Qaim Ali Shah's resignation as Sindh chief minister led to a series of hagiographic articles focusing on his personal habits and idiosyncrasies.
Presumably
written to cast him in a humane light, the pieces, in my opinion, lack
any insight on the overall performance of the ex-CM. His tenure should
be properly analysed as it was a unique one in several ways.
His
departure brought to a close the longest single tenure of a chief
minister the province has witnessed. But his occupancy was unique not
just for its longevity. Qaim Ali Shah is Sindh's first CM to complete a
full term (April 2008- March 2013), and had the luxury of his party’s
support at the centre during his tenure.
The restructured and improved seventh National Financial Commission (NFC) Award, 18th amendment
and dismantling of the local government system gave him more authority
than previous chief ministers and perhaps those after him.
He
was fully responsible for the areas of education, healthcare,
development, law and order — in short the overall running of the
province. As an independent and well-supported chief executive of the
province, he had the rare opportunity and time to make an impact.
As a tax payer, I am only interested in Qaim Ali Shah's performance, not that he is a vegetarian or had good filial relations.
History is replete with awful rulers, who had some good
qualities. Nero was devoted to the arts, while Hitler was abstemious, a
vegetarian, a teetotaler and an animal lover. Foreign correspondents
gushed about Joseph Stalin’s personal charm.
The reverse
is also true. Both Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy were said
to be womanisers, and Winston Churchill spent a small fraction of his
life sober. Yet, they were responsible for the New Deal, for winning the
Second World War, Civil Rights and the moon landing.
Given
a choice, this scribe would rather have a debauched, meat guzzling,
utterly hedonistic, but effective, public servant as opposed to a
criminally incompetent saint. So when evaluating QAS, the only yardstick
should be his performance and fulfillment of duties as CM.
And, in both aspects, he was found severely lacking.
Thar's tragedy
The biggest example can be seen in Thar. For the past few
years, most areas of the Tharparkar district have been suffering from
intense malnutrition and famine.
According to a report
by the National Commission of Human Rights (NCHR), almost 1,400
children died of malnutrition in the past two years, while a total of
2,800 children passed away due to measles and other diseases.
It
further stated that: “Thar has one district hospital, two rural health
centres and three Taluka hospitals to handle a population of 1.3 million
people.”
Yet, when the ex-CM visited famine victims
in March 2014, he gave a few speeches and then retired to the Circuit
House at Mithi to enjoy what media reports called “a wedding feast”.
At
a public talk held in April this year, Dr Shaikh Tanveer Ahmed — CEO of
developmental institution HANDS and one of the largest NGOs of the
country — said 481 children under five years of age had died from December 1, 2013 to March 14, 2015.
These
deaths did not happen at home but were reported at the District
Headquarter Hospital in Mithi, which should be equipped with basic
treatment facilities.
What made matters worse was QAS' chilling indifference towards the deaths.
In a media talk in January 2016, he said:
“If there was drought and a lack of healthcare facilities, then men and
women would also have suffered equally,” he said. He then complained
that if a child dies in a mother’s lap, the government is blamed.
Perhaps,
he was unaware of the Sindh Healthcare Commission Act, 2013 that was
passed by the Sindh Assembly under his leadership on February 24, 2014,
stating
that the provincial government is responsible "for improving the
quality of healthcare services and banning quackery in the Province of
Sindh in all its forms and manifestations".
Education crisis
Article 25A of the 18th Amendment
reads:
“Right to education: The state shall provide free and compulsory
education to all children of the age of five to 16 years in such manner
as may be determined by law”.
Every year, the provincial assembly of Sindh passes an educational budget running in hundreds of billions, — Rs739 billion last year — and yet Sindh faces an education crisis.
There are almost 7,000
public ghost schools in the province — the running of which costs the
state billions of rupees. The Sindh education department claims
transparency in hiring and yet neutral bodies identify between
6,000-7,000 teachers, who have been illegally appointed due to political
connections.
The Annual Status of Education Survey Report (ASER), which was published in December 2015, states
that more than a quarter of school-going children in rural Sindh are
not in school, while 20 per cent were never enrolled — the second worst
rate after Balochistan.
Almost 40 per cent of first
graders cannot read which actually comprises the highest degree of
students. The standards and enrollments drop as classes advance. 79pc of
Class 5 students cannot read sentences of Class 2 level, while
enrollments at Matric level is at 2pc.
Education is
largely a supply side problem. There is a severe shortage of functioning
schools and of the existing ones, the vast majority are for primary
education.
Moreover, education spending is not
regularised. For instance, Tharparkar has a tiny fraction of children
compared to other districts but it has the largest number of government
schools.
Most of the government-school buildings are in a
dilapidated state and missing basic facilities such as electricity,
drinking water or even boundary walls.
Government-offered
higher education has its own set of issues with several reported cases
of illegal appointments and extensions of faculty and political
interference in running of universities and degree-awarding
institutions.
Faculty and staff regularly go on strikes due to delayed salaries and other issues, leading to disruption of academics.
On
the law and order front, too, his leadership was lacking. It took an
army-led operation in Karachi to restore some semblance of normalcy.
In rural areas, besides robberies and killings, there have been regular cases of forced conversions
of minorities that has led to families from interior Sindh seeking
refuge in India. Police have been largely occupied in providing security
for politicians.
Even a cursory look at QAS' performance
screams lacklustre leadership and complacency. But his handlers and
sycophants point towards his loyalty to the PPP as a saving grace.
Loyalty to the party is meaningless to an average citizen; the only barometer is performance.
If anything these accounts only strengthen the case that he was more loyal to the party than the people he was meant to serve.
In the aftermath of his resignation, it is often stated that he did not have a free hand to deliver due to orders from the top.
Can
an octogenarian really not distinguish between good or bad? If his
hands were tied, then shouldn't he have done what any honourable man
would do: resign in protest.
Isn't that
what Mairaj Mohammad Khan — one of the founding members of the PPP — did
after developing differences with the party.
Shah's legacy is a long saga of inefficiency and ineptitude; the people of Sindh can only hope that the new CM will do better.
He will certainly be hard pressed to do any worse.
