Behind the image by Arif Azad

Arif Azad

PUNJAB is considered the epitome of good governance by many donors, the media and political classes. A large part of this perception is formed by Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif’s hyperactive managerial style: his on-the-spot sackings or demotions of officials found negligent, his personal immersion in mega infrastructure projects and his fondness for target-heavy presentations given by development experts.

Together, these defining traits constitute a perception of a better-managed province. Beyond this, however, is little scrutiny of Punjab’s so-called good governance agenda. In fact, emerging trends show that the good governance agenda is laced with an unbounded privatisation agenda, and that the privatisation of state entities in the name of efficiency is being pushed through without consultation.

Without wider public and political discussions on privatisation, the notion of a public service delivery ethos in public entities is corroded. Political parties have made the occasional, feeble noises, but to little effect. The PPP — normally a party of state-delivered public services — is conspicuous by its absence in the province’s political field. Thus, no sustained or coherent critique of the current governance model comes from the social democratic party of the PPP coloration. The PTI — caught up in its accountability verbosity — is miles away from the political tide when it comes to offering opposition to the privatisation agenda.

In Punjab, privatisation is being dressed as good governance

Although part of a larger ideological agenda (as is the case in other countries), privatisation is most visibly being forced through the education and health sectors at breakneck speed. With education, the plan involves the privatisation of education at all levels. Primary schools are being privatised with little or no opposition; the plan involves handing primary schools over to NGOs and the private sector. The teachers union offered only desultory opposition. In this move, critics see the stripping of state assets, such as infrastructure and expensive lands on which some of the schools are situated, with the involvement of the land mafia.

Privatisation of the primary education sector is being pushed through, in part, to drive up enrolment figures. This has seen some success. Yet, the policy of public-private partnerships is muddled. In some cases public-private partnerships are working at cross purposes when it comes to enrolment drives. There are instances where NGOs are working with donor funding to enhance enrolment figures in government schools, while the government is incentivising donor-funded provincial education foundations to enhance enrolment in private schools in the same area.

With limited numbers of primary schoolgoing students in the project area, there is often a shift from the state school to the foundation-funded school where enrolment is financially incentivised. This tends to demoralise state-sector schools, staff and students. The unspoken message here seems to be that private schools are better than state schools.

Post-graduate colleges are similarly being forced down the path of privatisation. The net effect of runaway privatisation of post-graduate colleges is an unaffordable fee hike for poorer students, thereby pricing them out of higher education.

Also under the privatisation hammer is the health sector. Here, again, there is an unseemly and unreflective haste to slash and burn everything that stands in the way of a supposedly efficient private sector. There may be evidence that some NGO-managed basic health units work better than health department-managed BHUs, yet these examples hardly give licence to the government to attempt to dismantle the public sector and abdicate its responsibility of providing universal affordable healthcare.

Curiously, this is happening in Punjab at a time when the neo-liberal consensus on the so-called infallibility of the market has been vigorously challenged in the West. This trend has seen the return of social democrats and socialists to power on the back of public ownership agendas. In the UK, for example, some parts of British Rail are already back in public ownership. Similarly, calls for abolishing the private market in the National Health Service are gathering momentum. The British government has already retreated from its policy of turning state schools into private academies.

Yet Punjab is headed down this path, irrespective of cautionary tales from other places. Add to this an utter lack of regulatory control over the privatised entities, and the socially unequal impact of full-blown privatisation on affordable access to education and health, and it becomes too glaring to ignore. Therefore, it is vital that a proper audit of Punjab’s privatisation experiment be undertaken and appropriate caution exercised in expanding the private sector’s role in education and health. Good governance can only be delivered by a high-performing and incentivised public sector.

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