Curse of the ‘old normal’
NOT too long ago, in Sindh’s sweltering heat, hundreds of desperate people in Shikarpur staged a prolonged dharna blocking the highway.
They demanded the recovery of a child who had been kidnapped outside his home. It was the second instance of kidnapping in a month. The child was recovered after a few days, but the previous victim — the child of a labourer — had been killed because his relatives couldn’t afford the large ransom. Kidnapping children for ransom has turned into a regular feature in recent years — in addition to the long list of other horrendous crimes in the province, which include murders, robberies, illegal occupation of private property, bloody tribal feuds, ‘honour killings’, denial of water to small farmers, etc.
Last year, Sindh Police reported that as many as 230 children had been kidnapped or missing since 2023 in Karachi alone. Crime has become the most profitable ‘business’ in Sindh, including in the upper reaches of the province, where it is rampant.
The provincial government has failed for years to discharge its primary constitutional obligation — protecting life, limb, honour and property — even though it holds immense power — politically, financially and administratively — after the passage of the 18th Amendment. The result is that a chronically lawless and violent environment is affecting every aspect of life — economic, social, cultural, demographic and even climatic.
Unemployment is rampant as the private sector is shy of investing in job-creating industries. Agriculture, the mainstay of the local economy, and employment are in decay, thanks to broken infrastructure, water shortages, climatic elements including recurring floods, and more ominously, generational tribal feuds and violence. The age-old ethos reinforcing multi-faith and multicultural relations have come under untenable stress, with religious minorities, particularly the Hindu community, trapped in the crosshairs of both religious bigots and criminal mafias. People are leaving an unsecure and lawless rural society to seek better economic and living conditions in the urban areas, especially Hyderabad and Karachi.
The state’s failure to enforce its writ is not simply endangering public safety, it’s also posing a risk to the environment as forests vanish and riverine lands are illegally occupied and used for agriculture, drastically affecting fauna and flora.
However, the provincial (and federal) government’s response to Sindh’s worsening law and order remains characteristically dismissive.
The deplorable state of affairs is referred to as the ‘old normal’. In other words, the lawlessness and insecurity are claimed to be rooted in the local ‘culture’ and societal structures, rather than the government’s incompetence, bad policies and failed governance. The ‘old normal’ narrative is also linked to the overall poor order in the country. It is true that the pathetic state of affairs, including kidnapping for ransom, can in some ways be traced to the infamous jailbreak of the mid-1980s, when hundreds of hardened criminals from Sukkur Central Jail were ‘facilitated’ in their escape in order to create an environment of fear and insecurity among the people of Sindh and thereby justify the deployment of federal forces to quell the democratic struggle.
Rural society also saw a new a surge of neo-tribalisation and neo-feudalisation under martial law. Feudal-tribal forces were used — with the helped of a re-empowered bureaucracy and a compliant clergy — to atomise society into castes, clans, tribes and sects. The aim was to sow division in democratic ranks, and to garner a pro-regime political base through non-party elections.
Gen Musharraf, however, flipped the system. He empowered the local feudal-tribal forces at the cost of both political forces and bureaucracy. Thus, for the first time, the nazim personified both political and state power. Consequently, the very matrix of power and societal control was transformed. The rural populace was virtually placed at the mercy of these socially regressive and politically repressive forces.
What is there for the people of Sindh in this elitist configuration of power?
Ironically, the PPP government has further enhanced the power matrix. It has not only enabled its local feudal-tribal political affiliates to exercise dominant control over the local bureaucracy and police, but to also enjoy the trappings of democratic legitimacy through elected offices.
No wonder, besides the cash-transfer programmes that have helped the PPP cultivate a large constituency among the poorest of the poor, the other significant factor behind its continuing spell in Sindh, and elsewhere, constitutes the support of these electables, forming mostly the local feudal-tribal forces. Meanwhile, the PPP has changed tack vis-à-vis the establishment. It has ‘won over’ the powers that be by, arguably, allowing them a free hand in provincial affairs and allotting large tracts of urban and agriculture land to them. The establishment also seems happy with the PPP for ‘quietening’ an otherwise historically restive province at a time when the state faces serious security challenges in KP, Balochistan, and even Punjab.
Thus, the PPP’s self-serving political strategy has worked for it. It has enjoyed power in Sindh (for over 16 years) and elsewhere. And there seems to be no imminent threat to its status, particularly with the establishment appearing to be pleased with the party’s leadership for playing a crucial role in the passage of the 26th Amendment, which has not only boosted the current hybrid regime, but also bestowed on the party the unique status of acting both as a ‘catalyst’ of change and a ‘balancer’ in the contending troika — the establishment, PML-N and PTI.
But what is there for the people of Sindh in this elitist configuration of power, given that swathes of the populace continue to live under the shadow of fear?
Their rights and liberties are trampled upon by organised criminal gangs while the local bureaucracy and police remain criminally negligent or complicit. And for how long will these hapless people be treated as the ‘means of elitist empowerment’, rather than — as promised by the founding fathers — the ‘ends’ of the ‘social compact’ that guarantees them security, equality, justice, dignity and honour?
But alas, as these hapless people continue to wait for the state to discharge its part of the bargain, the compact — discarded, disfigured and disregarded — itself has become a victim of the curse of the ‘old normal’.
The writer is a lawyer.
Published in Dawn, June 28th, 2025
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