Seraiki Province

Dawn Editorial
Sunday, 05 Jul, 2009

Prime Minister Gilani has dismissed the call for a Seraiki province as ‘ill-timed’. — Reuters

Punjab has been gripped by an extraordinary bipartisan political debate in recent weeks: should a so-called Seraiki province be carved out of south Punjab? The debate has been tempered somewhat by the attempts of the top leadership of the PPP and PML-N to quash talk of dividing Punjab, but it is continuing ferociously in the media and in sections of the political elite.

Unfortunately, the debate has been cast primarily as an internal issue of Punjab when in fact it would affect the whole federation and should, therefore, be correctly placed in a national context. Should Pakistan have more provinces and if so, what should be the basis for determining the boundaries of the new provinces? The demand for a Seraiki province is several decades old and is based on the claim that it is culturally, linguistically and historically a distinct unit of Pakistan. Given that the four existing provinces of Pakistan are by and large demarcated along those lines, prima facie a demand for a Seraiki province would appear to fit into the existing scheme of things.

However, the latest round of debate has drawn on an additional argument: administrative efficiency. The provinces are too big — Punjab with a population of 80-odd million is approximately the size of Germany — and simply cannot deliver services to all denizens, goes the argument. Smaller would be better. But this line of argument is actually about more than just a Seraiki province and opens up the entire administrative system in Pakistan to scrutiny: if four provinces are too few, how many would be enough? Five, 10, 15, 20? And before taking a marker pen to a map of Pakistan, should not the claim that smaller is better itself be verified? Simply pointing to India or Afghanistan and the numerous provinces/states there is not enough. Tinkering with provincial boundaries on the basis of unverified assumptions could be dangerous.

Prime Minister Gilani, who hails from Multan which is part of the Seraiki belt, wants to have nothing to do with the debate — whether in cultural, linguistic and historical terms or on administrative grounds — and has dismissed the call for a Seraiki province as ‘ill-timed’ and liable to open a Pandora’s box. But his position is in contrast to the PPP’s long-standing vow to defend the interests of sub-nationalities in Pakistan and it remains to be seen whether it will hurt him in his hometown, where there appears to be bipartisan sentiment in favour of the new province. In the present constitutional framework, debate on provincial boundaries along cultural, linguistic and historical lines should not be squelched.

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