Pakistan Today, Monday, 12 Dec 2011
I have often been accused of being a Punjabi supremacist. This is not surprising, given that I have lived most of my life in Lahore, a city that is as removed from the rest of Punjab as Beirut is from the rest of Lebanon. After having been brainwashed and spin-dried in Lahore for the bulk of my meaningless existence, I tried to eke out a living in the grand city of Karachi. This was my second biggest mistake, because Karachi is so far removed from the rest of Pakistan, let alone Sindh, that any generalisations made on the basis of Karachi experiences hold up just as long as a kulfi does in the blazing Jacobabad sun.
I have come to realise the hard way that Urban Pakistan is actually a myth; a bubble conjured up by ‘PhD-in-Anthropology’ candidates, the MQM and members of the Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN). This imaginary construct was erected to facilitate complex mathematical calculations, much like the existence of that other imaginary construct, the Equator, facilitates companies that sell GPS equipment. However, Urban Pakistan is a generalisation that is too wide to be applicable to any one urban centre, and is therefore as fallacious as saying “Interior Punjab”. This does not mean, however, that people do not employ such fallacies as common parlance.
One of the generalisations that is currently doing the rounds is that only Punjabis apply for, appear in and consequently monopolise the CSS exams. This is often cited by armchair intellectuals as the reason for the disdain that most people from Sindh, KPK and Balochistan harbour for the bara sooba. Their accusation is that Punjabis hog all the good seats in departments such as DMG, Foreign Service and Customs and leave all the menial jobs, such as Railways and the Postal Service, to their lesser brethren.
As you can well imagine, being a supremacist, such idiotic assertions make my blood boil. Such conversations usually go like this:
Me: So why won’t you apply for the CSS exams?
They: Because the Punjabis will get all the seats anyway.
Me: But there is a quota system. If you make the grade, they HAVE to give you a seat.
They: No, there is too much favouritism, we won’t even pass the exam.
Me: Really? Have you tried?
They: No, but my great-great-grandfather did and he didn’t make it. The British deemed him too rural to serve them.
Me: Arghhh!
Obviously, such conversations are the reason why I do not have hair on my head anymore. But there is a deeper, more tragic method to all of this madness. You see, due to the presence of a vibrant private sector in the city, people from Karachi usually tend to prefer to work in the corporate environment. This may not be a universal norm, but it is prevalent enough for me to be making this assertion. The Punjabis, on the other hand, can do only three things: grow stuff; package stuff and eat stuff. Equipped with such a diverse skill set, the only professions that can accommodate such nawabs are agriculture and industry.
Fortunately, we have a lot of that. Unfortunately, both sectors aren’t as manpower intensive as they used to be, therefore, middle-class Punjabis (since the only people who can be associated with either agriculture or industry in today’s world are the ultra-rich or the ultra-poor) are left with no other option than to apply for competitive examinations. And while they may not test very well, these fat cats are exceptionally good at finding out who will be grading their papers and then paying off that person in order to secure a good grade. These are people who have usually not worked a day in their lives and would require the services of a naib qasid or forty-two to change one lightbulb. Hence, we are left with a bureaucracy made up of cheats and crooks.
But hold on, you might say, aren’t all bureaucracies like that? Doesn’t every form of government service, no matter where in the world it may operate, seek to perpetuate the conventions and principles of duty, public service, honour (or a lack thereof) and frequent pay-raises for civil servants? I mean, has no one seen ‘Yes Minister’?
But people don’t seem to care. Instead, they stick to the preconceived notions that have been instilled in their minds for generations, all thanks to the British ‘Divide and Conquer’ strategy. That we are still as divided as the day the Brits left us is a tragedy that would have even AC Bradley in tears. And yet, for some reason, we choose to perpetuate this myth.
I have often been accused of being a Punjabi supremacist. This is not surprising, given that I have lived most of my life in Lahore, a city that is as removed from the rest of Punjab as Beirut is from the rest of Lebanon. After having been brainwashed and spin-dried in Lahore for the bulk of my meaningless existence, I tried to eke out a living in the grand city of Karachi. This was my second biggest mistake, because Karachi is so far removed from the rest of Pakistan, let alone Sindh, that any generalisations made on the basis of Karachi experiences hold up just as long as a kulfi does in the blazing Jacobabad sun.
I have come to realise the hard way that Urban Pakistan is actually a myth; a bubble conjured up by ‘PhD-in-Anthropology’ candidates, the MQM and members of the Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN). This imaginary construct was erected to facilitate complex mathematical calculations, much like the existence of that other imaginary construct, the Equator, facilitates companies that sell GPS equipment. However, Urban Pakistan is a generalisation that is too wide to be applicable to any one urban centre, and is therefore as fallacious as saying “Interior Punjab”. This does not mean, however, that people do not employ such fallacies as common parlance.
One of the generalisations that is currently doing the rounds is that only Punjabis apply for, appear in and consequently monopolise the CSS exams. This is often cited by armchair intellectuals as the reason for the disdain that most people from Sindh, KPK and Balochistan harbour for the bara sooba. Their accusation is that Punjabis hog all the good seats in departments such as DMG, Foreign Service and Customs and leave all the menial jobs, such as Railways and the Postal Service, to their lesser brethren.
As you can well imagine, being a supremacist, such idiotic assertions make my blood boil. Such conversations usually go like this:
Me: So why won’t you apply for the CSS exams?
They: Because the Punjabis will get all the seats anyway.
Me: But there is a quota system. If you make the grade, they HAVE to give you a seat.
They: No, there is too much favouritism, we won’t even pass the exam.
Me: Really? Have you tried?
They: No, but my great-great-grandfather did and he didn’t make it. The British deemed him too rural to serve them.
Me: Arghhh!
Obviously, such conversations are the reason why I do not have hair on my head anymore. But there is a deeper, more tragic method to all of this madness. You see, due to the presence of a vibrant private sector in the city, people from Karachi usually tend to prefer to work in the corporate environment. This may not be a universal norm, but it is prevalent enough for me to be making this assertion. The Punjabis, on the other hand, can do only three things: grow stuff; package stuff and eat stuff. Equipped with such a diverse skill set, the only professions that can accommodate such nawabs are agriculture and industry.
Fortunately, we have a lot of that. Unfortunately, both sectors aren’t as manpower intensive as they used to be, therefore, middle-class Punjabis (since the only people who can be associated with either agriculture or industry in today’s world are the ultra-rich or the ultra-poor) are left with no other option than to apply for competitive examinations. And while they may not test very well, these fat cats are exceptionally good at finding out who will be grading their papers and then paying off that person in order to secure a good grade. These are people who have usually not worked a day in their lives and would require the services of a naib qasid or forty-two to change one lightbulb. Hence, we are left with a bureaucracy made up of cheats and crooks.
But hold on, you might say, aren’t all bureaucracies like that? Doesn’t every form of government service, no matter where in the world it may operate, seek to perpetuate the conventions and principles of duty, public service, honour (or a lack thereof) and frequent pay-raises for civil servants? I mean, has no one seen ‘Yes Minister’?
But people don’t seem to care. Instead, they stick to the preconceived notions that have been instilled in their minds for generations, all thanks to the British ‘Divide and Conquer’ strategy. That we are still as divided as the day the Brits left us is a tragedy that would have even AC Bradley in tears. And yet, for some reason, we choose to perpetuate this myth.
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