Desolate Province

By Muhammad Omar Iftikhar | September 2020

The rural areas of Sindh remain desolate - and its cities are not far behind. They seem to have no connection with the rest of the country. Like the rural areas, the cities too wear a decrepit look. Areas in the interior of Sindh, such as Kotri, Khairpur, Larkana, Dadu, Tando Allahyar, Ghotki, Thatta and so many others, do not have ample educational facilities or a durable system of healthcare. People who want to acquire higher education are compelled to move to Karachi, Hyderabad or to other cities while those in need of medical attention also have no choice but to find hospitals in the urban centres. While Sindh is Pakistan’s third largest province in terms of area and the second-largest by population, it has its share of grievances arising from the inability of the government to focus on its development.

Over the years, the whole of Sindh has more or less remained a neglected part of the country. Where the federal leadership looks at the entire country as a whole, the provincial leadership has the responsibility to ensure that people living in its jurisdiction are not ignored in terms of their basic rights. The people of Sindh, however, are experiencing one bad government after another. Since 1970, Sindh has not been ruled by a government that could have uplifted the province. The leaders, including the chief ministers and the members of the National Assembly, have failed to change Sindh and upgrade it in education, health and all other sectors.

A leader must have clarity of purpose, decisiveness, courage, passion and humility. Moreover, a leader must have a vision about the future. It is this vision that is lacking in the leadership of Sindh. This prevents them from working for the development of the province and its people. Looking at the leaders of Sindh from the current setup and the past, we observe that they certainly do not have clarity of purpose. This is why, there is a need for them to plan projects related to infrastructural development of the province. These leaders must also have the decisiveness so that they can decide which projects to launch and how much funds must be allocated for each project. Unfortunately, they seem to focus only on earning money and stuffing their own pockets instead of taking up projects for the benefit of the people.

Since 1947, Sindh has had 29 chief ministers. The current chief minister, Syed Murad Ali Shah, is serving his second term that began on August 18, 2018. His first term was from July 29, 2016 to May 28, 2018. It is interesting to note that the chief ministers of Sindh from 1947 to 1955 belonged to the Pakistan Muslim League. From 1972 onwards, the provincial chief ministers were brought in by the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). This is when the state of affairs in Sindh began deteriorating.

From 1972 to 2018, there have been twenty two chief ministers. Out of these, nine times the CM has been a part of the PPP. The PPP leadership has faced severe criticism for its inability to manage funds. It has engaged in rampant corruption and does not focus on giving the people of interior Sindh the basic necessities. This is all the more surprising since it is generally believed that the voter base of the Sindh government lies in the interior of the province and not in the cities and certainly not in Karachi, which is the seat of the provincial government. Even then, while the cities of Sindh are deprived of any development funds by the provincial government, the same happens in rural Sindh as well – supposedly the PPP’s voter base.

The case of Larkana is a case in point. This is the town that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his family belong to. In his time, there were great plans to develop Larkana on modern lines. Today’s Larkana presents the picture of a once prosperous town which may soon compete with nearby Moenjodaro in terms of ruins.

Education, health and justice are the key elements that enhance a society. In Sindh, these elements have been missing for decades. According to a report, in 2018, as many as 52 schools of the Sindh Education Foundation (SEF) existed across Sindh. It was reported that nearly PKR50 million were allocated for the SEF, which is a public-private partnership, providing funds to schools in areas where there are no government educational institutions. The cities of Larkana, Hyderabad, Dadu, Tharparkar, Sanghar, and Mirpur Khas had such schools but they are now just ghost schools. It is reported that the funds were funnelled away in other directions.

Apart from education, health is a major sector that needs continuous development. According to a report compiled by the Sindh Healthcare Commission and released in July 2019, Sindh has 41,082 beds in 7,651 health facilities. These include government-run hospitals and private tertiary care hospitals. These healthcare facilities are available for a population of around 47.89 million. Based on this report, there is one hospital bed for around 1,200 people. Alarmingly, this is less than half of the global hospital beds-to-people ratio established by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Out of Sindh’s 7,651 medical facilities, nearly 1,770 or 23% are situated in the six districts of Karachi. The report claims that nearly 40% of the over 41,000 beds in Sindh are in the healthcare facilities in Karachi. This shows the imbalance of how medical facilities are distributed across Sindh’s urban and rural areas.

The condition of education and healthcare facilities may well establish the causes leading to bad governance in Sindh. This bad governance did not emerge overnight. It is a process of continuous corruption and evading the laws. Corruption in its simplest of definitions is the abuse of entrusted power for private gain. The leaders of Sindh have been abusing their authority to fulfill their vested interests while keeping the common people of Sindh in the dark. There is no reason that Sindh cannot achieve progress and development. It has the manpower, resources and capital. What is further required is a vision, purpose and the will to deliver promises with honesty.

Larkana

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