In the past nearly seven decades, the pattern of economic development has tended to concentrate workers in factories, population in a few cities and wealth in the hands of a not so fast growing number of rich.

No doubt industrialisation has widened prosperity and helped create a sizable middle class primarily in growth centres like Karachi, Lahore or Faisalabad; but these growth points have done very little to bring backward or less developed areas into the economic mainstream or made them at par with developed regions.

Some of the CPEC infrastructure projects like highways will open up opportunities for remote areas to develop along the routes the highways will follow and integrate them with relatively developed regions. But the main beneficiaries would be the growth centres while the domestic market grows faster.

However, things are changing in significant ways because of the pulls and pressures for devolution that places it in the mainstream of economic activities.

The merger will replace an archaic tribal system in Fata severely damaged by more than a decade of militant insurgency. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif says he is “working for a consensus to empower the people of Fata”

The Fata Reforms Committee has strongly recommended the merger of the federally-administered tribal territory with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa mainly on the following grounds: Fata has well developed infrastructural linkages with KP and the provincial administrative structure can be easily extended to the tribal area.

The merger has been also justified on grounds of social, cultural and ethnic cohesion.

The KP provincial assembly had, sometime ago, unanimously passed a resolution calling for representation of the people of Fata in the provincial assembly.

Fata would cease to be a federally administrative territory.

This would be a significant move towards participatory federalism with a bigger economically integrated and autonomous KP province playing a greater role in the country’s economy and with a stronger say in national affairs.

The merger would be no less significant than the renaming of the North Western Frontier Province as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The merger will replace an archaic tribal system in Fata severely damaged by more than a decade of militant insurgency. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif says he is “working for a consensus to empower the people of Fata.”

One of the strong recommendations of the Reforms Committee is that local bodies should be established in the region within 12-18 months after mainstreaming starts.

While there is a consensus on Fata’s merger with KP, getting Fata into the economic mainstream is a pretty complex issue.

Anecdotal evidence demonstrates that the choice of Baloch-speaking people of Dera Ghazi Khan to merge with the then relatively developed Punjab did not lead to the level of prosperity for the inhabitants of the area as they had expected. Similarly, Sindh offers a striking contrast of the relative affluence of Karachi and stark poverty of Thar.

Apparently conscious of the challenges in Fata’s mainstreaming, the Reforms Committee has suggested a transitional arrangement/mechanism under which the federal and the provincial governments would have joint oversight and role in Fata’s development along with capacity building of the existing Fata development agency.

According to a proposal of the committee, the federal government should continue its Rs21bn Public Sector Development Programme while Fata receives its due NFC’ share.

The committee has recommended that 3pc of the NFC award be earmarked for development of the Fata region.

As part of KP province it will become eligible for a share of NFC award on the basis of the current distribution criteria: population, poverty or under-development, the size of its scarcely populated territory and worst insurgency-hit area.

Fata’s locals are the poorest in the country and constitute just about 2pc of the country’s population.

Though needed reforms have been delayed for a long time, the people of Fata should be pulled out of the tribal system and from their distressed state of under-development and poverty as quickly as possible by the joint efforts of the federal, provincial and local governments.

The best route, however, lies in mainstreaming devolution.

Published in Dawn, Business & Finance weekly, February 20th, 2017