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The Sindh factor – III

(This is the CONCLUDING article on the series)

The PPP is the majority party in Sindh, it must take steps to establish firm leadership. Mr Qaim Ali Shah is a nice enough man, unfortunately smouldering Sindh is beyond his control, the radical measures that must be taken exceeds his capacity to either enact or enforce. The PPP has enough talent among its higher echelons to make a suitable choice. The issues are so real and apparent that falling back on blue-ribboned commissions to pontificate endlessly about the root causes is hypocrisy. Apocalypse being upon us we should get down to taking positive action, political and economic, NOW.

Politically we must immediately, without further delay, make the Metropolitan City Governments in Pakistan, particularly in Sindh, functional. All administrative powers pertaining to socio-economic functions in the city must rest with the elected head of the city. The city itself must be divided into PRECINCTS of not more than 50,000 population, each 4 PRECINCTS must be a SUB-DIVISION, 5 SUB-DIVISIONS making a DISTRICT (population ONE million). The PRECINCT must be a whole administrative unit. Each District must have an elected MAYOR as the administrative head of the unit, the judiciary which must start at the PRECINCT level and go up on the same pattern must be completely separate from the executive. This judiciary may be divided into Metropolitan Courts for the cities and County Courts for the rural areas but also on the Provincial and Federal lines in each city/town/rural area as a counterweight to excess by anyone segment of the executive. Karachi with its 9 million population would have 9 DISTRICTS. The MAYOR of any city with more than 3 million population should be called the Lieutenant Governor. The Lieutenant Governor must appoint a qualified person as a Police Commissioner heading the Metropolitan Police. One can have Lieutenant Governors for Karachi and Hyderabad in Sindh Province. All the utilities and services i.e. electricity, gas, water, sewerage, garbage disposal, educational, medical and health services, telecommunication facilities, transportation, etc, must be the responsibility of the Lieutenant Governor. If Ms. Benazir, young and administratively inexperienced when she took over as PM, can give an above par performance for the past year, what stops Lieutenant Governor Farooq Sattar (or Lieutenant Governor Aftab Shaikh) very much elected at the more basic city level from an above par performance level job under a democratic system? If either of them fail in their tasks or responsibilities the masses can always send them packing into oblivion, constitutionally. We must give the political (and administrative) power to whoever has been elected by the people, that is the essence of democracy, violation of the basic principles is what constitutes to the anarchy that we are witnessing today.

