Mushtaq Gaadi; Asad Farooq; Anwar Shah

Over the last few years, demands for carving new provinces out of the existing four have been a regular part of the national political discourse. There is widespread and continued disagreement among political parties and intelligentsia over whether ethnicity, language and culture should be the basis for new provinces or should administrative efficiencies be taken into account first and foremost while deciding about dividing the existing ones. A multiparty parliamentary commission has meanwhile recommended the creation of what it calls Bahawalpur Janoobi Punjab province. The proposed province will consist of Multan, Dera Ghazi Khan and Bahwalpur divisions as well as Mianwali and Bhakkar districts and most of its residents will be Seraiki speakers.

To discuss the pros and cons of the commission’s recommendations, the Herald invited Anwar Shah, an expert on federalism who works with the World Bank, Asad Farooq a teacher of law at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) who has worked extensively on socio-economic subjects in southern Punjab, and Mushtaq Gaadi who teaches at the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, and has a family history of activism on Seraiki causes.

Herald. Do you think the proposed name, Bahawalpur Janoobi Punjab, captures the essence of the demand for a new province?
Mushtaq Gaadi. It is rather contrary to the claim of recognising a linguistic identity which is the basis for the struggle for regional autonomy [in southern Punjab]. But the course of recognition has two aspects. One is self-identification while the other concerns recognition by others. At the moment, the parliamentarians are probably concerned with how [the Seraiki self-recognition] is acceptable to others in the present situation.
The success of the Seraiki movement depends on the survival of parliamentary democracy. If democracy persists, it would not be possible for any mainstream political party to ignore its demands.
Asad Farooq. Subjective factors – the consciousness of a national identity – do not emerge from out of the blue. They are the results of certain historical and contemporary conditions — of persecution, of oppression etc. We must examine the nature of marginalisation – or the peripheralisation – of those parts of the country in which Seraiki-speakers are dominant [to understand the demand for a new province].
Anwar Shah. The name does not capture the linguistic and cultural identity of a population seeking autonomy. But I have a different take on whether there should be a new province. Pakistan is an unbalanced federation with one dominant unit — Punjab. It is, therefore, by its nature an unstable system. One solution is to create new provinces but this will not solve the problems of dysfunctional governance. With feudal, industrial and military elites dominating the political system, it may instead yield a Leviathan form of governance comprising costly and massive bureaucratic and political structures with little to show for service delivery to people. What Pakistan needs is to think about a governance system that delivers services consistent with people’s preferences but also cost-effectively. In achieving this, provinces, as currently constituted, are part of the problem rather than the solution.
To serve people and to be accountable to them, a country needs to have empowered local governments with all service delivery responsibilities. Good examples of this are China, South Korea, Denmark, Finland and Sweden where local governments are responsible for two-thirds of government spending. Such an arrangement would diffuse ethnic and linguistic tensions and at the same time reduce government costs of unnecessary bureaucracies.

Herald. Besides linguistic identity, what are the political, administrative and financial reasons for the division of Punjab? For instance, the parliamentary commission’s proceedings show that southern districts of Punjab are not getting a fair share in revenue distribution, job quotas and development schemes…
Gaadi. We cannot disentangle the question of identity/recognition from the spheres of politics, governance, economic deprivation etc. They are co-constituted and must be taken into account.
Farooq. An indisputable factor in keeping some parts of Punjab as privileged and others as marginalised is the continuation of extractive and accumulating practices – including land grabbing and resettlement of Punjabis in southern Punjab – first set in motion by the colonial rulers. It remains important that we locate the debate on the new province in terms of material realities such as control over resources, land and resettlement of a large number of Punjabis in areas such as Bahawalpur division.

Herald. Do you think that the parliamentary commission has been responsive to the linguistic and cultural questions as opposed to economic and administrative ones?
Gaadi. The proposed province half satisfies the demand for a linguistic province. Although the parliamentarians have not considered naming it ‘Seraiki’ province, most of the Seraiki areas are included in the proposed new unit. We should also note that the demand for Bahawalpur [as a separate] province has not been entertained, which testifies to the underlying principle of creating one linguistic province.

