Daily Times

The PPP has once more put the idea of a separate province for South Punjab back on the (electoral) map. Party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, over the weekend, castigated the ruling PMLN over allocating a disproportionate amount of public funds and resources to Lahore and its environs while denying South Punjab its fare share of these. He was keen to point out that Lahore’s horticulture budget was greater than that allocated to all of the southern areas of the province. Promising to alleviate the Seraiki-belt economy and focusing on development related issues — Bilawal vowed to create a new Punjab for the south, provided the people were with him, while bringing to an end the negligence it has suffered during the last two PMLN tenures.

Such calls are nothing new. Especially when elections are looming large. Indeed, the PPP made similar calls for the division of Punjab when campaigning for the 2013 elections. However this didn’t stop the party from losing seats. Appeals for a new Seraiki province are also not new and have mostly been based on linguistic differences with North Punjab. Yet Seraiki nationalism remains politically weak and is restricted thus far to certain groups within the mainstream political framework. Meaning it has never been able to transform into a fully-fledged movement for self-determination.

Be that as it may, we believe Bilawal has a point when it comes to Lahore being favoured both in terms of good governance and fiscal support. During the unveiling of the Punjab budget back in 2010 — lawmakers from South Punjab protested the allocation of Rs 5 billion for their part of the province. Dismissing this as ‘Zakat’, they condemned the excessive spending on the Raiwind Road, leading to the Sharif residence on the outskirts of Lahore; the construction bill for which came in at a cool Rs 21 billion.

Complaints coming out of South Punjab are legitimate. After all, water scarcity has begun to take a massive toll on the areas, thereby impacting the local agricultural economy. In comparison with northern Punjab, industrial infrastructure is at best scarce, at worst obsolete. Similarly, manufacturing and commercial operations are more than faltering given weak human resources in terms of a skilled and educated labour force. Such conditions have led to widespread poverty, which, in turn, has rendered the area a fertile recruitment ground for extremist militants. This all needs to change before resentment at the lack of political representation boils over and Pakistan is once more pushed to the brink.

Published in Daily Times, December 17^th 2017.