Doomsday soothsayers may immediately say that handing over power to the MQM at the city level in Karachi and Hyderabad may end up in furthering job discrimination as the Mohajirs resort to parochialism and drive out the remaining ethnic Sindhis. First of all, transferring power to them is no gift, it is the God-given right of democracy, next a formula must be unilaterally imposed for quotas in a ratio of 40:60. 40% of the jobs to go on merit through advertised posts in a weekly city circular letter whereas 60% of the jobs must be apportioned by a quota fixed on the ratio of the existing population. Say, there are 4.5 million Mohajirs in Karachi, then they must have 50% of the quota (or 30% of the whole). Since there are Sindhis, Baloch, Punjabis and Pathans settled in Karachi they must get a similar quota based roughly on their population percentage. In reciprocal terms this would apply in the Sindh rural areas also. Job discrimination on ethnic or religious grounds must become a punishable Federal offence under the Constitution. A Special Ombudsman for assessing any violation of the laid down criteria must be appointed. It may happen that certain quotas may be unfulfilled due to various reasons, dispensation may be given by the Special Ombudsman after due notice is given by him in the City Circular. Anyone in authority who practices job discrimination on ethnic lines and is convicted as such should be barred for life from any elected or appointed office. He should not be awarded public contracts, etc of any kind at any of the democratic levels. His children must suffer the same fate for one generation. Anyone who propagates hate along ethnic lines must be expelled from the city other than commercial ostracization.
The Police should be immediately bifurcated into the Federal Police, the Provincial Police and the Metropolitan Police. The Metropolitan Police should have Police Stations in every Precinct with a Police Company at every sub-division and a Police Battalion HQ at every district. Each Police Company must have composite transportation with capability of at least 5 patrol cars on station at one time other than motorcycle patrols. Every three districts must be grouped into a Police Regiment with all their HQs based in the same building as the Metropolitan Police Commissioner. Conceivably Metropolitan Karachi could have 180 Police Stations (one in each PRECINCT), 45 Police Companies (one in each sub-division), 9 Police Battalions (one in each District) grouped into 3 Police Regiments under the Police Commissioner. There should be at least 100 personnel in each Police Station. There should be specially trained at least 3 Anti-Riot Battalions, one Security Protection Battalion and a Counter Terrorism Unit. All police training whether Federal, Provincial or Metropolitan must be through one training school, the choice of initial postings being through drawing of lots, inter-posting for a 3-year period every 9 years of service must be allowed. All officer cadre must do their basic training at the Military or Naval Academy for 6 months. Karachi happens to be the capital of Sindh Province, there can be some fears that the Metropolitan Police, being under the Lieutenant Governor, who will invariably be a Mohajir for the near future, may make life miserable for the non-Mohajirs, the ethnic Sindhis, Pathans, Punjabis, Baloch, etc in that order. At the same time Karachi also happens to be the only port city of Pakistan, therefore the main gateway. Balancing of powers of the Metropolitan, Provincial and Federal Police needs to be done, with the Federal Police having the maximum authority, following by the Provincial Police, and so on. The Sindh Police needs to be bifurcated and reorganised along these lines. For the interim period, both as a short-term measure to impose law and order and the long-term to effect judicious bifurcation of personnel and responsibilities while re-equipping/training of each police tier, we must post in a serving Army Lieutenant General as Inspector General of Police with a Brigadier each in Karachi, Hyderabad and Sukkur as the Chief of Metropolitan Police. This period should not take more than 6 – 9 months, when they can be replaced as per the democratic aspirations of the elected representatives. The appointment of an Army Officer in police posts must not be misinterpreted as lack of confidence in police officers. It is just that at the present time the Army has regained its stature as a neutral untainted force and the officers’ actions may be better accepted by the masses as an interim measure, particularly in fair apportioning. The Provincial Police must have an Urban Wing and a Rural Wing besides a Sindh Highway Patrol. The Urban Wing must be trained in riot control, counter-urban terrorism, white collar crime, murders which cross Metropolitan/Provincial borders, VIP protection, etc. While the Rural Wing must be adequately qualified/equipped to take on anti-dacoit operations reinforced by Federal Guards or the Army as the case may be. Karachi must be made a WEAPON-FREE zone. None except the law enforcing agencies should be allowed to carry arms, not even the private security companies or personal bodyguards. All arms licences must be suspended for Karachi forthwith. Anyone violating this law should be dealt with strictly and then expelled from Karachi. We wish that it could be applied in the rural areas of Sindh but the situation there is different and a modified version may be initiated. Any landlord found having truck with any dacoit must have his total lands confiscated and distributed free of cost to the landless. How many hard-core dacoits in Sindh are there? Put a figure of Rs. 10 million on the head of each and distribute this, not only among the informers, but also among the personnel of the law enforcement agencies who apprehend them. There is a Sindh Force commanded by a serving Major General. This should become part of the Federal Guards. In fact in each Province the Federal Guards (Punjab force, Baloch force, Sarhad force) should be headed by a serving Army Officer of Major General’s rank, with the Federal Guards, headquartered at Islamabad, headed by a serving officer of the rank of Lieutenant General. The Federal Guards concept must be revised immediately to improve the fiat of Federal Authority. The Federal Security Force was an excellent concept destroyed, unfortunately, by use for political purposes, its initial problem lag in not officering it properly by a mixture of serving defence forces and police personnel.

Throughout Sindh Province, indeed the whole of Pakistan, we must have administrative restructuring on the same basis to ensure effective power to the elected representatives of the people from the Precinct to the Sub-Division to the District and Metropolitan Government level. Since the problem is acute in Sindh, lets start with Sindh today. Towns with less than 100,000 population do not need Metropolitan Police and Provincial Police can do the needs. Power must belong to the people in the real sense of the word, not just lip-service hyprocrisy to stroke democracy. The judiciary must be separate from the executive, taking such action that must be necessary under the circumstances. All those who join Government service on a regular basis must sign a bond to shun politics or bias on ethnic or religious grounds. Any indiscretion must be severely punished by bans extending for life from public service or contracts with public money. When that ban extends to the children, the recalcitrants will realise that the sins of the fathers are likely to be visited on their children, are they likely to be more discreet?
Economically speaking, Sindh is in a mess for a number of reasons and away from politics our main area of attention must be economic, a question of job creation, if not industry related, at least service-oriented. At the moment most problems in Karachi are because of the job-saturated market, too many people are fighting for too few jobs. By streamlining civic service and making them more efficient more service jobs can be created, though care must be taken that all such contracts are given out in the private sector, thereby avoiding free-loading off the public system. The first thing to do is stop all emigration to Karachi from other provinces except with permission. This permission must be job-sponsored and must be accorded to any citizen of the country provided the Precinct where he will live so certifies, within one month of his job being sponsored, that they have living space for him/her, they/them. There has to be a dead stop to immigration from other countries. A special case may be made for the repatriation of stranded Pakistanis in Bangladesh, but that’s it. Let’s in mutual consultation even decide upon a cut-off date, 5-10 years ago or even January 1990 and have every citizen coming to Karachi get a work registration card based on his ID card number and duly registered in the Precinct where he/she lives. No ID card should be issued in Karachi to anyone other than the children of someone who already has an ID card. Rules for exception must be strictly enforced, all exceptions published in the media for objections, if any. All this should be computerised with the employers by law making all salary payments by cheque/bank transfers to employees, who in turn cannot open a Bank Account without an ID card. The system exists, it has just to be refined.

