Rural realities
4
HERE is a sobering reality: we often speak of poverty as a lack of resources, but rarely as a lack of trained human capital. Money can be raised, infrastructure can be built, but people — people who are skilled, motivated, and professionally mature — take years to grow. And in rural Sindh, they are painfully scarce.
Most organisations address this limitation by keeping their offices in cities such as Sukkur, Larkana or Karachi. Rural communities become sites of implementation, not places where institutions are built.
Almost two decades ago, I wanted to test the opposite. Could an organisation be staffed primarily by local people from villages? Could training replace pre-existing capacity? And could this approach generate not only employment but also a diverse skill base in communities where farming and daily-wage labour dominate?
One of the earliest challenges was sociological. In rural Sindh, private-sector jobs are considered low-status. Government jobs, however, are prized — not for their responsibilities, but for their lack of them. A government post promises security, status and, in popular belief, minimal accountability. Attendance can be negotiated and performance bypassed. Influence often precedes competence.
A strong management tier has emerged from hiring locally.
Because public-sector hiring is widely viewed as dependent on connections or monetary payments, education itself loses value. Degrees do not lead to employment unless accompanied by social capital. This leaves us with a growing pool of educated rural youth who remain unemployed because they consider farm work or labour ‘beneath’ them.
When I began hiring locally, these dynamics appeared immediately. Though my organisation maintains a staff of around 35 at any given time, I have hired close to 200 people over the years. The turnover is not about wages. It reflects deeper tensions around work ethic, hierarchy and emotional resilience.
One recurring issue is the limited sense of pride in one’s work. Employment is often perceived as a transactional arrangement rather than a contribution to a collective goal.
Another challenge is emotionally driven decision-making. Employees have resigned not due to workload or compensation but because their feelings were hurt — after being asked to come on time or being reminded of responsibilities. Managerial oversight is often interpreted as mistrust. Ego shapes career decisions.
There is also hierarchical discomfort. Supervisors are sometimes viewed as ‘less capable’ simply because everyone comes from the same community. Being answerable to someone of a different background or age group can be difficult.
And yet, despite these challenges, the most significant outcome of hiring locally has been the emergence of a strong, deeply rooted management tier. Today, our senior team includes former farmers, drivers, shop assistants and labourers. They began with no formal experience, but they embraced accountability and developed ownership.
Training has ranged from the very basic to the complex. I have had to teach people what a stapler does, how to organise documents and prepare simple agendas. These skills, while time-consuming to impart, are straightforward.
What is far more difficult to teach is the nuanced intelligence that local staff bring effortlessly: an instinctive understanding of social hierarchies, local tensions, seasonal behaviour, informal networks and unwritten community norms. Teaching someone how to file documents takes a week; teaching them how to read a community takes a lifetime.
The single greatest advantage of hiring locally — one that no outsider can match — has been the depth of this on-the-ground knowledge. It has consistently shaped deci-sions, informed programme design and prevented mis-steps that formal training alone can-not foresee.
Recently, I heard a senior staff member advising a new employee: “Most organisations don’t hire without experience. Ours does. Value this.” His remark reflected a deeper shift: the recognition that an organisation is not merely a place to collect a salary but a place to grow.
The broader lesson is clear. Rural development efforts often focus on hardware — schools, clinics, waterworks, roads. But without human capital, these structures remain underutilised or collapse. Investing in rural youth requires time, patience and a willingness to accept short-term inefficiencies for long-term gains.
If Pakistan is serious about durable, community-rooted development, then human capital — not infrastructure — must take centre stage. Talent exists in rural Sindh. The question is whether we have the patience to cultivate it.
The writer is a rural development specialist and social entrepreneur and the managing trustee of a memorial trust working with the rural community in Sindh.
Published in Dawn, December 2nd, 2025
