Volume 6, No. 12, December 2024
Editor: Rashed Rahman
The figures on Human Development Index (HDI) regarding Balochistan are not forthcoming and even searches do not provide up to date figures so I am sharing here a piece about the UNDP Report of 2018 written by Nadil Baloch.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) launched its 2018 report and Pakistan was ranked 150 among 158 countries by combining life expectancy, income and education. It shows the alarming condition of human development in the country. UNDP measured the HDI of the districts of Pakistan through five Likert scale from very High to Very Low according to their socio-economic and other social factors to find out the social inequality within federating units. According to the rankings, those districts that fall above 0.800 would be considered Very High in HDI, 0.700-0.799 High, 0.555-0.699 Medium, 0.555 or below Low, below 0.400 Very Low.
The findings of the UNDP present distressing conditions of human development in Balochistan because most of the districts of Balochistan fall under the Very Low category. Balochistan contains 32 districts and no districts fall in the Very High or High category. Only one district, Quetta (0.666), the Capital of Balochistan, falls in Medium and 10 districts fall in the Low category; the remaining districts are placed in the Very Low category.
According to the Pakistan HDI ranking, Punjab is in the leading position at 0.732, Sindh 0.640, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 0.628 and Balochistan 0.421. The HDI of Balochistan can be compared with countries like Chad, Niger and other countries of Central Africa, whose HDI is distressing. According to the UNDP report, Awaran, a district of Balochistan, stands at 0.173, which is the lowest HDI position in the country. Other districts like Washuk, Harnai, Dera Bugti and Kharan are Very Low, with HDIs of less than 0.30.
The HDI is measured by UNDP according to healthy life, access to education and standard of living. Balochistan is the only province where all these three factors are in a deprived condition. Balochistan is amongst the worst in terms of education. The Mean Years of Schooling (MYS) – average level of education attainment of a person who is 25 years old – is 2.6 and Expected Years of Schooling (EYS) – which measures the number of educational years a child is expected to receive – is 7.6. Health is also in an abysmal condition. Balochistan is facing a great degree of health inequality. The ratio of health is 0.400, which falls in the low category. At the district level, 16 out of 32 districts are placed in very low or low category and only Kalat district falls in the high category in terms of health index. Most importantly, 50 percent districts, including Quetta, experienced a decline in health condition in the past 10 years. Kharan, Jhal Magsi and Zhob are at the top of districts that have experienced a health index decline in the last decade.
According to the UNDP report, Balochistan experiences the greatest deprivation in terms of the living standard index. It has a maximum number living in substandard conditions; 17 districts fall in very low category, 10 in low category and only one district, Quetta, falls in High Medium category. This has happened due to the lack of facilities such as sanitation systems, piped water, electricity, etc. Pishin, Sibi, Noshki and Lasbela are performing better in the living standard index.
I will add that Dera Bugti was ‘conquered’ in 2006 when Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti was killed, but there has been no progress in HDI. The blame game of the Sardars (tribal chiefs) being obstacles to progress stands exposed. In Awaran the army has been in control since the 2013 September earthquake but it stands at the very lowest. During the army action in Dera Bugti, some 178,000 persons were displaced and were living the life of refugees in and near Dera Ghazi Khan. In January 2014 the Balochistan High Court’s (BHC’s) bench headed by Justice Jamal Khan Mandokhel ordered the Dera Bugti administration to allow the displaced people to return to their homes in phases due to security reasons. Balochistan Advocate General Nazimuddin said the provincial government had no objection to the return of the petitioner and the Bugtis accompanying him but identification of the persons was necessary in view of the security situation in the district. The returning Bugtis were stopped at Dera Morr in Kashmore by the Frontier Corps (FC) and were not allowed to proceed. The returning 50,000 Bugtis staged a sit-in and disrupted the traffic in protest but the FC did not relent. Its writ, not the BHC’s, prevails in all matters. I had personally witnessed this blockade as I had gone to meet Mama Qadeer, Banuk Farzana Majeed and others near Rojhan Mazari in Dera Ghazi Khan. The refugees are still refugees for only a hundred were allowed to return to save face for Shahzain Bugti who, according to his own statements, is ready to fight alongside the army for the liberation of Kashmir.
This is what I wrote regarding the poverty in Balochistan and how it is discriminated against in all fields: “A word of caution for this piece: loads of data tend to obscure human suffering. Engrossed with figures, readers lose track of the primary object. To avoid this pitfall, it is essential to keep one’s blessings and others’ deprivation in perspective all the time.” To present the grim reality of economic deprivation and poverty, I quote credible experts and reports. Syed Fazl-e-Haider, a respected developmental analyst, says, “Poverty is a multi-dimensional concept rather than simple income (consumption) deprivation. Any single measure of poverty, such as head-count ratio based on specific ‘poverty line’ does not fully capture all its dimensions and does not reflect the real causes of wider human sufferings. ‘Poverty of opportunity’ index, a composite of deprivation in three vital dimensions – health, education and income – is quite useful in this regard. In case of Balochistan, any single measure indicates that it is the poorest province.” Further highlighting the neglect, he says, “Balochistan remains almost voiceless, having no say in the decision-making process at the Centre. Over 50 percent of its population subsists below the poverty line. Income-based inequities in human development need to be addressed. During fiscal year (FY) 2000-2001, only 9.2 percent of the total Khushhal Pakistan programme budget had been allocated to the province compared to 16.2 percent for NWFP, 19.7 percent for Sindh, and 48.9 percent for Punjab. During the first year of the programme, utilisation as a percentage of the budgeted amount was the lowest for the province at 2.8 percent compared to 7.7 percent in NWFP, 8.2 percent in Sindh, and 19 percent in Punjab. In FY 2004, the federal contribution to the provincial development programmes was 56 percent for NWFP, 28 percent for Punjab, 19 percent for Sindh and only eight percent for Balochistan. The share allocated in foreign project assistance (FPA) to Punjab was 53 percent, NWFP 29 percent, Sindh 12 percent and again only six percent for Balochistan.”
