitor like me, than spending a regular, average life in the area surrounding it.

The organisation has orphanages and schools for boys and girls.

 

A boy watering a plant that is dedicated to his late father.

But not all are average human beings here, of course. The politics of this area is dominated by the lords from our colonial past, Tiwanas, and others of the same ilk. There hold has been absolute. I came to hear the word 'ryot' for the first time here.I parked my bike on the empty road and walked to these men herding goats to ask them how they mange their daily chores on polling day and how far the polling stations are from their residences. They would start confidently but then falter mid way and we would end up with an all-is-well kind of position. I ignored it initially as cameras and such equipment confuse many people but then I realised that it was happening repeatedly.

A poor man in a tattered dress, working in gram fields cleared the confusion. His shirt had no buttons and he instead had tied the front flaps of his shirt with a piece of thread to hold them together. He and his family had travelled from some distance to labour here in return for a small heap of gram shrubs with pods. I asked him who he votes for and why. His answer was simple: I vote for the sardar as I am his ryot. I wanted him to say this on record but when I started recording he changed his words.

I complained about it. His reply was a stunning indictment of middle class babus, like myself. He told me that I am a 'malik' too, implying a middle-class person, and won't side with him, the poor, in a controversy between him and the sardar. I stood dumb for some moments, folded back my shinny iPad and took a small break to gain composure to be able to ride ahead.

The political discourse here has been hijacked and enslaved by the lords. They have turned the electoral process into a tool to periodically renew and reassert their status. Can the elections give way to the political aspirations of the poor here? I am confused.

But I am quite clear that if, in this desolate environment, an organisation dares to create an alternative discourse, howsoever apolitical may it look, it shall be supported.

This semi-literate man, however, was very articulate about his community's predicament. One reason behind his grit might be that his family was a visitor here and not a part of the local power hierarchy. Liaqat Ali's appeal was moving. Watch.

I rode to Nurpur Thal, that is a small town in the middle of Thal desert that lies between river Jhelum and Indus. I attended a training session of the female polling staff supported by the UNDP and being implemented here by the same organisation.

For the first time in the country's history, we will know in the coming elections that how many of the votes were cast by women and in which constituency – a gender segregated voter turnout. This will help us map the electoral participation of women with unprecedented detail, and that could then be used to design interventions to cover the gaps.

A mock polling process was part of the training. The training venue was a school.

 

A walk was organised by another NGO to emphasise on mother and child health.

The Commission is also deputing more female staff at the polling stations this time besides increasing the overall number of stations. The school teachers are generally the main part of middle class in these villages; they have to face many odds in performing what appear to be simple duties otherwise. I talked to these teachers but they too wanted to say only nice things on record. It was an 'in-camera' day for me, perhaps. Anyways, here is what one of them said.

I had planned to head south from Nurpur Thal to reach Shergarh, then turn eastward to  Bella Shahir and then again turn south to reach Atthara Hazari for night stay. But leaving Nurpur Thal, I took a wrong turn and rode too far on the eastward road to village Aeno. The road passes through the desert and you hardly come across another traveller. People working in the very thin gram fields are also too far away to attend to your call. Worse of all, Google Earth wasn't working and the batteries were about to die out! I ended up on Khushab-Muzafargarh road with a penalty of an additional 70 kilometre or so.

My bad luck wasn't over for the day as yet. The Khushab-Muzafargarh road runs along river Jhelum and then along Chenab after their confluence at Atthara Hazari. So if you are driving south, there is desert on your right and the desert with a green border on your left, the river side.

Sand dunes move as strong winds blow in this plane area, they occasionally encroach upon the road as well. I rammed into one such heap of sand that had gathered on the other side of a small hill. It didn't hurt me, except a bruise, but my bike proved to be more prone to injury. It's steering handle developed a fault that I could not fix.

A biker soon sent a mechanic from the nearby village, Bullo. I was happy to discover that his workshop was very well equipped. Motorcycles are the main motorised vehicles here, besides the agricultural vehicles and the level of expertise in fixing them up is excellent. My mechanic, however, advised me to visit a specialist consultant at a bigger town before I resume my journey. Which is why, I have decided to stopover at Jhang.