Uneven development

Across the history of Pakistan development in the broadest sense has never been a process evenly distributed around the provinces. The most cursory of analyses reveals a pattern of development that is consistently Punjab-centric no matter which political party — or military dictator — holds sway. The 18^th Constitutional Amendment has thus far done little to correct the balance, primarily because the provinces, Punjab excepted, simply lack the capacity to effectively spend all of the budgetary allocations now under their purview. Balochistan remains woefully neglected as does eastern Sindh that has recently begun to gain more traction courtesy of the development of the Thar Coal Block II project.

A reliable indicator of development is the opening, anywhere, of an airport. Airports are big (even the small ones) and expensive to build. Their building presupposes traffic that is going to generate sustaining income for the airport and its infrastructure as well as be an engine for local growth. The project was financed by the Sindh government, cost Rs2.2 billion and is designed to facilitate local and foreign investors, who are working on the mining and power generation projects within Thar Coal Block II.

It is an emerging reality that the Sindh government opting for a public-private partnership development model is a right move. Such partnerships have borne fruit in other parts of the country most notably in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa where partnerships in the health sector are giving real benefit. The airport was inaugurated by PPP co-chair Bilawal Bhutto who lamented that there was insufficient attention paid to publicising success in the development sector, in which there is more than a grain of truth. Tharparkar has for decades been one of the least-developed and backward parts not only of Sindh but the entire country. Whether the surge in development activity can be sustained only the next decade will show, much as the benefits resulting from the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor are in many instances going to be slow to show themselves. As Mr Bhutto intimated the partnership model is no less valid in the development of Balochistan and he is right. We await developments.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 13^th, 2018.

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