THE province of Balochistan needs educational academies, not military garrisons. Instead of strategists and military operations it needs educationists and economic activism. Most importantly, it needs peace, not silence about its predicament.

If the status quo in Balochistan changes, peace will follow. And the status quo in this least-developed and insurgency-hit province can only change with education.

Credible surveys place the province in the lowest rank in terms of the male and the female literacy rates, as well as in the Gender Parity Index. It lags behind the other three provinces in improvements in the net enrolment rate performance in the area of education, an index that can yield great returns in terms of development.

The tragedy of Balochistan is that it is poor because poverty perpetuates itself. Human and social capital would be a long-term, high-return investment. Competent doctors, engineers, bankers, entrepreneurs, architects, agriculturists, academics, geologists etc would allow it to develop its significant natural resources and bring itself to the level of the other provinces.

In any society, education can prove an effective tool in combating poverty. Any single measure of poverty, such as head-count ratios based on specific poverty lines, cannot fully capture all the dimensions in which the condition manifests itself — it does not reflect the real causes behind wider human suffering.

The ‘poverty of opportunity’ index, a composite of deprivation in the vital areas of health, education and income, is quite useful in this regard. Yet in Balochistan’s case, the application of any single measure of poverty indicates that it is the poorest in the country.

The incidence of poverty here is higher than anywhere else in Pakistan, even though it is rich in mineral wealth. Over 50 per cent of the population subsists below the poverty line. And while poverty in Balochistan is more ‘shared’, the problem of income-based iniquities in human development needs to be addressed.

Education is a crucial factor distinguishing the poor from the non-poor. Poor households on the average have 75 per cent more children than non-poor households. Most of these children receive no education, and thus the cycle of poverty is perpetuated.

With teacher absenteeism and poor facilities low enrolment and high dropout rates are common. For populations in the more remote areas of the province, poor access is also a problem. The expansion of elementary and secondary schools may be required at certain locations to accommodate students from the more remote areas. This may help in increasing student enrolment, particularly of girls.

Rural Balochistan totally lacks the physical infrastructure for education, and in these areas the dropout rate among school-going children is comparatively higher. According to one estimate, there are a total of 15,000 settlements in Balochistan. Of these, 7,000 have schools in the formal education sector. And in most of the province’s districts, the literacy rate of females is lower than four per cent.

The province also has the lowest number of educational institutions — 10,381 against the national number of 216,490 (106,435 in Punjab, 46,862 in Sindh and 36,029 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa). This means that of the total number of institutions in the country, 48 per cent are in Punjab, 22 per cent in Sindh, 17 per cent in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and five per cent in Balochistan. The province also has the lowest number of private schools: 1,750, as compared to 48,541 in Punjab, 12,574 in Sindh and 11,276 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Ground realities call for rationalised and long-term planning for the development of the province’s human resources. Only educated, skilled and healthy people can make the best use of the enormous potential found in the province.

Technical education and vocational training (TEVT) in Balochistan suffer from many structural and operational problems. High dropout rates and little success in examinations attest to the inefficiency of polytechnic programmes. It also takes graduates a long time to find work, partly because the skills needed for the jobs available are mismatched with the technical education imparted.

There are only two polytechnics under the Directorate of Colleges, Higher and Technical Education in Balochistan. The province lags behind the others in terms of access to TEVT, with the two polytechnics and 11 training centres serving a population of more than 7.7 million.

Many industries have been envisaged in and around Gwadar port. In any scenario, only a person with technical training and skills would have some worth in Balochistan. Skilled manpower will be needed for the operation of the Gwadar port and allied industries.

There is a dire need for qualified and professional port staff for the successful marketing of the port management to potential customers, the building of the export-processing zone, trans-shipment and warehousing facilities and the fixing of port tariffs for shipping companies in order to be competitive.

However, due to the deteriorating security situation, the province has witnessed a vast flight of human capital over the past five years. Many professionals, who had moved here from elsewhere, left for this reason.

A number of educationists, including Nazima Talib, Fazal Bari, and Safdar Kayani, have died at the hands of target killers over the past few years, possibly to force non-native residents to leave.

Balochistan is Pakistan’s poorest province. Improvements in the educational sector, such as the expansion of the secondary school curricula and the introduction of vocational streams at the middle school level, are direly needed.

Effective and sustained educational reform hinges on a combination of policy and institutional changes, as well as investing the right amount for the appropriate types of education. There is a need to follow a common set of professional standards in the curriculum design.

The writer is the author of Economic Development of Balochistan.

sfazlehaider05@yahoo.com