MITHI: Krishna Kumari — a rights activist belonging to the Kolhi community living in the remote village of Dhana Gam in Nagarparkar — has been selected as a candidate for a Senate seat by the Pakistan Peoples Party leadership.

Her selection was widely discussed in the social media on Sunday and since then congratulatory messages have been pouring in from the PPP leaders and lower cadre.

MPA Dr Mahesh Kumar Malani was the first to confirm the PPP high command’s decision to award her a party ticket on Sunday and Bakhtawar Bhutto-Zardari sealed the report when she tweeted on Monday to congratulate Ms Kumari on her candidature.

Ms Kumari told her social media friends that she was in the process of filing the nomination papers. Her brother Advocate Veerji Kolhi was elected chairman of the Berano union council as an independent candidate and later joined the PPP.

Born on Feb 1, 1979, Ms Kumari (lovingly called Kishoo Bai by her parents) had a tough life in her childhood when she along with her family members and relatives had been held in bonded labour. They were set free in a police raid on the farmland of their employer. She started her primary education initially from Talhi village of Umerkot district and then the Tando Kolachi area of Mirpurkhas district. Her parents facilitated her and Veerji’s studies and academic activities despite the hard days they had been facing. She was married off to Lal Chand, a student of the Sindh Agriculture Unive­rsity, Tandojam, in 1994, when she was 16 and a class IX student. She continued her studies after the marriage to get a postgraduate degree in sociology from the University of Sindh.

She started her social activities in 2005 by organising and participating in different seminars in Tharpa­rkar. She was selected for the third Mehergarh Human Rights Youth Leadership Training Camp held in 2007 at Islamabad during which she covered an overview of people’s movements in the world, history of social movements in Pakistan and a thorough understanding of the governance system in the country. She also learnt strategic planning and tools for bringing social change.

After completing the training, she worked for the Youth Civil Action Progr­amme to identify cases of bonded labour and conducted case studies focusing women under bondage, organised workshops and seminars on bonded labour, sexual harassment at workplace and other human and women’s rights issues and contributed write-ups to various newspapers.

Published in Dawn, February 6th, 2018