Herald. A new province requires changes in the National Finance Commission award, job quotas, river water distribution and representation in the Senate. Will these changes create more interprovincial problems and conflicts than they will resolve?
Farooq. The possibility of problems and conflicts is not a sufficient cause to not address the real grievances of the marginalised communities.
Shah. Yes, the 18th Amendment has also created incentives for such conflicts to be accentuated with provincial governments having the power to discriminate against non-residents and provinces enjoying wider regulatory powers in food, drugs and interprovincial trade. I think it is a bad policy to create barriers to trade and movement of human and material resources [among the federating units]. There is significant evidence from countries across the world showing that protectionism leads to lower growth in the protected regions.
Gaadi. I don’t agree. A new province will not only help reduce the ethnic hegemony of Punjab but it can also create some kind of balance of power between the federating units.

Herald. How will the proposed province generate revenue to meet its development and financial needs?
Shah. All provinces in Pakistan are heavily dependent on transfers of money from the federal government and the Seraiki province will be no exception. In Pakistan, the provinces receive these transfers as manna from heaven without any accountability to their own residents or to anyone else.

Syed Ghazenfur. Will the division of Punjab on the basis of Seraiki identity redirect state resources from particular interest groups, such as the landed class and state institutions, towards popular welfare and redistribution?
Shah. No. [Divisions] lead to further deprivation of the disadvantaged regions [by creating barriers on the movement of resources] in federations where the federal structure is dominated by certain interests and hegemonic ideas and institutions. Considering that there are ethnic tensions and regional disparities in Pakistan, I don’t think that barriers against the movement of resources will reduce the politics of deprivation in certain areas.

Syed Ghazenfur. Do you think that local government reforms, with fiscal and administrative autonomy, would overcome the problems of exploitation without a new province?
Shah. It is important to protect the aspirations of the Seraiki identity. My plea is to rethink federal governance in its entirety — which in Pakistan proves to be a highly costly option with little benefits to the citizens. Pakistan needs a federalism of regional/local governments where there is home rule at the local level and local governments have oversight responsibilities for regional and national governments in their own area.
My understanding is that feudal politics dominates in the Seraiki region. The new province will entrench the powers of these influential politicians further. No remedy is being provided to ensure that the interest of the common man will be served by the ruling elite and that the elite will be held accountable by the common man. Needless to say, a similar situation prevails in the existing provinces.
If we focus on creating accountable, decentralised local governance, we can overcome our divisive politics and focus on improving economic and social outcomes for Pakistani citizens. We now have a country which can neither guarantee the security of life and property of its citizens nor ensure the protection of minorities and disadvantaged groups. This calls for a more radical reform of public governance than simply tinkering with the existing system by creating a few more provinces.
I am struck by the parochialism of the current debate [on the new province] focusing on governmental structures as an end in themselves rather than as a means to achieving an end while completely ignoring the objectives of improving service delivery and economic and social advancement. We have bloated federal and provincial governance and non-existent local governance in Pakistan but this does not seem to be an area of concern within the current debate.
Gaadi. After the creation of the new province, it would be easier for the working classes and marginalised groups in the Seraiki region to demand further democratisation and redistribution of resources.
Secondly, we also need to recognise the potential of the Seraiki identity in terms of a decolonisation process. The radical questions being posed with reference to linguistic and historical identities can lead to a new imagination of nation, state, region, etc.
Farooq. The obsession with geographies and boundaries inherent in the modernist polity can be re-articulated in new and innovative ways — a re-imagination that should emerge from the grassroots level and not from a pre-defined policy/cost/market agenda which has failed here and elsewhere. The potential to rethink politics that presents itself in the Seraiki provincial question is one that we cannot miss – not in terms of federalism and cost-effectiveness, market, or otherwise – but in terms of opening up real political spaces in which people are able to articulate demands and claims.
It seems that there are preconceptions about the ‘right’ type of devolution to address the question of marginalised communities but it is important to acknowledge the fact that any reformulation of local governance must emanate from the peoples’ demands and concerns.

Guest. In a recent decision, the Lahore High Court has ruled against the creation of new provinces by the current parliament. Is the court ruling in accordance with constitutional and legal precedents?
Farooq. Certainly not. The Lahore High Court argued for the implementation of a convention of British Constitutional Law that says political parties should contest elections on any major constitutional change [before bringing about that change]. The use of this convention in Pakistan is tenuous — in fact, the Supreme Court has clearly stressed the need for re-evaluating largely colonial paradigms of governing.
Gaadi. The proceedings on the issue of new provinces in the Lahore High Court exemplify increasing judicialisation of politics. The new province is purely a political and parliamentary issue. Any judicial review in this regard is actually an encroachment over parliamentary sovereignty.

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