February 20, 2006	Monday	Muharram 21, 1427

THE country’s largest province with extremely low-density population and high incidence of poverty, Balochistan is undeniably the country’s worst neglected region.

It has been bestowed with endless misfortunes by officials and local big wigs comprising tribal leaders generally referred to as Sardars.

The two have combined to heap misery over the population since independence; prior to that event, the Sardars and British government officials had ruled the roost.

Since the setting of the sun on the British Empire’s biggest colony, the colonial masters’ role was assumed by federal authorities who later developed subservient individuals and groups in the province. But that is the system across the country and Balochistan could not be exception.

The two, Sardars and government officials, have been at loggerheads more than once. Military action often takes place when they have difference of views; it is often not described as what it really is but that hardly maters or changes ground conditions.

In the clash between powerful combatants with high-valued vested interest, the general population is crushed heavily. It is a case of grass getting trampled in a fight of elephants. From the look of things, this is currently happening again in the province.

Whenever tribal leaders and officials develop a disagreement, the formers’ nationalism rises by a few notches and the latter’s commitment for the welfare of the populace becomes the main headline for governmental policies for the neglected province.

The government’s solution is mega projects worth billions of rupees to be completed over longish periods; the tribal elders’ prescription is further tightening of belts by members of their tribe and appealing to the sense of self-respect of the underfed, scantily clothed uneducated and poverty-stricken tribesmen, a hollow concept in the context of the people’s lives.

Both lines of deception work. Tribesmen take refuge in pride that is essentially false but firstly this reality is not dawned on them because they are not in a position to comprehend the fact they were being sacrificed at the altar of vested interest of tribal chiefs presented to them as principle, tradition and heritage and secondly because they have no option.

There is an easy way out that is beneficial to all segments, the government, the chiefs and the people but it is scrupulously avoided by the first two sides because it accords officials no chance of playing with funds and the chiefs are not better positioned to blackmail authorities; the third party has no say although it is the lives of the people that are affected by all developments, negative or positive.

For instance, right now Balochistan offers the country’s most fertile territory for the growth of agriculture, particularly in some of the crops that have become a burden on national resources because of imports and for food sufficiency in the country.

The province has land and water for producing huge quantities of wheat and for growing crops that can considerably cut down the import of edible oils.

Chaghi district, known to people as the side of Pakistan’s atomic explosions, presents a region with peculiar agriculture characteristics and tremendous potential for cultivating wheat.

Chaghi, bigger than the NWFP has sub-soil water available at less than 70-90ft. Climatically, it produces the crop in winter under rain-fed conditions. The shortfall can be provided supplementary irrigation from the tube-wells.

An impression has been created that Balochistan has acute shortage of water. This is true of Quetta valley and some other parts of the province but not of the entire province. The valley’s water problems are the result of excessive mismanagement of water resources that have pushed the water-table dangerously down.

The wells possessed by feudal elements and Sardars are paid a heavy subsidy on electricity by the provincial government. Water is thus treated as exploitable material by the elite in the system in which the elite call all the shots.

The system has been geared for serving a certain class and that is why mega projects are welcome in all seasons and plans for general development of the province and welfare of the masses are treated with disdain.

The authorities are satisfied because their projects create a new class of sycophants, a segment that flourishes in non-democratic dispensations; officials have no hesitation in displaying them as evidence of their good intentions. This wheel has dominated the lives of the people of Balochistan ever since one can recall. It is currently in momentum again.

While Pakistan has traditionally suffered from resource constraint, the present administration seems to have no shortage of funds and is in fact eager to allocate huge amounts for projects, even such undertakings that may be controversial or assessed as unneeded. The value of some of the approved projects for the country and the people may be moot point but that has nothing to do with availability of resources.

In fact, the government conveys the impression that the treasury’s pockets are bursting with banknotes - local currency as well as dollars, of highest denominations. Its approach towards Balochistan reflects both generosity and affluence. It has numerous mega projects in files or pipelines currently at the initial stage of installation. But the projects have not much concern for ground conditions.

One of the main commitments of the government is Gawadar but assessing from what has been done in the island as also plans for its further development, it contains no mileage for ordinary citizens of Balochistan; indeed many of the prominent Balochis who have the reputation of being the beneficiaries of the policies of the federal government have been complaining that they have been left in the lurch.

Construction of cantonments or other projects raising huge physical structures leave the locals similarly cold - they are like gas projects for them that supply the gas from their fields to the rest of the country, provide ‘compensation’ to Sardars but only to dig iron in the Balochi souls deeper. Their needs and concerns remain unattended, their problems unresolved.

It is not merely requirements of the people of Balochistan but in the interest of the entire country that the agriculture potential of the province is exploited. Chaghi has an area of about 4.5 million hectares. It is ideal for wheat cultivation plus a number of other crops that can be grown simultaneously. But a start even for mono crop agriculture. There is more to the potential of the province than wheat but let us put that off to another time.

Pakistan’s shortfall in wheat is never more than two million tons, an exaggerated figure by all accounts. Even if the yield is limited to the produce of rain-fed areas of other parts of the country, cultivation on two million acres would make up for any shortage of wheat and free Pakistan of the continuously, expensive and corruption ridden agony of importing wheat.

It is an opportunity for the people of Balochistan and for Pakistan as a whole. But would the federal government rise up to the opportunity or it has become so deeply and inextricably involved in power games that gifts from nature would be ignored, indeed altogether rejected.