It was in the last quarter of 2010 that the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government hosted a round-table conference on cultural revival. “The conference was something that inculcated a new spirit and caused a major shift in the government policy towards promoting and preserving the lost cultural glory of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,” says Mohammad Azam Khan, the provincial secretary for sports, culture and tourism.

The government has now devised a strategy on the basis of the recommendations of the conference. A Directorate of Culture has been set up to oversee the implementation of the recommendations, in liaison with the culture wing of the Tourism Corporation Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly called the Sarhad Tourism Corporation or STC), a semi-autonomous body responsible for developing tourism in the province.

But making money available remains a problem. For one, culture has never been a priority area for the provincial government while making its annual budget. In fact, there has never been a separate head of account for culture on the official ledgers. In the provincial budget for 2009-2010, the government has allocated 333 million rupees – or 0.7 per cent of the total provincial development budget – for sports, culture, archaeology and tourism combined. In the current budget year, this allocation has been increased to 670 million rupees, but it is still less than one per cent of the total annual development budget which has grown substantially due to increase in the amount of money Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has received under the Seventh National Finance Commission Award. Similarly, the provincial government had also lobbied international donors such as the United States Agency for International Development to generate funds for the revival of cultural activities — without success though.

According to Khan, funding for ongoing projects for cultural revival is being made from the money allocated for tourism. The Revival of Cultural Heritage project, focused on districts other than Peshawar, is involving non-government organisations to share its costs with the provincial government. The provincial authorities will reimburse 20 per cent of the cost incurred by the non-government and community-based organisations carrying out the activities planned under the project. “We want to only facilitate these organisations to step in,” says Khan, adding that a reimbursement process has been designed to avoid bureaucratic hassles and a monitoring mechanism has been put in place to check fraud and pilferage.

To ease the financial bottlenecks for the future, he says efforts are being made to secure separate allocation of money – at least 300 million rupees – for the revival and promotion of culture in the next fiscal year’s annual development programme. A senior official at the provincial Department of Finance confirms that culture has been included as a separate head of account for the allocation of development funds for the next fiscal year but he does not know the amount of funding it will receive. “As far as the procedures are concerned, they have been fulfilled for a separate budgetary allocation for culture. But the final decision about the amount of money will be made by the political leadership of the province,” he says.

The Herald is Pakistan’s premier current affairs magazine published by the Dawn Media Group every month from Karachi.