Balochistan Budget

The coali­tion gov­ern­ment of Balochis­tan, led by Dr. Abdul Malik Baloch, has pre­sent­ed Rs 215.713 bil­lion deficit bud­get for finan­cial year 2014–2015. They (the leg­is­la­tors) have termed this finan­cial year’s bud­get ‘friend­ly’ dur­ing a ses­sion of the Provin­cial Assem­bly. Unlike past gov­ern­ments, the present provin­cial gov­ern­ment has increased the bud­get to a greater extent. But, on the oth­er hand, the inde­pen­dent econ­o­mists say that this year’s bud­get, like that of the pre­vi­ous year’s, will be lapsed. Rea­son: the secu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion in Balochis­tan has not been improved; rather, it is going from bad to worse. That is why it is seem­ing­ly impos­si­ble for the provin­cial gov­ern­ment to revamp the provin­cial econ­o­my, which has been crum­bling for decades.

The provin­cial gov­ern­ment has allo­cat­ed Rs 1.725 bil­lion for the main­te­nance of law and order, but despite it, the sit­u­a­tion seems to be out of con­trol in Balochis­tan. And in an insur­gency-hit province, allo­cat­ing a huge sum of the bud­get for the main­te­nance of law and order explic­it­ly denotes that Balochis­tan may again be deprived of devel­op­ment and invest­ments this year. Also, it is not new that Balochis­tan present­ly lacks devel­op­ment; it has been kept unde­vel­oped since the British rule. Unlike Balochis­tan, Sindh, Pun­jab and Khy­ber Pakhtunkhwa were devel­oped and brought about invest­ments before and after par­ti­tion. Sim­i­lar­ly, inde­pen­dent ana­lysts say that the recent bud­get will have no upshot for the down­trod­den peo­ple of Balochis­tan.

In the edu­ca­tion and health sec­tors, the gov­ern­ment has allo­cat­ed 23 per cent and 8.6 per cent in the bud­get, respec­tive­ly. But, prag­mat­i­cal­ly, the funds on ground are nowhere to be seen. As usu­al, a chunk of the funds will be pock­et­ed by the cor­rupt lead­ers while a diminu­tive part of it will be used in unim­por­tant and unwant­ed schemes. This is the rea­son why these two sec­tors are not flour­ish­ing, and have always been in a sor­ry state. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, a great num­ber of schools and hos­pi­tals in Dera Bugti, Kohlu, Awaran and Cha­gai dis­tricts are turned into ghost schools and hos­pi­tals.

Anwar Sajji­di, who is Edi­tor-in-Chief of a dai­ly Urdu in Quet­ta, told this writer, “The finan­cial year’s bud­get will be uti­lized in Balochistan’s Pash­tun belt with ease, which is tran­quil unlike Balochistan’s Baloch belt. As far the Baloch pop­u­lat­ed places, the bud­get may not be prop­er­ly employed due to law and order sit­u­a­tion.” More­over the min­sters from Jami­at Ule­ma Islam-Fazal-ur-Rehman’s fac­tion (JUI‑F) in Balochis­tan are sit­ting on oppo­si­tion bench­es. Indeed, most of its min­is­ters’ con­stituen­cies are in Balochistan’s Pash­tun belt, and they have been lament­ing that their con­stituen­cies in Balochistan’s Pash­tun belt have also been neglect­ed in the bud­get.

In recent years, the dev­as­tat­ing floods wreaked hav­oc in Balochistan’s Jhal Magsi, Jaf­fer­abad and Nasir­abad dis­tricts, where dozens of vil­lages were inun­dat­ed and hun­dreds of the peo­ple remained home­less. Where­as the provin­cial gov­ern­ment has not allo­cat­ed funds for them in the bud­get, so their ago­nies are going to be com­pound­ed. Besides it, the recent year’s 7.7 mag­ni­tude of the earth­quake in Awaran, which took the lives of 825 res­i­dents, have also been neglect­ed in the bud­get. All of them are left in the lurch, and they are liv­ing a piti­ful life in their areas.

The hap­less peo­ple of the afore­men­tioned dis­tricts are dwelling in their thatched huts. Their homes and vil­lages have either been inun­dat­ed due to floods or razed to the rub­ble due to earth­quake in their areas. Even the inter­na­tion­al donors were inter­cept­ed from going to these areas to help the res­i­dents out. It is unfor­tu­nate that the provin­cial gov­ern­ment, too, has ignored them in the bud­get. On the oth­er hand, they are unnec­es­sar­i­ly dig­ging out the roads to make drainage sys­tem in Quet­ta, the provin­cial cap­i­tal of Balochis­tan, which have been cre­at­ing prob­lems unnec­es­sar­i­ly for the cit­i­zens and caus­ing traf­fic jams.

Strange­ly, the doc­u­ments of the bud­get were also not revealed to the media, which denotes lack of com­mit­ment and trans­paren­cy from the gov­ern­ment for not let­ting the pub­lic know about the bud­getary deci­sions. It is one of the rea­sons the gov­ern­ment has received harsh crit­i­cism at the hands of the oppo­si­tion and media per­sons.

The peo­ple of Balochis­tan anx­ious­ly await­ed the bud­get, but they are seem­ing­ly dis­ap­point­ed hav­ing not seen the devel­op­ment projects on ground. Besides, the provin­cial gov­ern­ment has also failed to ful­fill its promis­es after com­ing to pow­er, which has added to their mis­eries and dis­ap­point­ment. For exam­ple, Dr. Abdul Malik Baloch who, after being elect­ed as Balochistan’s Chief Min­is­ter, vowed that he would resolve the myr­i­ad issues of the province, par­tic­u­lar­ly the issue of Balochistan’s miss­ing per­sons. But after a few months, he him­self acknowl­edged at the Karachi Press Club that he was unable to resolve Balochistan’s miss­ing per­sons’ issue, as it is beyond his author­i­ty.

In this way, the province that is deal­ing with numer­ous issues has cre­at­ed ‘an inse­cure envi­ron­ment’. So, in an inse­cure envi­ron­ment, how can the provin­cial gov­ern­ment come up to people’s expec­ta­tions and bring about devel­op­ment in Balochis­tan?