BRAIN AND HAND DRAIN IN PAKHTUNKHWA
By Fatima Ahmed

fatimakhan76999@gmail.com

Khan! Khan!Khan! Hurry give me a corn. I watched as school children huddled up around the teenage boy selling boiled corn in front of a private school in Rawalpindi. All were demanding to be served first as it was a short break in the classes during school hours. After a few minutes, all was quite as the kids went back inside the school. I had come to drive my elder sister who had been summoned to the school by her son’s teacher. I wandered close to the young boy selling corn and asked for a corn too. Intrigued by his bright shining eyes and casual confidence, I asked him about his age in Pashtu. Encouraged by hearing his mother tongue, he told me that he was only 13, but felt happy that he looked close to 16, his name was Umer Gul and that he belonged to Bajaur. He was doing this job since last two years while staying with his uncle, who sells fruit and lives in the Kachi Abadi close to Sabzi Mandi in Islamabad. Umer Gul earns roughly RS.2500/-, part of which he sends back home to his family to take care of his 6 younger siblings and ailing mother. As I left, I glanced at him once again and felt a pang of hurt and guilt. He was the same age as my nephew and looked as full of life. I just wondered! What is he living for in this far off land? What is his future? Why isn’t he at school like other kids of his age? Umer Gul is not the only one. There are hundreds of young Pakhtun boys roaming in the streets and bazaars of Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Lahore, Faisalabad, Karachi etc selling corn, glasses, vegetables, fruits, polishing shoes, cleaning cars and so on. While driving back home I kept thinking how to describe this phenomenon. The first term that came to my mind was brain drain – but that hardly described it; after a while my mind came up with the term ‘Hand Drain’! Yes that probably describes it better. But how could one explain ‘Hand Drain’? Classically brain drain is considered as the flow of educated and skilled people from their home countries/regions to foreign lands in pursuit of better jobs, however in case of our region this classic definition can not be applied. In fact in the case of Pukhtunkhwa and its people, this phenomenon is epitomized as a drain of both skilled and unskilled hands, mostly youth with devastating consequences for the social structure and development prospects of the society. The brain drain here has been supplement by the flight of semi-skilled as well as unskilled youth which can be termed as ‘Hand Drain’. The reasons for this phenomenon are multifarious; chief among them war and conflict, political unrest, social disharmony, and absolute lack of any prospects for economic and social development. Particularly the civil war like situation in the Pakhtun lands since the last three decades coupled with the absence of any economic activity at present or any prospects of that happening in the foreseeable future has resulted in manifold increase in the volume of young people leaving their homes for far-off lands. This phenomenon has had a tremendous effect on the social and cultural life of our region. While some of these effects have been positive, some asymmetric trends have had devastatingly negative effects on the lives of our people.The first wave of hand drain after the creation of Pakistan came in the early 50s and 60s when scores of young people left their villages and hemlets for the city of Karachi and to a lesser extent the urban centers of Punjab like Lahore, Pindi, Faisalabad and Multan etc, in pursuit of jobs to survive. The chief reason then was that these urban centers were experiencing an economic boom spurred by the state’s economic policies while their own region was completely neglected in this phase of industrialization of Pakistan. The movement of people from our areas to Karachi and Punjab has continued ever since, as has been the economic policies of the state to exclude our region from the economic and infrastructural progress. Resultantly we now find that the greatest number of Pakhtuns live in Karachi alone-more than 3.5 million i.e. much larger than any of the cities in the core Pakhtun cities like Peshawer, Mardan, kohat, Bannu and even Jalalabad, Kabul and Qandahar. The result of these demographic changes can be easily analysed in the backdrop of the events of 12 May 2007 in Karachi. The unskilled people migrating to these cities have been engaged in lower-end jobs like drivers, laborers in factories, chowkidars, office boys, peons, hawkers and even garbage collectors. Socially they have been at the lowest rung of the society and confined to slums exemplified by Landhi, Kemari, Banaras, Pathan colony, frontier colony etc. These kachi abadies as they are called by the elite of these cities can be easily termed as ghettos: dirty, dense, over-crowded, without any basic facilities like drinking water, schools, hospitals, community centers or anything of the sort. They are excluded from the mainstream social life of the cities and are excluded from political say in the affairs of their areas; that being the exclusive domain of the educated elite and business class. In case of Karachi these elite classes are themselves also migrants from various parts of India, but taking advantage of the state policies and better access to education and business, have emerged as the affluent class. Over the decades, the Pakhtun people have permanently settled in the city and make an undeniable part of it. They have progressed somewhat economically, educationally and socially due to the seepage effect of the economic development. Spurred on by the media explosion, relatively easy access to education and global emphasis on human rights, they have of late become more aware of their rights and started demanding their rights as equal citizens of the city, which the traditional power holders are averse to accord them. Their contribution to the development of their home region ‘pukhtunkhwa’ may be limited economically, however they derive their political strength from their home region and in turn give the political forces here considerable say in the affairs of that city as demonstrated by the current events. The same anology can be extended to many cities in the Punjab too. Lahore and Pindi/Islamabad have considerable Pakhtun population, who live on the social and economic periphery, however being less in numbers; they do not have any political strength to voice their concerns and are thus destined to live in the same social, economic and political oblivion. All these migrant groups have contributed somewhat to the economic life of their home region, however on the negative side they, having been polluted by the Punjabi/Indian culture have also brought these cultural and social influences to their home towns and villages thus contributing to the decay of Pakhtun social values.