Explained: Why is everyone so mad about Karachi province?

Talk of Pakistan’s territorial reconfiguration is back in circulation again with mention of the division of Sindh producing the most bile.

It was all started by the interior minister who told businessmen in Islamabad last month that he mourned the collapse of Pakistan’s “outdated governance system”. Urgent reforms were needed, he argued, if Pakistan wanted to avoid blowback from “cockroaches” (Gen-Z agitating in India). Our salvation lay in the decentralization of governance which could be achieved by creating new administrative units (read: provinces).

People who make a case for new provinces argue that the existing ones are too large to manage and there is too much distance between the government and the people. Smaller units would be more efficiently governed and would thus bring the seat of power closer to the people.

Some commentators took his remarks rather seriously and started to earnestly do the math, running numeric options for a new ‘right-sized’ and reconfigured Federation of Pakistan: 5, 8, 10, 12 provinces, depending on which flavour of administrative reform you liked. South Punjab, Greater Karachi, Seraiki province, Hazara province. And secretly everyone wondered if the minister’s rhetoric had wafted down from the rarefied exosphere of the supra-political elite.

Three groups have made their preferences clear over the question and in some stratospheres the mood may be leaning towards ‘right-sizing’ the state. Political parties have expressed mixed views. And nationalist parties, particularly from Sindh, have opposed it.

Sindh has been the angriest. Its house of elected representatives passed an unequivocal resolution against any proposal to change the boundaries of the province. What explains this reaction and what is the history to this sentiment?

When Partition took place, Sindh had already operated as a fully-fledged province for a decade after it was separated from Bombay in 1936. And with independence in 1947, it regained the old feeling of distinct territorial existence which it had experienced before the arrival of the British in 1843. This rejuvenated consciousness tinged with pride of belonging to one of........

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