We must create more jobs. We must draw the ethnic Sindhi into the economic mainstream of the nation. We must end his economic isolation. To that end we must have a comprehensive economic plan for Sindh which must rely heavily on developing Port Qasim as a Free Trade Zone (FTZ). Bureaucracy never bows down before political authority. The PM gave a directive to make Port Qasim an FTZ as far back as August 5, 1989. It took them three months to issue the directive in writing from the PM’s Secretariat. Almost six months have gone, after that date. The Federal Bureaucracy just laughs scornfully at it. FTZ’s must be created not only in Port Qasim but adjacent to every major town of Sindh with clear stipulation that at least 51% shareholding will be Sindhi, preferably from the adjacent towns/rural areas. To encourage unity among all Sindhi’s ethnic and Mohajirs, outright grants and low interest credit must be given to partnership/corporate bodies having representation of ethnic and Mohajir Sindhi, and on a pro-rata sliding scale for other Pakistanis. One must confess being a critic of the Board of Investment (BoI) at its inception. Like anyone else one was skeptical about its role and performance. The BoI has certainly let a “hundred flowers bloom”, US$ 2 billion sanctioned December 1988 to November 1989, US$ 1.5 billion December 1989 to February 1990, US$ 9 billion projected for the whole of 1990. It is mind boggling, it is true. Above all it creates jobs, it is creditworthy.

The BoI has functioned as ONE-WINDOW operation, opening up the economy of Pakistan. Now lets open-up the economy of rural Sindh by drastic measures. The PM’s election had put paid to Sindhi secession elements, duly orchestrated by that masterly mayhem conductor, RAW from our friendly neighbour, India. It is the responsibility of the PPP and MQM hierarchy to ensure that the ugly heads of secessionists in Sindh are stamped down without mercy. The only way to ensure the removal of grievance is to sweep away economic disparity. This can only be done by industrialising parts of rural Sindh in a force-fed manner. Thatta was historically the major trading port of Sindh, with its contiguity to Port Qasim, which must serve only government cargoes and that of FTZs all over the country. Thatta can again become a modern commercial centre, relieving somewhat the economic pressures on Karachi. We must develop our complete coastline including the ports of Gwadar, Pasni and Ormara as alternates to Karachi, but for economic emancipation of ethnic Sindhis, we have to concentrate on immediately developing Port Qasim.

The aforesaid ideas are not complete solutions, they need to be refined by better and more experienced minds, but at the very least they are a neutral dispassionate analysis and recommendations, which is not a reflection of bureaucracy 9 to 5 attitude towards life, the only variation and excitement being how to shorten this time and lengthen the weekends. Sindh is aflame, Karachi is dying, what will happen to 9 million people if we do not take action now? No number of All Party Conferences or Peace Committees are going to settle problems, only further polarisation will result by raising extraneous issues. While everyone is agreed on the need of taking immediate and drastic action to restore the rule of law in Sindh in the cities and the interiors, God help us if we have to resort to martial law. That would be a Doomsday solution. The moves we must make should be political and economic, in that order of priority. One year of Ms. Benazir has strengthened democracy, not weakened it. An effective opposition has contributed to that democracy, not sabotaged it. Now we look to our elected PM to act, without fear or favour, as the democrat she certainly is. No one can doubt that in all her authoritative actions, pertaining to Sindh, she will evoke bipartisan support. The essence of leadership is to look beyond immediate or personal gain to the long-term national aspirations. The march of history leaves those who do not seize the moment in its lurch. For Ms Benazir, the PPP, the MQM and the IJI it is a crossroads of opportunity. Will they have the courage and statesmanship to take tough decisions and to make their cadres accept them? Some of the decisions may not be palatable but must be taken in the greater interest of Sindh and Pakistan. If anyone plays politics at this stage for personal ends, lets not forgive them, ever.

As the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Ms Benazir must live with the loneliness of the long distance runner. The time has come to stand up and be counted — or counted out!

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