Mahatma Gandhi once said, “Poverty is the worst form of violence.” In the resource-rich Sindh province, this violence has raged against millions of people for generations. Disease is spreading. School attendance is dropping. Vaccination programs are sporadic. Food security is uneven. And upper and lower Sindh regions are the only region in the country that has grown steadily poorer since 1985.
Moreover, other forms of indignity against human lives, such as retrogressive customs and tribal conflicts, have imposed even more misery on some of the most vulnerable sections of society, particularly women and children. A comprehensive poverty alleviation strategy must be devised to extricate the people of Sindh from this poverty trap. The sooner, the better it is. The Sindh Bank and other such organisations may be directed to take pragmatic steps to alleviate poverty from the province instead of wasting billions of rupees on televised publicity.
HASHIM ABRO
Islamabad
