This is apropos to the reports about cuts in the nuclear budget. As a nation we have to understand that a balance has to be enforced between our priorities for development-cum-welfare and the necessity to maintain a nuclear deterrence for our defence, given the financial limitations that refrain our conventional capabilities. This country cannot afford to allow its paid servants to live luxuriously and have our vital sensitive security institutions getting their pensions from civil budget, maintain fleets of executive jets and limousines, whilst they have vast funds at their disposal to run a corporate business empire. We must differentiate that there can be no more funds to build palatial residential societies for elite members of civil and uniformed bureaucracy, where vast majority live below poverty line and does not even have access to clean drinking water.
Your report highlights the cuts in our nuclear budget during past four years by the Planning Commission, which was incidentally headed by Sardar Assef Ahmed and Dr Nadeem-ul-Haq. The former has just been welcomed to join PTI by none other than Imran Khan himself in Karachi, while the latter has served IMF all his life and all his other assets are located abroad, where his family holding dual nationality resides.
How many such men or women with split loyalties hold key positions in our civil bureaucracy, our parliament, or serve as ministers and even key senior positions in vital security services of Pakistan. What does it take for men like Sardar Assef to have their conscience hibernating and awaken when it is politically convenient to do so?
GULL ZAMAN
Peshawar
