Suleman Abro was born in Shahdadpur in April 1954. His family originally came from village Ismail Abro, lying fifteen minutes drive north of Shahdadpur. There his father, an only child and orphaned very early in life, was brought up by Suleman’s maternal grandfather. Born into abject poverty, the grandfather worked as a tenant farmer and that was the life that Suleman’s own father knew as a young man. As his brood grew, this remarkable man, himself with only two grades of schooling, harboured great hopes for the education of his own children.

A man of sharp perception, the senior Abro must have seen the promise in Suleman, his second child. He took great interest in the boy’s education – more than he had taken in that of his elder son. The boy was not wanting in reciprocation and did fairly well in school. Only lack of ready funds occasionally stood in the way. As he was promoted to the sixth grade, Suleman’s family did not have the resources to buy him new school books and for two weeks the boy could not go to school. The meagre sum was eventually borrowed, books purchased and school resumed. This one event, of little significance for most children, weighed heavily on Suleman’s sensitive mind. It set things going.

He became conscious of those others like him – children whose families lacked the means of maintaining them in school. At the end of the next annual examinations, Suleman got together with a few friends and collected old school books from all passing students. It was not difficult t find students whose families were hard put to maintain them in school. That year, for the first time, such students received used books for their new classes. The effort of this group of young friends was so well received by teachers, parents and students alike that from then on it became standard practice. By the time Suleman had matriculated, he and his friends had all but institutionalised this system of used book distribution. The distribution ceremony would be held as a public function where some local notable would be invited to do the honours.

Now, Suleman’s father worked at the patwaris’ (junior revenue officers) office and there Suleman too started to spend his time after school. Those were pre-electricity days in Shahdadpur and Suleman would make himself useful during hot summer afternoons as what was known during the Raj the punkha-puller. His job was to sit outside the door of the office and alternately pull and release the string that swung the large cane and fabric fan suspended from the ceiling. This tedious toil brought him five rupees per month. Ever mindful that his father’s meagre salary was scarcely sufficient for their large family Suleman used this income to pay for his school books as well as whatever other reading he required.

A voracious reader he was fast turning into. What little time was left from punkha-pulling, Suleman spent in the municipal library. Here his literary regimen consisted of Sindhi, Urdu and English literature. As the years went by his mind was illuminated with the ideas of Shah Latif and Voltaire; Manto, Faiz and Mubarik Ali. This led to a hankering for interaction and discussion with his intellectual betters. And so even before he had matriculated in 1970, he had helped set up a literary society called Idara-e-Nawa-e-Adab. Under this aegis Suleman’s gift for debating was polished and honed. By this time too Suleman was also working as a book-binder besides being a punkha-puller. The additional income was to pay for his college education.

In the early 1970s Shahdadpur did not have a college building and the high school doubled as an intermediate college during the evenings. As he enrolled in the first year programme, Suleman’s day would begin at 5.00 AM. He apprenticed with a brick layer until midday. After lunch he would attend a typing school and at five in the afternoon hurry off to college. Finishing at around nine, he did the last of his days’ chores as an ironing man in a local laundry. For two rupees daily, Suleman worked for the launderer so diligently that by and by he became known as the best ironing man in all Shahdadpur. Seldom in those years came a night when he hit the bed earlier than midnight. Yet he could not afford to lie in bed later than five the next morning.

In 1973 when he was in the first year of the graduation programme, Suleman got the position of tax collection clerk with the local Market Committee. The job entailed cycling around Shahdadpur town to collect taxes from small traders. At seventy-five rupees per month the salary was meagre, but it was considerably easier than working as a brick layer’s assistant. Finishing his graduation, Suleman enrolled in a social work diploma programme at Sindh University (Hyderabad). Simultaneously, the consuming desire to read, write and speak good English, betook the young man to language classes at the American Centre.

Done with his tax collection work, Suleman would ride a bus to Hyderabad where he would attend the diploma class at the university before running off to the American Centre. Now, the American Centre was the haunt of young men and women from moneyed families some of whom attended the Centre simply to see and be seen. Among those fresh-faced and nicely turned out youngsters, Suleman, dishevelled and smelly from his day of work and the two-hour bus ride from Shahdadpur, stuck out like a sore thumb. In the beginning his appearance alarmed his better-off peers. Once or twice he was asked what befell him. Gradually however his fellow students got used to seeing him in that condition and gave up prying. One wonders if there were any among those more affluent colleagues of Suleman’s at the Centre who secretly admired the young man’s determination to learn in the face of such grinding adversity.

Finishing his graduation, Suleman began working for a Masters degree in Sindhi literature. That done, he got another degree in Sociology. All this being paid for by his tax collection clerk’s salary as well as whatever else he was making from book binding and laundry work. Working in Shahdadpur and commuting daily to Hyderabad, the tireless and determined Suleman was, by 1985, also a qualified lawyer. The spoken English classes, the hours of reading in the libraries, his degrees in sociology and law were all to stand him in good stead in the future. The bus rides with the choking diesel fumes, the lousy meals at the cheap eateries near Hyderabad railway station and the short hours of repose were to pay in the long run.