The table of ‘Districts Showing Decline in Index of Multiple Deprivation of More than 10 Points’ in Research Report No. 72 by Social Policy and Development Centre (SPDC) for comparing1998 to 2005 shows that there was not a single district from Balochistan showing decline while there were three from Punjab, five from Sindh and seven from NWFP. Moreover, in the table ‘The Ten Highest Deprived Districts of Pakistan’, nine were from Balochistan and it emerges as the most deprived province with over 91 percent of population residing in high-deprived districts during 2005. It shows that in 1998 the percentage of population living in a high degree of deprivation was 25 percent in Punjab, 23 percent in urban Sindh, 49 percent in rural Sindh, 51 percent in NWFP, and 88 percent in Balochistan. In 2005, the figures were: Punjab 28, Sindh 35, NWFP 35 and Balochistan 91, showing that Balochistan is in a consistent nose-dive. The report adds, per annum declining rate of deprivation is the lowest in Balochistan; it has the weakest long-term growth performance. From 1972-73 to 2004-05, the economy expanded 2.7 times in Balochistan, 3.6 times in NWFP and Sindh, and 4.0 times in Punjab. The growth divergence has widened historic income differences and Balochistan’s per capita income level of $ 400 in 2004 was only two-thirds of Pakistan’s national level. Perhaps, with the sole exception of the area in and around Quetta, social deprivation is widespread in all districts of Balochistan. As expected, in terms of level of deprivation during 2005, Punjab possesses the lowest, while Balochistan has the highest magnitude of Index of Multiple Deprivation.
A horrific picture emerges if one surveys the maternal mortality rate, which is 650 per 100,000 births in Balochistan while it is 281 in Karachi. This is double the national average. Infant mortality in Balochistan is 158 deaths per 1,000 live births. Even Democratic Republic of Congo’s average of 126 is lower while Pakistan’s national average of 70 is less than half. The latest figures in August 2020 that claim a decrease in the maternal mortality rate for Pakistan assert it has decreased from 276 deaths per 100,000 live births to 186 deaths in the last 15 years. The ratio in Punjab was 157 deaths per 100,000 live births, followed by 165 deaths per 100,000 live births in KP, 224 deaths per 100,000 live births in Sindh and 298 deaths per 100,000 live births in Balochistan. The ratio in Azad Jammu and Kashmir is 104 and 157 in Gilgit-Baltistan. Balochistan still is a death trap for women. If that is the rate of maternal mortality, it means that infant mortality will be higher there.
Balochistan accounted for seven out of the nine districts with the lowest full immunisation rate, including the four districts with the worst record. Balochistan’s performance would look even worse without the exclusion of Dera Bugti and Kohlu in the Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement Survey (PSLM) sample due to security reasons. Only 20 percent of its people have access to safe drinking water compared to 86 percent in the rest of Pakistan. Village electrification is only 25 percent compared to 75 percent in the rest of the country. The education sector figures are depressing too. Access to education is also far below the ratio of other provinces. Over three-fourths of women and two-thirds of the population above ten are illiterate. The conditions in the insurgency-affected Marri-Bugti areas and among the internally displaced persons (IDPs) are much worse. With regard to net primary enrolment, 11 out of the 16 districts, including the four districts with the worst record in 2004-05 belonged to Balochistan. These figures prove that Balochistan has perpetually suffered from neglect and wilful attempts to keep it in a state of deprivation. Blaming the Sardars for obstructing development cuts no ice because the areas under the government’s writ haven’t prospered either. Take the example of Bugti area. Though gas was discovered in Sui in 1951, meets approximately 45 percent of Pakistan’s total needs and is worth Rs 85 billion annually, yet what Dera Bugti receives in return for the wealth it generates is evident from the UNDP Human Development Report 2003, which ranked Dera Bugti last among the 91 districts on the HDI.
So if people have grievances and resent the federal government’s attitude and the unbridled highhandedness of the Army and Frontier Corps, it should come as no surprise for not only is the exploitation systematic, the deprivation is too. That leaves the people the only option to fight for justice and rights as there is no institution in Balochistan that is able to redress their grievances. People say the elected leaders form the government in Balochistan. However, they forget that the elections are rigged beyond belief. The Balochistan Awami Party (BAP)-dominated Assembly was ushered in with massive fraud and arm twisting.
(To be continued)