How the west was lost

In this concluding reading of the first five-year plan, 1955-60, we see that the writers of this plan, led by the very able Mr Zahid Hussain, had prescribed a gradualist approach for the sociopolitical and economic development of Fata.

It is essential that haphazard and piecemeal planning be abandoned in favour of programmes based upon a general appreciation of their social, economic and political problems. Sooner or later and in one way or another, it is inevitable that the tribal populations of Pakistan should become more closely associated with national life. The desire for increased literacy and its remarkable spread since Independence, the improvement of communication networks, the development of natural resources in remote regions, all these and other activities will, without question, lead towards increased contact and understanding between all the peoples of Pakistan, towards the growth of sympathy and towards the breakdown of barriers of hostility and suspicion. All this is good.

Nevertheless, it has virtually universally been experienced that the spread of a different culture weakens the solidarity of a tribe and in so doing, creates a kind of moral confusion. This is not merely a matter for sentimental regret, for when traditional standards are lost or reduced in strength there is usually a period of instability, often characterised by an increase of antisocial behaviour. It is, perhaps, inevitable that all the less-developed peoples of the world should pass through this stage before their eventual positive adjustment in modern conditions. This, however, does not exonerate the responsible authorities from the task of making the passage as easy and painless as possible or of helping the people concerned to retain what is appropriate in their own culture, while they assimilate what is valuable to them from the wider national civilisation.

Perhaps, the most effective way of achieving this aim is to afford all available help to the people in question in leading their own lives as effectively as possible. For this reason, the bulk of the proposals made are concerned with the amelioration rather than with the radical alteration of conditions. It has been found in almost all parts of the world that for a people who are, for example, literate, who are less impoverished than they were because of improvement in the traditional methods of agriculture and for whom certain additional openings for employment exist, are far less likely to be shattered as a community than people who remained very backward until suddenly brought into contact — through the discovery of great mineral resources in some parts of the world — with modern technology and better standards of living. A group in which the standard of life is gradually raised without the pattern of life being drastically altered is likely to remain a stable component of society and, indeed, contributes to the larger society through the preservation rather than the destruction of its own intrinsic qualities. The political and administrative future of the tribal areas must wait upon events but there is no question that whatever the future adds, it will come more easily to birth if the poverty, stress and ignorance characterising most of the tribal regions are reduced. This policy for the tribal territories might be summed up as the gradual increase of political stability, economic and social progress and contact with the rest of the country.

(Concluded)

Published in The Express Tribune, November 23^rd, 2012.