THE Population Council’s District Vulnerability Index for Pakistan offers a data-driven picture of vulnerabilities both at the provincial and district level. It shows that the nation’s regional disparities are not accidental but an outcome of decades of skewed development policies and political priorities. The index collates existing datasets to measure and compare relative vulnerability across Pakistan’s districts. Unlike traditional climate or disaster assessments, it focuses on underlying structural and systemic factors. It draws on 21 indicators grouped in six key domains to assess access to essential resources and opportunities: housing; communication and transportation; livelihoods; access to health services; access to public education; and demographics.
It is an uncomfortable truth: provincial disparities are not only wide; they are also structural and deepening. This is most visible in Balochistan, which continues to exist on the socioeconomic margins despite decades of policy rhetoric. The province scores at the bottom across nearly all domains — from infrastructure and communications to livelihoods and human development — reflecting systemic governance failures. The distribution of vulnerability — high unemployment, inadequate housing, poor access to health and education, etc — across the province paints a picture of exclusion from the national development strategy. Of the 10m people living in the 20 most vulnerable districts, more than half are in Balochistan. Conversely, the 20 least vulnerable districts are in Punjab — which has its own large islands of underdevelopment in the south and west — and a handful in Sindh and KP. This underscores how unevenly development gains have been disbursed. That 17 of the 20 most vulnerable districts are located in Balochistan suggests that vulnerability here is not the outcome of episodic shocks or disasters but of persistent neglect. Even KP, with its own challenges, fares far better than Balochistan, with only one district ranking among the five worst-performing districts.
Beyond statistics, this index is an indictment of successive governments that have consistently channelled resources and public investments into politically important regions. This deliberate choice, driven primarily by a highly centralised power and governance structure, and short-term electoral cycles, has starved remote and underdeveloped districts of essential services, ranging from basic healthcare and education to critical climate resilience measures necessary for even and equitable progress. In short, the DVIP report underpins two key points about our development landscape. First, the country’s challenges stem not only from limited resources but, more critically, from deep inequalities in how those resources and essential services are distributed across regions and communities. Second, these entrenched vulnerabilities mean that those already left behind are both more exposed to disasters and far less likely to catch up with the better-developed areas.
Published in Dawn, November 20th, 2025
