Tashkent is the capital of Uzbekistan and the largest city in Central Asia. I have had the opportunity to visit Tashkent twice. I have mentioned some of the memories of the trip in my book "Mehwa Sal in PTV" but now the memory of Tashkent has been brought from there by a column of our friend Muhammad Abbas. According to him, in three years, such development programs have been implemented in Tashkent and the rest of the country, which has changed the face of Tashkent and other cities and villages. In any case, the governments pay attention to the capitals, but the special thing here is that the map of the villages has been changed. We too can learn something from this revolutionary program. We are finding it difficult to deal with the problems of growing population in cities because the idea of rural development has never been attractive to us.
Our society was basically a rural society but with the passage of time the migration from the villages to the cities continued to accelerate in the recent past which made various problems in the cities a challenge for the governments. This was because in the past no work was done on the development of rural areas. There were many reasons. One is the concentration of population in cities, so the need for facilities is also high. Then the government gets credit for working in cities because the media only focuses on cities. Villages have no voice, so why pay any attention to dumb creatures. If there are no modern facilities in the villages, then there will be relocation. The population living in the villages has been handed over to the Patwar and the police station and there is no one to free them from the clutches of these departments. The PML-N government has done some positive things in this area which should be acknowledged, such as laying the motorway network which is a huge undertaking and has far reaching effects. Now you can reach Lahore in three or four hours from any city of Punjab. This was impossible before the motorway. It is expected that this will make some difference in population migration towards cities. Then computerization of revenue records in Punjab is also a big task but life could not be saved from the domination of finance department. Changing police behavior is still a dream. Apart from roads, at least almost all the villages in Punjab have electricity, so it can be said that many basic amenities have reached the villages. not even.
It is a fact that the farther you are from the center of power, the more backward you will be and the more you will feel deprived. The problem with our Seraiki region is that they are coincidentally far from the centers of power, otherwise they may not have been deliberately abused by any government but for a long time the leadership of present day Pakistan belonged to Seraiki region. Now obviously both Islamabad and Lahore are in the last corners of Punjab. Under these circumstances, the area between the two centers has benefited. If Seraiki becomes a province, then the problem of "backwardness" of the Seraikis will not be completely solved because the capital of Seraiki province will not be able to give to the people of the province what the people of Lahore and Islamabad have. Well this is a long discussion I have already mentioned in one of my columns.
Every government wants to satisfy the people of every region but obviously the government has some compulsions. Now that the PTI government has come, its slogan was that it will break the status quo and replace traditional politics. Merit will do politics and then Imran Khan came up with many new ideas like building houses, planting trees and promoting tourism etc. Now only time will tell to what extent he can implement his ideas because in any case the compulsions are different. Like the government, they also have and time is limited, ie now almost three years are left, the last six or eight months of which are devoted to election preparations. I would like to draw their attention to the issue of rural development. Although they are very much in favor of local bodies, they have not been successful in this regard yet but they have not come up with any special plan for rural development. It is thought that the issue did not even come to his mind.
The importance of local bodies is very high though it is a strange coincidence that whenever the army comes in government it immediately restores local bodies and the attitude of political governments is negative in this matter. I am sorry to say that the intention of both It doesn't work. The military government wants to revive the existing politicians by restoring local bodies and the political governments want to keep the power in their hands. However, under the current system, out of 220 million people, the National Assembly, the Senate and the Provincial Assemblies together combine a few thousand people to come to power. However, local bodies serve as a nursery for new leadership. MNAs and MPAs take over the role of local bodies, although this is not their job, but we have a common tradition that every institution.
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