Meanwhile, back in 1976 in the thick of his post-graduation degree programme, the English language classes and government job, Suleman had come into contact with a group that called itself Sindh Graduates Association (SGA). The NGO phenomenon had not yet taken off in Pakistan and this bunch of educated, idealistic and well-meaning young men and women did various sorts of charity work in the province. Collecting donations of medicines and a team of doctors willing to work as volunteers, these people would go out into the villages to set up free medical camps. Suleman joined these tours and during one such exercise got thinking: these were day-long routines, so what transpired with the poor village folk once it was over? How did they meet their health needs when this team was not there between free camps?

It became clear to Suleman that whatever was being done was temporary. It rankled him no end that he did not possess the means to address the health problems of poor rural communities on a perpetual basis – ‘sustainable’ not yet having become a popular catchword. And health was not the only problem that rural communities faced, there was a host of other difficulties like lack of potable water and the burden of grinding poverty. Something needed to be done on a permanent basis, but that something was the unknown quantity. For ten years Suleman lived with the dream of changing his world and continued his welfare activity with SGA. All the while he struggled to discover the nature of that unknown quantity that would make his dream reality. But there was no answer. Not yet at least.

 In 1985 a friend introduced him to Karachi-based Pakistan Institute for Labour Education and Research (PILER). There the bearded and soft-spoken Karamat Ali was a source of enlightenment. Suleman began to make frequent trips to the PILER office where he came in contact with many of the known names of leftist politics in Pakistan. They talked of politics and governance, of the state of society, of education and health facilities or lack thereof. Suleman found their discussions very illuminating for they brought home a new clarity of vision, something he had never known before. He came to recognise that collectiveness within respective communities and a higher state of awareness would eventually deliver the disadvantaged people that he saw all around himself.

As PILER was an organisation, Suleman realised that he and his friends at Shahdadpur needed to work under a banner as well. A name indicative of the issues the organisation would tackle was devised, understandably first in Sindhi and then translated into the English. Sindh Agriculture and Forestry Workers Cooperative Organisation, Safwco for short, was thus born in October 1986. Now there was hardly an evening when Suleman would remain in Shahdadpur. Every evening after work he borrowed his brother’s motorcycle and rode out to nearby villages, gathered the men in an otaq and engaged them in the same discussions he heard in the PILER office at Karachi. It was a very Sindhi thing to do for this ancient tradition of the daily get-together goes by the name of kachehri.

The rapt attention he received was completely unexpected. The meetings starting a little after sunset lasted until well after midnight. There were occasions when even as the eastern horizon was beginning to light up the villagers would still be in passionate discussion with Suleman. The men who sat around listening to him, they had time and again talked of their common problems amongst themselves, but there had never seen anyone from outside the village visit to discuss their difficulties. It was unthinkable that some such person would even invite them to think of possible ways of getting around their problems.

These discussions did not solve the problems of drinking water or of sanitation or absence of schools or increase the oppressed tenant farmer’s income. Nor too could Suleman show the way out. All he could tell them was that the way ahead for them was not as individuals but as well-knit communities. That together as groups they would be able to attain what had forever been denied them. He could well have given up but the one visible change these meetings wrought, the one that kept Suleman going, was that those who attended were galvanised. There was the faint beginning of the notion that they were not unconnected individuals living in the same village, but that they were a group whose lives were irrevocably intertwined.

The interesting aspect in all this activity thus far was that neither Suleman nor his friends at Safwco had any idea about the existence of donor agencies. They did not know that there were funds to be had simply to ‘mobilise’ communities. Consequently, with no outside funding, Suleman would lay aside a little from his own income to pay for the work with rural communities. Though he could see that the men he was interacting with were becoming increasingly aware, he himself was conscious that there was precious little he could offer in terms of concrete solutions.

Having established of Safwco, Suleman together with a few of his friends carried out a survey around Shahdadpur. The purpose was to look into the causes of social and economic backwardness of the area. Their learnings were:

• Very low income of small and tenant farmers was the main cause of poverty. After tilling the same block for generations and slaking it with the sweat of their brow, these farmers had no ownership. In case of the tenant farmer, though he shared the cost of seed and fertiliser equally with the owner, he was the sole bearer of loss in case the crop failed for natural causes.
• Low literacy rate prevented women and men alike from realising their fullest potential. Illiterate farmers were incapable of adopting modern methods of agriculture because of their ignorance.
• Absence of farm to market roads prevented farmers from bringing their produce to the market in time in order to get good rates. Moreover, lack of contact with the outside world kept poor communities in the thrall of ancient and outdated customs.
• Lack of potable water and health and hygiene facilities was a major cause of disease. Infant mortality was high as was death in childbirth. Most villages were no more than vast rubbish dumps.
• Ignorance of the dynamics of community organisation prevented people from taking up participatory and self-help initiatives to alleviate poverty.
• The social and economic backwardness of rural women was a gross violation of their basic human rights on the one hand. On the other, it increases backwardness by impeding the potential of half the population.

