Monday, August 19, 2013

It has been more than 10 years since the government approved a master plan to develop the Gwadar Port but the progress made in that time has been scant and beset by corruption and violence. We initially relied on Singapore to help get the project off the ground and are now relying solely on China to finally realise the Gwadar dream. Port concessions were given to China by the last government in the hope that it would spur our neighbour into speedily tackling the development task. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has also made Gwadar a priority, making it a focus of his recent visit to China – his very first foreign trip as prime minister. Now, as part of the proposed Pak-China Economic Corridor, Nawaz Sharif has approved the construction of a road linking Gwadar to China. The announcement is both needed but also premature. Until the port is developed and functioning and Gwadar has become an important trade hub, there is little need for this road. At the same time, we need to do everything we can to bind China into the Gwadar project since they have been reluctant to do so. The issue is primarily one of law and order, with Baloch separatists having killed Chinese workers before and made threats against anyone working in Gwadar.
Nawaz Sharif may have made the calculation that having Gwadar operational and successful will be a vital tool in quelling the Baloch insurgency because of the economic riches it will bring to the province. He has it the wrong way round. Until the separatists are pacified or somehow won over, it will be impossible to develop Gwadar. They will sabotage every project and ensure that Gwadar becomes as dangerous as the rest of the province. This is why China has been so reluctant to become involved in Gwadar, despite the fact that the warm-water port would significantly shorten the route for their oil supplies and be open year-round. Just how hesitant China is can be seen by the fact that we have to continually offer them incentives to work with us in Gwadar even though the port will eventually benefit them tremendously. With or without Chinese support, we have staked our economic future on Gwadar and so must continue with it. Nawaz Sharif will have to undo the many mistakes of the Musharraf regime which, thanks to favouritism in handing out contracts, gross inefficiency and reigniting the Baloch separatists, has made the Gwadar dream as distant as ever.



A new controversy has arisen concerning the housing census conducted by the PPP government in 2010. This survey has now become redundant as a population survey – as is required under the law – was not carried out within a year of this exercise. With over three years having elapsed since the survey, a new exercise involving a simultaneously conducted housing census and a population census will need to be done by the current government. Costs of billions of rupees are involved as well as the other complications that arise from a census. One of these is that a census is required before the local bodies polls. The Supreme Court had set September 15 as the date when these were to be completed – a target that seems impossible to meet.
We need a population census as conducting governance without proper demographics is an exercise in absurdity. The last one was held in 1998, more than a decade and a half ago. The matter is to be put by the government before the Council of Common Interests. A precise methodology and formula for carrying out the census is also required. This is especially important as the results of the 2010 housing survey, and also those of the 1998 census, were disputed. Due to a variety of factors, including the number of seats in the assemblies, demographic data is a delicate matter in our country. Ethnic tensions add to the problems. The conduct of the surveys will therefore not be an easy matter. But at the same time it is important that this task be completed. It is unfortunate that this did not happen in 2010, wasting both resources and time. If a census, required for many different reasons, is to be carried out successfully, consensus needs to be built with political parties and other groups so that the results are acceptable to as many as possible. The last thing we need at this moment is further friction of any kind, and the PML-N leadership will need to show due sagacity in going about a task that is necessary both constitutionally and practically, to ensure that matters of state, big and small, can keep moving on. And this is virtually impossible in the absence of a reliable census.



A report by the Sindh government’s Planning and Development Department, discussed at the forums of NGOs and humanitarian agencies through last month as the issue of providing sufficient nutrition to people was discussed, states that 71 percent of households in Sindh are food-insecure. Severe food shortages exist in 17 percent of these homes. This is despite the fact that the province has 17 million acres of land under crop cultivation. Experts say that “lack of access” to food is a key reason for the findings on hunger, which also show that just under 50 percent of children are stunted – or failing to reach the expected height for age and nearly 17 percent wasted, or failing to reach the expected weight for age. The findings are obviously grim, and depict the kind of lives too many people in our country lead. While poverty, as would be expected, is linked to the rates of malnutrition, stunting is found even in relatively wealthy homes – apparently as a result of poor choices of food consumed within families.
This problem is one that is not discussed too often, certainly not as often as issues such as militancy, law and order and illiteracy. But of course, it has a drastic impact on the lives of people, especially women who have been found to suffer the most severe effects of malnutrition linked also to multiple pregnancies and a lack of proper care during them. We need to take note of these realities. They have come up again and again, year after year. In Sindh, little has changed over the last decade or so. It is a good sign that the provincial government has chosen to discuss this with international agencies and is trying to devise a strategy. But perhaps all of us need to be more involved in understanding the state in which many of our people live and asking what has been done to mitigate their problems.