Pakistan is a unique country; it has the highest level of resilience on one hand and the most fragile economy on the other. What a contrast! It is also a country which has the highest ratio of philanthropist contributions by individuals towards the downtrodden. Why then every pocket has a hole? Despite all other plus or minuses, the biggest endowment is the geography, especially the diversity of it.
Balochistan is the 40 percent of the land mass and therefore is the most important factor in the new arithmetic of regional geo-economics. The emerging new Middle East is just at the doorsteps of Balochistan. It is also the El Dorado as far as the wealth of natural minerals and valuable deposits are concerned.
A recent image was quite promising in which General Ashfaq Kayani inaugurated a marble mine in Balochistan. Is the military face really required in every economic activity of this province?
Army is naturally a factor in this part of Pakistan, because almost 60% of Balochistan is the B Area, which is almost ungovernable by normal mechanics of the governmental dispensation.
Change in terms of improvement in social indicators is the real key to counter any centrifugal tendencies. Do we require Harvard qualified anthropologists or ethnographers to identify these problems? It is not only the ethnic counter which has to be reversed, it is also the complete time clock which has to be reset.
Development initiatives are the best measures which can bring change. People of Balochistan are to be engaged with trust building efforts. As per all the modern writers, trust is the mortar which binds the nation together. Francis Fukoyamas world known thesis vindicates the same.
Balochistan requires immediate attention and response from all the players. Youth of the province is waiting for gestures of paternal magnanimity from the state. People in general are not in habit of queuing up for fulfilment of their basic needs being the tribal and feudal society.
ABID LATIF SINDHU
Karachi
