Usra Rasool

Degree

BS (Social Sciences & Liberal Arts)

Faculty / School

Faculty of Business Administration (FBA)

Department

Department of Social Sciences & Liberal Arts

Date of Award

Spring 2017

Date of Submission

2021-08-03

Advisor

Dr. S. Akbar Zaidi, Executive Director, IBA

Project Type

SSLA Culminating Experience

Access Type

Restricted Access

Abstract

This thesis addresses a narrative which exists in Karachi about the Sindhi population. The narrative is that Sindhis under the influence of Sindhi nationalism blindly elect Pakistan’s People’s Party (PPP) in the provincial government. The narrative assumes all Sindhis to be illiterate and irrational voters responsible for making the conditions of the province deplorable. This thesis argues that this narrative exists because there is a problem of legibility in understanding the functioning of power structures that control the politics of rural Sindh. Because of superimposition of pre-colonial and colonial power structures over post-colonial structures there has been a failure in translation of the roles of the power executives which has subsequently led to a failure in meeting the conventional democratic outcomes within the province. Therefore, to understand present conditions of Sindh one needs to unravel the historical trajectory of pre-colonial and colonial structures that has brought Sindhi landlords to the helm of political control in the contemporary post-colonial structures. The assumption that the rural voters vote irrationally, is false, as they vote based on their patron client relationship with their landlord, who is made to be the only one available to them in times of trouble within the contemporary structure. That the Sindhi voter is irrational, illiterate and incapable of handling democracy, is an urban non-Sindhi view that has prevented members of Sindhi community to join hands with anyone other than the landlords.

Pages

47

Download

The full text of this document is only accessible to authorized users.

Share

COinS