A cruel share-out

Punjab is allocated a vastly disproportionate development share compared to all other provinces

There can be no clearer example of the way in which the PML-N government discriminates in favour of the province of Punjab in the distribution of the annual development budget that is used at the discretion of parliamentarians. Punjab is allocated a vastly disproportionate share compared to all other provinces. The amount allocated to Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) and Balochistan is less than that allocated to Islamabad, a city with a population of less than two million. More than half of the total Rs19 billion has gone to Punjab. Balochistan, by far the most under-developed of the provinces, got 2.3 per cent or Rs445 million — little more than chicken-feed in the overall picture of development funding. To the surprise of some observers, K-P fared little better getting Rs480 million or 2.5 per cent. Sindh got 4.2 per cent of the funding.



That there is something fundamentally wrong with the proportions of allocation would be obvious to a primary school student — even a primary school student in a government school. If this was a government truly committed to the development of the entire nation, then the proportions would have been a more equitable reflection of true development needs rather than the political ambitions of the PML-N, which is cementing its vote bank for the next election. The allocation speaks of wildly discriminatory behaviour, both for and against, and feeds directly into the inter-provincial rivalries that so bedevil the task of nation-building.

If anything, the allocations to Punjab should have been halved for several years in order to allow other provinces a reasonable chance of ‘catching up’ — but that would have been a step in the direction of true equity that the PML-N was never likely to make. There are any number of arguments presented as to why Punjab should get the lion’s share of any money on the table; but unless the sitting government is willing to use positive discrimination in the formula for funding allocation, then other provinces are always going to be the losers. They will never develop the capacity to effectively spend development funds and will forever be beggars. Shameful — but we expected neither less nor different.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 17^th, 2016.

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