Changing Social Landscape of My Village

Back to the Village of My Birth (Part 2)

Ishtiaq Ahmed: A few days ago, in Part 1, I shared reflections on the salient aspects of village life during my childhood days in the late 50’s and the 60’s. Then the lifestyles were more open, more socially interactive, and more interdependent. The people of the village felt more connected with an innate sense of togetherness and mutual support.

In many ways, due to internal and external influences, the social fabrics of village life has changed, not necessarily to worse but certainly to very different nuances.

The impact of new found opportunities and the economic migration that followed to many parts of the world initially in the 1960’s to the UK from Mirpur, Rawalpindi, and Attock radically changed the economic and social fabric of village-based rural life in these regions.

This outward trend of outward migration further expanded in the 1980s, with further opportunities arising for people to work in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and other parts of Europe and America. For these reasons, there are significant populations of Pakistanis in these parts of the world.

Opportunities to travel overseas, work, and earn helped to make people financially independent and less reliant. For example, they were able to move away from the traditional methods of farming by animals to the use of tractors and other forms of farming machinery.

This helped to considerably reduce the manpower needed by traditional farming methods, leaving people with plenty of time to try other things. The traditional farming methods, which required the entire family, from young to old, could now be dispensed by one or two.

This also reduced the levels of livestock to a minimum, thus further sparing people from associated daily chores. The spare hands of young men were encouraged to seek other opportunities in towns and cities away from their villages.

Many sought to travel abroad, supported by members of their families already there. This trend has continued over the last 50 years or so. With additional income from overseas, village families began to venture out to towns and cities.

Read Part 1: https://thepenpk.com/back-to-the-village-of-my-birth/

This also helped to broaden their experiences and heighten their aspirations, particularly. With newfound wealth and reduced dependency on land, people began to avail themselves of education, investment, and employment opportunities.

It is true that those who venture out to new pastures usually never return to the old ones. Therefore, those who left for new countries, towns, and cities became permanent residents of their destinations, encouraging others to do the same.

In the segment of the village where I grew up, almost everybody has moved to Gujar Khan and Rawalpindi in search of better opportunities and to be supported by their relatives abroad, leaving the entire neighbourhood empty. They only return to the village for weddings, the deaths of their loved ones, or some other special occasions.

Others, those who chose to stay in villages with incomes from abroad, financed lofty homes in competition with each other to showcase their wealth. As we drive around large parts of the districts of Rawalpindi, Attock, and Mirpur, we can’t fail to notice large mansion-type houses, often only being lived by a few people or totally empty.

These spacious houses constructed with hard-earned finances are only lived for short periods of weeks or months in a year, and not even that. It is what I describe as a ‘non-gainful’ investment only intended to massage people’s egos to show off their newfound wealth and give them some mental comfort that they have a house to return to.

However, we should not also underestimate the significance of overseas remittances and investment to the Pakistani economy, which provides a critical lifeline. The Bestway Group is an excellent example of the contribution the overseas Pakistani diaspora is making to Pakistan. There are many other such examples.

It would be true to say that cities like Mirpur, Gujar Khan, Rawalpindi, Hazro, Attock, and others have been boosted by the inflow of investment from overseas, mainly Britain.

Additional income and being exposed to the wider world have also helped to expand people’s horizons and life aspirations. Certainly, they see the value of education for their children and siblings.

The children who were once seen as useful helping hands at home are being encouraged to attend school. This new outlook became reflected in the emergence of private educational institutions, all competing to offer better quality education, often at the demise of government schools.

Along with improvements in incomes, people have been able to acquire new facilities such as motorcycles or cars. Thus, an increasing number of families have cars, and almost all households have motorcycles.

With an improved road network, people have become mobile and can access facilities even at a distance. With physical mobility also came mental mobility. These are good omens for the future.

There also came the digital revolution, which in many ways has changed traditional social norms. Television, mobile, and the internet have hugely impacted people’s outlook, their view of the world, their aspirations, and how they wish to interact with and relate to each other.These innovations, though welcomed, have, to an extent, taken away the warmth of personal relationships. Tools such as mobiles, WhatsApp, and the internet certainly have helped to facilitate communication and human interaction on a worldwide scale, but they have also irreversibly become impediments to personal social interaction, one-to-one conversations, sharing of gup-shup, and banter.

Even in villages, almost everyone has a mobile phone and an internet package. Almost every house has a TV. I have seen young and old, sharing the same space but glued to TV or their mobile phones, not uttering a word to each other, each absorbed in their frame of mind and oblivious to others.

The digital revolution has not been balanced by proper education and awareness. Hence, there is a real danger of the misuse and abuse of new tools. In this respect, I take the view that chisel in the hands of a craftsman is a tool of creativity, but in the hands of an unskilled is a tool of destruction.

Certainly, traditional village life is under enormous strain and almost becoming unrecognisable. The courtyards, which were once buzzing with people and animals alike, have been replaced by mansions cordoned off with tall walls and heavy metal gates and, in many cases, left empty.

The village is there, but the village spirit has been drained out of it. The community that once took pride in togetherness, mutual support, and care has either disintegrated or has chosen to suffocate itself behind the confines of heavy gates.