Pakistan: Politics of provinces

The Frontier Post

It is all politics, both the creation of the parliamentary commission on new provinces in Punjab and its rejection by the Punjab Assembly. Bluntly, both the PPP and the PML (N) are flirting playfully with something very serious. Creation of new provinces is a very serious matter which has to be taken in all the earnestness that the issue imperatively demands. But the two parties are just belittling it with their patently politically-motivated shenanigans. The PPP originally mooted the proposal of a Seraiki province. And the pundits screamed that it was sheer politics, and a bland electoral politics at that. The PML (N) first countered the move with the idea of a Bahawalpur province and now with the call for a Potohar province. And this too the pundits term as sheer politics. Whatever it is, with their politics of provinces the two parties are smiting into oblivion some of the very legitimate and pressing demands for a province. As for one, the popular demand of the tribal people for giving the status of a province to their Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). By every reckoning, theirs is an eminently justifiable aspiration and a rightful expectation. Not only they qualify to have a province of their own, be the criterion administrative, linguistic, ethnic, geographical, demographic or resources. For the present, their long-denied induction into the national mainstream has nevertheless been rendered an indispensable requisite no lesser for the supreme objective of preserving and strengthening the national security, stability and solidarity. Yet the long-cherished demand of our tribal compatriots has plainly drowned in the bottom of the din of the two parties’ politics of provinces. It should have been occupying the place of primacy. But cudgeled into such an insignificance has it been in the ongoing bout over the provinces in Punjab between the PPP and the PNL (N) that nobody talks even in passing of a FATA province. Then, it is not in Punjab alone that calls are coming out for carving it up into more provinces. Such calls are being heard in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan as well. And not all those demands can be shot down all like that. Some make an eminent sense and must be put to a very serious thought and scrutiny. Furthermore, smaller federating units with greater devolution of power demonstrably make for far more wellbeing of the citizens and the strengthening of the federation. In neigbouring India, they have gone for a massive exercise of craving out new provinces over the years, and are still continuing with this drill. And we too stand in urgent need of a similar reconfiguration of our land in the greater national interests. But this task palpably cannot be undertaken wisely and efficaciously by the political eminences, simply because their politics will inevitably enter into the task in a big way. Some nonpartisan people have to be involved decisively, as creation of new provinces doesn’t mean simply declaring a part of the land as a province. Intricate issues like its sustainability as a province administratively and financially, and getting a fair share of the resources from the mother province are involved. Hence, if the two parties are any serious about the creation of new provinces, they must agree, in concurrence with all the other political formations and groups, the establishment of a blue-ribbon commission to study and examine the various demands being voiced in the country for new provinces and put up its recommendations to the parliament for perusal and approval. It must be an independent commission comprising nonpartisan prominent public figures and experts. But if the two parties are only after politics, they may keep up with their funfair of establishing politically-inspired commissions, rejecting those commissions and calling for new political commissions. After all, supreme national interests come home to them only sparingly, if at all. They may have their abominable politics of provinces to the fill. The people give two hoots to their theatrics.