Sindh’s governance priorities

No one could accuse the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) of good governance in recent years. In opposition the party is fire and brimstone, seething with ideas about how best to run the country or whichever province they are represented in. In government they invariably become incompetents as their string of failed policies, corruption charges, and inaction show. The latest debacle comes from Thar, a desert region in Sindh bordering India, where droughts occur routinely every two or three years. Sindh is the PPP heartland, and while the rest of the country fell to the PML-N virtually without a fight in the 2013 elections, the PPP kept its mandate in Sindh intact. The Sindh government’s negligence has now led to the deaths of a reported 121 children in three months in Thar from exposure and malnutrition during this year’s drought. Let us mull over this figure momentarily: 121 children, under five, many of them just a few months old. Who will be held responsible for this unforgiveable human tragedy? The Sindh government only took notice after news reports from the area showed that a localised famine was growing in severity. Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah paid an obligatory visit to a hospital and has announced a Rs 100 million food aid package, with Rs 0.2 million in compensation to the families. However, such a debacle would normally persuade any self-respecting democratic government to resign, particularly since grain stores were lying full awaiting distribution. So far no resignation, or even sincere remorse is forthcoming for this gross negligence. The army has moved in to provide emergency aid while the National Disaster Management Authority remains conspicuous by its absence.

The paltry cash recompense is made worse by the fact that Thar residents suffer from poor or non-existent facilities and communications. Thar’s people exist at a subsistence level, with little or no water, and rely on livestock to meet their needs. Qaim Ali Shah is trying to hide behind past disasters, particularly that 90 percent of Thar’s livestock was killed during the 2000 drought. This does not explain reports that hundreds of heads of livestock died of disease in 2010-11 too. Clearly livestock numbers grew again during the intervening decade, only to die off later. The 2012 floods destroyed grain storage areas near Thar, but people received no assistance in rebuilding them. All this begs the question why the PPP allowed the situation to persist in their five years in power at the federal level and six years (by now) at the provincial. Now PPP Patron-in-chief Bilawal Bhutto Zardari faces considerable embarrassment over the fact that while he was organising a multi-billion rupee wonderful Sindh Festival, dozens of babies were dying of hunger just a few miles away, his belated order to provide immediate relief notwithstanding.