Essentially, the newly-merged tribal districts lie at the bottom of the development food chain in Pakistan. This is not to say that this is a wasteland. Far from it. It is home to around five million people as per the last census. There are schools and hospitals, though the quality of teaching and healthcare offered there is relatively basic when compared with large tertiary care hospitals in Peshawar. Electrical power and piped water are available in some parts of this border region.
But this is not enough. The government has put in place a decade-long strategy to develop the area along with a commitment to provide at least Rs100 billion every year for the duration of the growth plan so as to implement the strategy. Therein lies a real opportunity with ex-FATA. In the more developed areas of the country, such as Islamabad, Lahore and especially Karachi, the room to manoeuvre, to develop modern infrastructure is quite limited.
But it is a relatively blank slate in these once badlands and hence there is much room for both provincial and federal governments to sculpt a vision of the future Pakistan here. People from Pakistan have gone on to work around the globe, contributing to the creation of a modern world. They rightly take credit for building glitzy modern metropolis in the sands of the Middle East. These men and even women have toiled under the punishing sun and survived in squalor quarters to scrape some money to send to their families back home.
Perhaps, as a country, we need to show that now, they can contribute to an even better world at home.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 6th, 2019.
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