If you start driving on the M3 from Multan, carry on towards Lahore before getting on to the M2 and drive all the way up to Talagang near Rawalpindi, you will pass over the Ravi, Chenab, and Jheulum rivers in that order.
For anyone that has travelled frequently from Lahore to Islamabad, these rivers are important landmarks in the journey. And all the way up to the federal capital, both sides of the road are framed by lush fields of wheat, mustard, and other cash crops. While the greenery of the Punjab is as familiar as it is ancient, the demographic and agricultural landscape of the province are vastly different to what they were in living memory.
At least up until the end of the 19th century, much of Punjab was arid or semi-arid land, including many of the very fertile and valuable agricultural lands we know today. The birth of the Punjab we know from our social studies textbooks took place in 1886, when the British Colonial government built the Punjab Canal Colonies.
Much of what we know today as Pakistan is a result of the British appetite for wheat. The British constructed railways in what is now Pakistan in 1855, in no small part due to a desire to connect the wheat-growing parts of Punjab and Upper Sindh to the port in Karachi. In 1886, the British were able to start building the Punjab Canal Colonies, which were a series of large, previously sparsely inhabited areas in Punjab, that were brought under cultivation through the use of canals that diverted water from the province’s five rivers. Those canals allowed for previously landless and poor farmers to settle in newly cultivable regions, and the railways helped them sell their surplus crop to the rest of the British Empire.
After partition, the landowners in these new canal colonies (many of whom had been reluctant accepting these lands) were the new elite of the province. By virtue of being landowners, they exercised great political and economic control over their areas. However, most of these landed elites chose to live in Lahore. After all, their lands were in areas that were vastly underdeveloped. Their yields were high but the British had designed these colonies for agricultural efficiency, not for living. Lahore is where Punjab Politics came to a boil, this was the old seat of power that had been a crown jewel of the Mughals, Sikhs, and British alike. This is where the party was and it is where people wanted to build their homes, educate their children, and live their lives.
For decades, the centrality of Lahore remained. But as the past few weeks of Profit’s coverage has shown, this is rapidly changing. This week, our cover story focuses on Gujranwala and its speedy ascent to becoming one of the largest cities in Pakistan, and a clear Metropolitan area within Punjab. The week before, our coverage focused on the rise of other such ‘greater’ metropolitan areas in the province. Our findings show that smaller districts that once orbited Lahore are now exerting their own gravitational pull, with the creation of business and immigration taking place. What is more, these cities offer many of the same upper-middle class amenities that people would once move to Lahore for.
All of this has happened naturally. The Punjab has gone from a semi-arid province with a mighty river system single handedly running its agriculture, to a region with a complex network of canals that turned it into a colonial bread basket, and now into a province that is quickly blurring lines between rural and urban. As this new iteration of Punjab manifests itself, one must remember that it can only really thrive through efficient local governments. Just take a look at the Gujranwala Metropolitan Area discussed in this week’s story which includes Sialkot and the Sialkot Airport. There is a clear will among these regions to develop their districts, and a pride in them that cannot be understood by a government in Lahore.
In every conceivable way, local governments make sense.
We are not speaking here specifically of any local government acts that have been passed in Pakistan, but generally of a third tier of democracy as a concept. It is a more efficient administrative system and adds another tier to the democratic process, making accountability and access to said administrators a less arduous process than it currently is. It also allows communities to look out for and administer themselves in accordance with their own best interests.
By this we do not just mean governance on a UC level about street repairs and sewerage (even though these topics are often more important than macro problems). What we mean to say is that if Gujranwala can develop at this pace by itself, imagine what it could do with an empowered and elected Metropolitan Corporation collecting taxes, spending money, and directing policy for the growth of these districts which have already proven their mettle.
Local governments have been another issue highlighted in this publication recently. Only two weeks ago Profit reported on how nearly a trillion rupees earmarked for local governments have been misappropriated by the provincial government in the last eight years. Last week, Dr Javed Younas pointed out how local governments can be gamechangers in combatting extremism. Unfortunately, despite the clear benefits and the obvious mishandling of this subject, local governments remain elusive. One can only hope that the stakeholders in a changing Punjab, particularly those in these new metropolitan areas, can realise it is in their best interest to advocate for strong local government.
