Authenticity In Call For Formation Of Southern Punjab Province

The National Assembly on Thursday adopted a resolution for creation of a new province for the people of Southern Punjab. The resolution was moved by the Federal Minister for Law and Justice, Farooq H Naek. Highlighting the sense of deprivation of the people of South Punjab, the resolution said “The House hereby resolves that in order to address the grievances and to secure the political administrative and economic interests of the people in the Southern region of the province of the Punjab and to empower them in this regard, it is expedient that a new province to be known as Province of Janoobi Punjab be created from the present province of the Punjab”. Stressing upon the Punjab government to formulate legislation in Punjab Assembly to create a new province, the resolution further added “This House thus calls upon the provincial assembly of the Punjab to present a bill in the Punjab Assembly to amend the constitution in accordance with the article 239 (4) of the constitution, for passage which would have the effect of altering the limits of province of Punjab, thereby creating province of Janoobi Punjab.” There seems to be some confusion in media and in the minds of people of other parts of Pakistan regarding the authenticity of the issue. It is also a hot topic of discussion what has prompted the government in general and its ally party MQM to initiate a very strong campaign in media, assemblies and other forums for discussion on the formation of Seraiki province. There is an argument that political gains or distraction from other issues might be the idea behind this campaign but the following statistics reveal an entirely different story. The province of Punjab is the second largest, most developed and most populous province of Pakistan. According to the different indicators it is considered the most prosperous province of Pakistan but paradoxically, Southern Punjab, sometimes also referred to as the Seraiki belt is one of the most backward regions of the country. This region has a very high incidence of poverty and the number of children who have never been enrolled in schools is highest in this region.1 Despite being the populous region in the province of Punjab, this region also has the least number of public and private sector universities. Region Incidence of Poverty (%) North 21.31% Central 28.76% South 50.1% West 52.1% Region Never enrolled in School(boys) Never enrolled in School (girls) North 6% 15% Central 12% 23% South 30% 44% West 27% 44.5% Source: Punjab tops in infant mortality, poverty, income inequality http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=145337&Cat=5&dt=11/9/2008 The province of Punjab has the highest per capita income and its socio-economic indicators are generally higher than the national average. But district level data reveals that parts of southern Punjab are closer to Sindh and Balochistan in terms of poverty-related characteristics. The patterns are disturbing when analyzed in conjunction with the generally favorable status of the northern Punjab belt stretching from Rawalpindi to Lahore, and including the semi-industrialized districts of Gujrat, Gujranwala, and Sialkot amongst others. This region has a strong feudal influence but families such as Queshis, Khosas, Gilanis, Gormanis and Legharis has so far failed to address to the sense of deprivation prevailing in the minds of the people of the region. This regions has the most poor infrastructure as regards the health, educational and public transport system The deprived and poor people of southern Punjab do want development, jobs, schools, roads and basic infrastructure. The origin of the problem dates back to early years of Pakistan. Bahawalpur was the first state which announced accession to Pakistan as a federating unit and on April 29, 1951 a supplementary accession agreement was signed by Nawab Sadiq and Khawaja Nazimuddin under which Bahawalpur was made province of Pakistan (federating unit) and under this agreement the 1952 polls were held in the province and a provincial government was set up. Furthermore, in the draft constitution of 1954, officially printed by the Printing Press of Pakistan, Bahawalpur had the status of a province. Miseries for the people of this region started surfacing with the creation of one-unit in the year 1955 when this province was announced as part of West Pakistan and later in 1970, under an LFO issued by military ruler Yahya Khan, one-unit was abolished and Bahawalpur was made a division of Punjab. Since that day the people of this region have been demanding a separate province for themselves but because of various reasons discussions on sub-national disparities have always been considered taboo in official circles in Pakistan. In this scenario when the local feudal families have failed to solve the problems of the local people, the question arises that what the political parties have done so far to alleviate the situation. In its public meetings held in Multan and other areas of the southern Punjab, MQM has raised this issue several times. MQM has raised this issue several times in National Assembly and Senate also which has resulted in increased pressure on all the major political parties to publicly declare their policy on this issue. Finally, the National Assembly passed a resolution acknowledging the sufferings of people of this area and hopefully adaptation of this resolution will a major milestone in the creation of a new province for the deprived people. Furthermore, it is required that all the major political parties and elected representatives also formulate legislation for other deprived areas of the country to form new provinces. One such example is the Hazara district where locals have been demanding for a new province for a long time now. Next step should be working towards provincial autonomy so that local elected members would be able to solve problems of their areas in a better manner and conflict among all the provincial units would be minimized.

Will dissolution of HEC directly affect middle class students???

There are currently some counter arguments that dissolution of HEC is not really a problem of middle class students. The first argument is that HEC has worked totally on improvement of quaternary education and producing PhD scholars and has not given any attention towards eroding quality of pure/basic sciences and lower education.