 

Subsequent to the survey and the lessons learnt from it, the decision regarding the sort of work Safwco was to do was not hard to arrive at.

• Educate rural masses regarding the dynamics of community organisation.
• Raise awareness of rural populations regarding socio-economic issues.
• Facilitate rural CBOs to introduce modern and scientific technology and methods in agriculture and social forestry.
• Empower rural women through innovative initiatives.
• Evolve income generation activities and saving schemes.
• Facilitate the provision of basic civic amenities to rural communities.
• Educate policy making bodies, urban NGOs and international development agencies regarding socio-economic developments at the grassroots level and share learnings gleaned from rural partners.

With Safwco established, it was essential that there be premises that could be called its office. There was a tiny block of land at his disposal, but Suleman had no funds for construction. Fortunately Mr Durrani, his boss at the Market Committee, a gentleman of good sense and perspicacity, was in those days renovating his own house. Suleman acquired all his discarded bricks and steel and with help from his friends and colleagues set about to raise a two-room structure. Rather simple and possessed of a somewhat unfinished look, this building was appointed in fitting manner: with a couple of charpais, a few wobbly chairs and a table in like condition. The most expensive office equipment to show off was an aging manual typewriter. For the next several years this place was to serve as Safwco office, otaq and meeting room for visitors no matter where they came from.

This set-up became a much favoured haunt for visitors from the villages where Suleman was holding his kachehris. There was scarcely a day when there wasn’t a handful of men visiting town and stopping by to discuss this legal problem or the question of the most viable cotton seed or how to get the tomato crop to the market at Hyderabad. And there wasn’t a night when half a dozen or so visitors weren’t staying over. Suleman’s family was understandably upset. Those were years of political and civil upheaval in Sindh and anyone of these unknown visitors could be an outlaw, they argued, and Suleman could be implicated as an abettor. But he kept at it and the family eventually concluded that Suleman, the one in whom the elder Abro had reposed the greatest confidence, had lost his sanity.

In his mind Suleman was at ease, however. Mahatma Gandhi had once said that every new process was met with set reactions. First, of all, Gandhi had said, censure came from the immediate family. Then followed the neighbourhood and the entire city. Eventually when all had said their piece, there came approval and appreciation. The people of Shahdadpur followed Gandhian wisdom very faithfully. Only it was not yet time for the appreciation.

development, like charity, begins at home

Ismail Abro was no different from villages anywhere in Pakistan. And that was where Suleman’s roots lay. If a good thing had to begin, what better place than to begin at home? In 1987 it still had no electricity, no school and no paved road connecting it to the main highway just over two kilometres away. Suleman spotted a young matriculation student who daily walked to a neighbouring village to attend school. Offering him a stipend of a hundred rupees per month (from his own meagre resources), Suleman proposed to arrange a rug, blackboard and chalk if this youngster was willing to do a couple of hours of lessons for the children of the village.

Afternoon was the time chosen and classes were held under a spreading neem tree outside the village. Upon first announcement of the opening of this informal school enrolment was about thirty students. Application in hand Suleman called in at the Shahdadpur office of the Social Welfare Department. It took a bit of wrangling to convince the officials that the school was indeed up and running, but when he walked out he had a blackboard and a rug. The open air school now looked sufficiently business-like. Next he apprised the District Education Officer of this new school, and got him to affiliate it as a branch with the regular school in the neighbouring village. The year was 1987 and such was the beginning of the first ever school in village Ismail Abro.

This was a great beginning. The next letter from Safwco went out to the Area Development Board of the Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) requesting a connection for the village. Much to his surprise, the head of Safwco was invited for a meeting with the head of the Board. When he walked out of the meeting, Suleman had sanction for the connection. Only the community was required to contribute Rs 10,000 to the project outlay. Sufficiently mobilised after the sanction of their school, the people of Ismail Abro did not hesitate to dish out the requisite funds. The village got connected to the power grid in 1991 much to the amazement of surrounding villages.

Not long afterwards, file in hand containing an introduction of Safwco, Suleman was at the door of the Planning Department. Here was a branch school with no building and so many students who braved the elements under the neem tree. Was it possible, he asked, if Ismail Abro could also have a regular schoolhouse building. One wonders if it was a bureaucrat of exceptional mettle or if Suleman’s plea was so overpowering for its sentiment that the department did not only sanction the school with two teachers, but also released Rs 350,000 for the building. Since its initiation in 1987, the school functions to this day, bringing light to the children of Ismail Abro