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Old Friday, June 15, 2012
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Default Urbanization and its discontents

Urbanization and its discontents


Liaquatpur is a settlement of approximately 40,000 people, located half an hour away from Rahim Yar Khan city. The town's economy is largely dependent on the retail/wholesale sector, and on transport and storage businesses, which in turn, are closely linked to its main produce market. The town center houses a public sector degree college, three private commerce and information technology colleges, an English language training center, at least 2 gyms (for men), 3 beauty parlors, 1 snooker club, and what appears to be the indigenous version of a popular fast food chain. All of this, obviously, is over and above the countless number of grocery and produce retailers, mobile phone vendors, arhtis, and cloth merchants.

Based on what little of Punjab I've seen, there is nothing about Liaquatpur which distinguishes it from countless other settlements located all over the province. Take a trip from Rawalpindi to Lahore on the N-5 and you'll encounter Liaquatpurs of varying shapes and sizes after every 15 minutes. Turn west towards Sargodha, and the landscape might change, the dialect certainly becomes harsher, but the small town with its garish IT institute and commerce college billboards maintains a ubiquitous presence. So much so, that a friend of mine who once left Lahore, for a weeklong trip to discover the idyllic, untouched, and mostly imaginary plains of rural Punjab, came back thoroughly disappointed.

Ali Zafar, he told me, is inescapable. He's selling cellular connections everywhere.

On paper, Punjab's urbanization stands at approximately 30%, which basically means that 3 out of every 10 people live in areas that folks at the statistics bureau classify as urban. This figure, according to urbanization experts like Reza Ali, is grossly underestimated thanks in part to the continued usage of outdated definitions and partly due to a seemingly infinite intercensal period. Hard distinctions, (never easy to develop), are now impossible to create as countless rural union councils (and there are around 2,486 of them) have developed urban pockets over the last 15 years, and now stand contiguous with those classified as completely urban (978 by the end of last year). What's harder to capture, and infinitely more interesting, is how the ethos of the province has changed from peasant proprietor haven under the Raj - (the Punjabi peasant is a hard-working, content subject who wants nothing more than an acre of land and a fresh stream of water) - to an upwardly mobile, rabidly consumerist market in more contemporary times.

To account for more qualitative changes, it's easy to divide them into two distinct (but not mutually exclusive) categories. On one side, lies the development of new sub-cultures in rural, peri-urban, and urban areas. Changing dietary preferences, and an association with what are perceived to be 'urban' trends like western dressing, mobile communication, and even educational choices, mark recent investment in towns across Punjab. Only a week ago, a popular domestic fast-food chain based out of Lahore advertised franchise opportunities in 26 locations across Punjab. Most of these locations, like Chichawatni, Kharian, Wazirabad, Jauharabad, and Sadiqabad, are those that have seen mini population booms in the last two decades. Similarly, private colleges guaranteeing 'market-based' education in the English language (for a reasonable fee) are now seen as functional alternatives to the less expensive, but more competitive public sector institutes. Mian Amir's Punjab Group of Colleges, with campuses in 13 districts for example, is one such flagship example.

20 years ago, the thought of a shawarma outlet, or a shopping mall, or even an IT college in some of these locations would've seemed preposterous. In 2012 however, these ideas are not only relevant, but businessmen are busy making millions off this new consumerist ethos.

The other category of qualitative transformation has been in the political sphere - specifically in terms of how people vote (patronage based or autonomous), the relevance of primordial identity (clan, ethnicity, language), and the emergence of new political actors. Like the Janus-faced nature of capitalistic development elsewhere in the third world, the vibrant consumerism of Punjab's new middle class hides a number of more sinister changes. For starters, the linearity of modernization theory, which posits a change from traditional social organization to more individualized existence, has failed to materialize in any meaningful way, except maybe in some suburban parts of the biggest cities. In a bargain between the new and the old, hybrid forms of social organization and interaction have emerged that use both economic and cultural means to form patronage networks. One such manifestation of this trend has been in the vastly informal sector of secondary manufacturing and retail in Punjab, which relies on the fragmentation, co-option and oppression of labor through a variety of economic and cultural means. Labor agents, colloquially referred to as jobbers, use a variety of biraderi and clan-based ties to market and sell off unemployed, unskilled workers to small-scale manufacturing concerns, and in some cases, to employers in the Gulf.

It is these small-scale businessmen, traders, transporters, and retailers that have emerged as a political force over the last 30 years - both as the backbone of the PML-N and as an independent 'civil society' formation. Collective groups like the All Pakistan Anjuman-i-Tajiran (APAT) and All Punjab Transporters Association (APTA) have exerted their political influence on policy-making - most recently exemplified in their successful efforts to remove Form D from the Income Tax return document.

But perhaps nothing gives a better indication of the mix of cultural, political and economic changes than the entrenchment of religious groups and movements throughout the province. Whether it's the popularity of the Al-Huda movement within upper-middle class females of Lahore and Rawalpindi, or the more class-cutting, revivalist appeal of the TableeghiJamaat, or even the militant interpretations of fundamentalist organizations, Islam has formed an almost organic relationship with the process of transformation. Trader groups patronize religious organizations in return for both divine favor, and worldly assistance during elections and public demonstrations. In parts of South Punjab, the SipahSahaba Pakistan (SSP) cadre has found common cause with elements within the Seraiki province movement, using religious and linguistic denomination as another wedge in a society already divided along socio-economic and native (muqami)-settler (abadkar) lines.

Enhanced mobility, communication, and outreach - all of which are characteristics of rapid urbanization - serve as catalysts in exacerbating socio-economic, religious, and cultural differences. While Punjab's emerging middle class boom remains a fascinating phenomenon, it is worth noting that it masks a number of deeper, structural problems - such as ethno-linguistic tensions, militant fundamentalism, and labor oppression. It remains to be seen whether a corrective form of politics can emerge within the province, which ultimately seeks to counter the more worrying aspects of its transformation. ?

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