The rise of Private Schools in Southern Punjab

My father tells me that when he was the political administrator of Muzafargarh in the 70’s there was an opening for seven government jobs in the district, with FA as the minimum academic requirement. After touring the entire district he could not find seven FA graduates to fulfill the requirement. Ironically in recent years, academic qualifications in the weight of paper certificates issued by the Government of Punjab has increased in such unprecedented obesity that thousands of post-graduate, charpoy-potatoes are sitting at home unemployed. Most MA passes I meet from Muzafargarh have degrees either in Islamiat, Pakistan studies or English, although it is a different story that all the MA passes with authentic degrees in English cannot read or write a word in English. I will not say an increase in literacy but definitely a proliferation of degrees has exacerbated further an impending crisis.

All degree holders have one demand in common, they all want government jobs; the attraction of government jobs is that they provide the ideal sinecure: no work and an easy access to bribes. Private jobs are a turn off because they might involve some real work. The problem arises due to the lack of government and private jobs available and the only work available in plentitude is in the agriculture sector, which a University degree holder refuses to do. The situation elicits a bipartite crisis: the first is the mischief of youth mobs sitting idle in rural homes could range from such extremes as Bestiality and sectarian terrorism. The second and economically important factor is that there is a labor crisis in the agriculture sector, urbanization is already causing an intermittent exodus towards the cities, with the rise in education, agriculturists are finding it difficult to hire and retain labor.
Traditionally two forms of education have been available, government funded public schools and madressahs; both have had their own set of problems. Public schools remain in a deplorable state; most public schools function as centers to provide salaries for teachers. I visited a public school in Muzafargarh, union council of Sharif Chadra, which is a classic example of a public school. The school is up to fifth grade, there are five teachers who spend the entire school time sitting under the shade of a tree, drinking tea, gossiping, reading newspapers while children are assigned to frolic their youth away on the school grounds till school is dismissed. Ghost schools is also an irregular ongoing problem; the ghosts inhabiting public schools over the years like potty-trained babies have become so adept to the whimsical and propaganda geared policies of successive governments that after the spate of media hyped raids on ghost schools is over and the government turns its attention to other matters of ‘pragmatic’ importance, the ghosts comfortably make a not-media-sponsored comeback. Although exceptions to the rule exist and is usually due to the individual effort of a rare, dedicated teacher or the interest and level of influence of village elders. One such exception is the public school located in the, ‘village of Noons’, in Muzafargarh. The government approved a school for the village of Noons but the funds and materials never came through. It has about seventy to eighty students who all gather at the spot where the school was supposed to be built. There is only one teacher and is kept in check by the village elders but the problem is that without a building the school is shut for days when it rains or when its too cold or too hot. Many such examples abound where only a few bricks and cement can change the future of an entire generation.
Madressahs have also continued to grow in parallel to other schools with ratcheting political influence. A small semi-urban Tehsil like Kot Addu has twenty-seven madressahs! All of them previously belonged to the banned sectarian outfit, Sipah Sahaba. After our incumbent President unleashed the orchestrated might of his prose on Sipah Sahaba, the madressahs compliantly switched flags to another party and now all of them fly the flag of the other party and villages bordering Kot Addu are slowly succumbing to the influence of this party, the ‘village of Pirhaar’ being a shining example.
A new and welcome addition to the education sector has been private schools, in fact they seem to be a phenomena and are growing with such rabidity that only in the vicinity of my small village of Khar Gharbi there are about six or more. Most of the owners of private schools that I have met ‘so far’ are children of former serfs, who graduated from the run of the mill public schools and after sitting at home unemployed, instead of taking to the gun or any other illicit trade decided to open a private school. The motivation behind these private schools like any city private school is to make money but the standard of education imparted is better than public schools and at the same time provides a much needed service to an ignored region. Although the labor crisis is not going to abate with thousands of graduates being churned out of private schools and unequivocally the social dynamics is going to change the agriculture sector completely from where it stands today but it can be hoped with intuited optimism that if private schools could come out of public schools then perhaps something better will come out of private schools.

Just the other day I was lounging with my friend and comrade Allah Wasaiah under the shade of a Neem tree on a Charpoy veneered by an ethnic Sindhi Chador. Allah Wasaiah has a great command over the Seraiki language, is an eloquent public speaker and at public gatherings can embarrass and shut-up any a feudal lord worth the measure of his land. . Allah Wasaiah is also the son of a former serf; he graduated from a public school and after failing to find a job, started his own private school. I, in one of my facetious and glib Seraiki moods said to him, “ Allah Wasaiah even though you might think that dental hygiene is another name for the rare Houbara Bustard but nevertheless you are truly one of the unsung heroes of Pakistan”.