Migration is extremely difficult to rationalise as people usually have penchant to move, often without reason.
ISLAMABAD: This is with reference to Ayesha Siddiqa’s article, “Why places don’t grow” (April 23).
The writer contends that an element of invisibility attracts people from smaller living settlements to cities and towns since in rural areas being visible necessitates a constrained existence in a social space characterised by rigid values and norms. While this might be true for people coming from relatively well-off classes, migration itself is a complex process which is defined by factors as diverse as economic opportunity, education or the desire to live in a seemingly more interesting place.
Migration is something extremely difficult to rationalise as people usually have a penchant to move, often without any reason. I would particularly like to put reverse migration as an example of a scenario that makes it difficult to understand migration. My family chose to move from a village town to a village in the mid-90s just because my father thought it was better to live in a village.
The last paragraph of the article aptly captures the ways of the elite by putting forth the example of Hina Rabbani Khar (the erstwhile foreign minister of Pakistan). However, the writer then goes on to say that restriction on females are the by-products of elitist morality or their notions of honour and have nothing to do with local cultures. Moreover, the possibility of elite morality profoundly influencing the local cultures is significantly high in rural areas where unlike cities the elite are not compartmentalised. The elite have no exclusive restaurants, schools, cafes, in villages. Their lives and works are inextricably linked to the common people in villages. This is the reason why, I suppose, people will find that attitudes towards women are not that different in villages and cities.
Even at the danger of being refuted, I would not stop from assuming that the article portrays the writer’s own vision of what social life is in Pakistan and serves as an extension/rationalisation of her own choice to not to live in Bahawalpur. Lastly, the title of the article is somehow painfully judgmental as through it, places like Bahawalpur or village settings come to us as static and progress resistant. One might sarcastically ask: how did our cities suddenly become so progressive and liberal and since when did they start offering all possibilities of movement to women?
Kamran Aziz
Published in The Express Tribune, April 26th, 2014.
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