He didn’t realise he was poking a stick into a hornet’s nest. The Punjab premier’s off-the-cuff, rhetorical question about the creation of new provinces has touched such a raw nerve that it sparked one of the few instances of unity shown by the trio of Karachi. Just why is the mere mention of new provinces enough to brew up a storm regardless of the province?
It’s all about politics. The PPP is trying to make the League(s) feel uncomfortable by gently stoking the cinders of south Punjab, an area with ever lowering League support – despite, ironically, electing the chief minister. This stoking is gentle because its divisive potential could also eat up a bit of the PPP itself. The division of Sindh, on the other hand, doesn’t sit too well with the PPP and, with the attempted reformation of the MQM, it doesn’t sit well with London either. That the ANP won’t warm up to the idea is self-evident. But that isn’t the only new province that the ANP is against. It’s a mesh, really. But it makes mighty good politics.
Asking the various political forces not to make these issues electioneering slogans is unfair. This is just how the political cookie crumbles. Neighbouring India, which has had a greater experience of creating new provinces, has had the issues of newer demarcations brought up by regionalists successively in one election after the other before they were taken up. But the difference between the politicking on the issue there and here is the fact that no one here has the gumption to seriously follow it up. After all, the constitution has a clearly laid out methodology for creating new provinces, one that now involves the concerned provincial assembly as well. Why doesn’t somebody move a resolution somewhere and get the ball rolling?
Perhaps much would fizzle out if these schools of thought are followed up on. Are the people of south Punjab really as much in favour of a new province as the mass media projects them to be? And if so, is the region a monolithic entity, with Bahawalpur and Multan on the same page on all matters? Would the people of a mere three districts of the Hazara division be able to speak for the rest of the division? What are the new numbers on the Pushtun-Baloch proportions in Balochistan? Interesting questions, all of them. But don’t expect any answers any time soon. No one’s interested. Least of all, those who scream out the loudest.