It’s a haunting fact that our economy is melting down day by day, bit by bit. Reasons, we all know… the parent reason is the War on terror, second is corruption. We’re drained out to the last bit and are left with an economy mainly dependant on foreign remittance by overseas Pakistanis.
As a solution, our failed govt setup has closed their eyes to the state threatening issues. And they’ve floated this national debate of new provinces as a scapegoat.
The worst thing they did was that they changed the name of NWFP to KPK (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), not because NWFP didn’t need renaming, but because the renaming was based on language and ethnic divides, which left other chunk of non-pushtoons in now-KPK feeling deprived and inferior. Don’t forget that the reaction of renaming was violence everywhere in the province which claimed at least 11 lives and left more than 100 people injured. The main drawback of this whole process of renaming to KPK was that it installed a foundation towards the ethnic and language based demands to provincial divisions, which we are facing now.
People (aided by politicians) started demanding new provinces based on language they speak. For Instance, Saraikistan for people who speak Saraiki language. Though you may think that Punjab is for Punjabis then why can’t Saraiki-speaking have Saraikistan. That’s because Punjab is an ancient name derived from punj and aab which means five waters (i.e five rivers), therefore it’s a geographical name, not ethical or language based. Same goes for other provinces. I although believe that a proposal can be put forward in parliament to change names of current provinces as well (in a better way though) so that we all sound more like Pakistanis than Punjabi, Sindhi, Balochi etc.
This hype of new provinces has been created to keep us busy only, so that we ignore the more urgent reforms we require. Anyway, I believe that new provinces will not be created anytime soon for three main reasons:
1 – Per situation of our economy, we don’t have enough funds to install administrative setups in new provinces.
2 – Partitions will not be acceptable by main provincial political parties for a simple reason of losing grip on resources.
3 – As per Pakistani Constitution, the bill of new provinces will have to pass through both the houses with 2/3 votes of majority, which is not likely to happen any time soon because of such a disorganised and uncertain setup in place. In case this happens, the bill will then have to go through respective provincial assemblies as well to pass with 2/3 majority. This again looks uncertain, especially in Punjab because PML-N wouldn’t like to give away chunk of their-controlled province to PPP who already has a good vote bank in so-called Saraikistan.
It happens or doesn’t, the question we should ask is: Do we really need new provinces at this point of time? Instead, don’t we need urgent reforms in law and order situation, economy, education and health just to name a few? If these leaders and their parties were keeping us and our needs dearer, then they would talk about how to make the current system better instead of making us feeling uncertain about our future.
But to avoid these most urgently needed reforms, the Govt has decided to keep us busy with the debate of new provinces. We, as Pakistanis, should think about standing under one flag instead of choosing political flags for ourselves. Do you remember that lesson from school? i.e. United we stand, divided we fall. Lets decide, and pray that we stand united under one Pakistani flag, always. Ameen.
Filed under: Geopolitics, Pakistani Culture, Pakistani Politics, Balochistan, Hazara, KPK, New Provinces, Pakistan, Pakistani Politics, PML-N, PPP, Provinces, Punjab, Qabailistan, Saraikistan, Sindh
Jeevay! 