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The answer lies in the question itself. First of all, let us make it clear that what is the mandate of HEC and what are the functions that it performs. Its first function is to regulate the standards of universities. Without a central body such as HEC, and without its quality control, we would be seeing mushroom growth of fake universities of two rooms each in every street where it would be possible to literally buy degrees. These fake universities would also be offering bachelor programs and the standard of education even at the bachelor level would really deteriorate. Without HEC, any industrialist or capitalist would be able to establish universities as a money making business and the standard of education offered by these universities would be quite low in the absence of a regulatory authority. Currently a graduate from Karachi University is considered far more superior than a graduate from many commercial universities. This happens because HEC ranks all the universities across Pakistan considering a lot of factors and the standard of education. In the absence of HEC, a student from Karachi, who has studied hard all his life to secure good marks to eventually get admission in Karachi university would be rated exactly similar to someone who has not studied hard ever in life, but has money and means to buy degrees from potential low standard universities.



Secondly, HEC does not only focus on PhDs, it also regulates the M.Phil and Masters programs and the number of Masters and M.Phil students has also increased manifold since the establishment of this authority. These graduates of these masters, M.Phil and PhD programs teach at Bachelor levels. So if we do not have quality masters, Mphil and Phd scholars, the teaching faculty at bachelor levels will impart education of low quality and this standard of bachelor education will also fall. The bachelor graduates often teach at primary and secondary level and consequently the level of education at this primary and secondary level will also deteriorate.



The third function of HEC is to grant scholarships to deserving students for masters and Mphil and Phd education. Before the establishment of HEC, very few middle class families could afford the cost of education of these levels. The scholarship programs offered by the government were availed only by the affluent and resourceful families who had connections. What HEC has done is, that it now awards scholarships for various programs strictly on merit for middle class families. In the absence of HEC, the corrupt politicians would be free to award any scholarship to their own families and children.



The fourth function of HEC is to validate and verify the degrees. There are many universities abroad where rich families and rich kids can literally buy their degrees and a term of party schools has been coined for such universities. People who can afford to buy these degrees, come back to Pakistan and get higer positions in job market usurping the rights of deserving students in Pakistan. We all have seen the issue of fake degrees of legislators recently, in the absence of a central body such as HEC who else could have pointed out which were the fake degrees and which were the real ones.



One more function of HEC is to promote scientific research. Without scientific research flourishing, the number of jobs available for graduates of pure sciences would decrease even more. Scientific research is directly responsible to assist industry and agriculture and opens avenues for jobs for graduates of pure/ basic sciences. Currently HEC is funding research project in the field of chemistry to generate cheap fuel, in the field of agricultural sciences to produce cheap seeds etc. Being an underdeveloped country, people of our country need these researches even more to increase agricultural growth etc. Without a central body such as HEC, these research projects and the activity being generated by them would die out.



Another function is HEC is to verify and validate the degrees of those students who go abroad for employment after completion of their graduation or masters education. After the dissolution of HEC, it would be almost impossible for students from our country to seek jobs abroad as there would be no authority to verify and validate these degrees.



All these factors mean nothing to affluent people, and are most important to middle class people because rich families can easily afford to go abroad and study and the standards of local universities does not really bother them, so the perception that it is not out problem does not seem correct to me.



Another perception that the improving the standard of lower education is more important for us and Karachiites, also does not seem correct to me. We can cite the examples of Jews who are so few in number and are yet controlling the whole economy of United States. Their number is probably only in hundreds of thousands and yet they are controlling the policies which affect billions of people al over the world. This is only possible because they are a very highly educated nation, and as a result they automatically occupy all the important positions and then make policies which directly benefit their nation. How thousands of jews can dominate billions of Muslims, how a country so small such as Israel can export fighter jets and the wealthy countries of Middle East despite enormous wealth are becoming dependent on them is only possible because Jews give extreme importance to higher education and research.



This last argument that standard of lower education has gone down is again self contradictory. It is not the mandate of HEC to regulate lower education in the first place, but in the absence of HEC the standard of lower education would go even more down as there would be no quality teachers available to teach at these levels.



In my opinion, and from my understanding, I believe that MQM does realize the importance of higher education and that is precisely the reason that it has proposed and is establishing Nazir Hussain University. It is also important that simultaneously the quality of primary and secondary education should be improved.





Dr. Fahad Azam

Dissolution of HEC and increase in pay structure of doctors

The Federal government has almost finalized the decision to dissolve HEC and to provide grants to the academic institutions and universities directly through provincial governments. This action will undo all the goood work of HEC and will severly damage standard of higher education in the country. Soome of the notable achievements of HEC include an increase in the number of academic publications, the fact that some Pakistani universities have improved their global rankings, increased university enrolment and a greater number of PhDs.

MQM is one political party in the country which did not even have one single fake degree holder in its ranks at the time of evaluation of degrees of MNAs and MPAs and has huge number of highly educated individuals as its supporters. If MQM takes the stance of opposing dissolution of HEC, it can win sympathies of thousands of very intellectual people who are observing this situation with a keen interest.

Similarly, after the ugly handling of strike of Young Doctors Association by the Punjab government, if MQM decides to increase the pay structure of doctors in Sind, it will be greatly appreciated by the medical associations throught out the country and especially in Punjab. Together these two actions will also do a lot of good to the the image of MQM in Punjab which would be just the perfect time before the hugely anticipated public meeting at Qaddafi stadium on April 10. The raise in salaries of dcotors might not be such a difficult step to take becuase MQM currently holds the pronvincial health ministry.

Dr. Fahad Azam