narrow, a fine metal road was intact at the time from Saidu Sharif to Kalam and beyond. Schools were functional even in the faraway villages of Utror and Ushu.
What happened after the merger is a sad story of neglect and marginalisation. The hospitals and schools gradually became dysfunctional; and the road turned into rubble. The only improvement we see now is the increasing number of ‘foreign funded’ madressahs. In the valleys of Kalam and beyond one can see a startling difference between the high-quality buildings of madressahs and the poverty-stricken houses of the local population. Madressahs are increasing in number because schools become dysfunctional.
The majority of schools remain dysfunctional mainly because of appointment of non-local teaching staff while children who go to the few primary schools have to pause their education for seven months because of the seasonal migration of their parents. The hospital is made functional only in the summer, mainly for tourists – otherwise the locals aren’t regarded human.
The road to Kalam was never great since the merger but it was still not as bad as it has been after the floods in 2010.
Poverty has been made the fate of the locals. Because of this pervasive poverty the locals had sold their lands; now among the over 200 hotels there only a couple of them are owned by them.
Tourism is still a great source of income for the locals but here, too, the great chunk of the income goes to non-locals. Whatever little income of tourism the locals get can’t sustain them through the long winter and so the majority of them migrate to other areas as cheap labour.
If the PTI-led government really wants to make Khyber Pakhtunkhwa an example of the change it has promised it must focus on peripheries like Kalam and the valleys. Being the most attractive tourist heavens in the province, the valleys of Kalam and Bahrain need to be prioritised for both summer and winter tourism along with giving special benefits to those employed by the government. The area needs to be declared a ‘hardship area’ with quota for locals in all educational institutions and government employment.
The writer heads IBT, an independentorganisation dealing with education anddevelopment in Swat.
Email: ztorwaligmail.com