“Balochistan Pakistan kay mattay ka jhoomar hai”, “Balochistan is the glimmering jewel on Pakistan’s forehead”. A fancy phrase very often used with a bursting tune in the corridors of power. Behind such hollow slogans and jargon, no leader, military or civilian, has been honest enough to soberly inquire into, understand, and heal the deep-rooted wounds of the “jewel”.
For years, Balochistan’s underdevelopment has been insufficiently discussed, reluctantly acknowledged, and then quietly set aside. Instead, the Baloch themselves have been blamed for their underdevelopment. Their political voices are silenced through political engineering, and peaceful movements have been suppressed through the use of brute force.
However, in the last few years, several reports published by reputable organisations and government institutions have quantitatively validated that Balochistan is not lagging due to socio-cultural reasons but because of systematic and structural policies that excluded the province from Pakistan’s development trajectory.
The recently published District Vulnerability Index for Pakistan (DVIP), by the Population Council of Pakistan, provides a very bleak and worrying portrait of Balochistan’s development landscape. In fact, the DVIP is a softer version of a “Black Book” on Balochistan. Heavily laden with facts, the report substantiates the Baloch people’s claim of systemic underdevelopment and a discriminatory regime that has been in place since the inception of the country.
The report places 21 districts, nearly two-thirds of Balochistan, in the most vulnerable category nationwide. This is not a marginal difference from other provinces. It is a profound divide that shapes how people live, work, learn, and survive. Nearly half of the province’s population resides in districts where deprivation is not episodic but permanent. This is not a story of one missing road or one underfunded hospital. It is a story of cumulative neglect, where geography, weak governance, limited investment, demographic pressure, and climate stress reinforce one another year after year.
According to the report, Basic Health Units are often located more than 30 kilometres away; in some districts, maternal and child health services are nearly 100 kilometres from the nearest village. Education follows the same pattern. Secondary schools are so distant that dropping out, especially for girls, becomes almost inevitable. In all districts, including copper-gold-rich Chagai, schools are scattered so sparsely across vast tracts of land that access itself becomes a barrier to learning.
Those who have traversed Balochistan’s towns and villages have definitely observed the medieval-like life and structures of villages and rural towns. The report substantiates that, “In the twenty lowest-ranking districts in the housing domain, over 65 per cent of households reside in temporary or makeshift structures; half lack toilet facilities; and 40 per cent have no access to improved water facilities.” These are not lifestyle choices; they are symptoms of chronic poverty.
Balochistan’s structural neglect underscores that its decline is not accidental but the outcome of long-standing policy, financial, and institutional exclusion
The question is how and why Balochistan has reached this appalling state. A region with vast natural and mineral resources, providing natural gas to Pakistan’s millions of households, commercial enterprises, and industrial units for the last six decades, is deprived of drinking water and electricity — the bare minimum requirements for living humanely.
Well, the answer is not that complicated. In the majoritarian federal system, the Baloch people do not qualify for dignified living standards. Their population count is so low that they are forced to live below the rest of the population. The politics of numbers, along with systematic discrimination, political engineering, and institutionalised corruption, has pushed millions of lives in Balochistan to the edge of miserable poverty.
Since the inception of Pakistan, the politicisation of national wealth, its misappropriation, and often discriminatory distribution of resources gave birth to East Pakistan’s movement. In post-1971 Pakistan, the powerful elite continued a similar approach. They enforced population as the sole criterion for prioritising all the perks and privileges that a state could offer to its citizens.
Therefore, despite vast and strategic land, immense natural resources, and economic potential, Balochistan did not qualify for human development schemes due to its population size. The National Finance Commission, federal public sector programmes, and projects, including United States and Arab aid received during the Cold War, did not trickle down to Balochistan, which suffered the most due to the refugee burden and social stress caused by the state’s policy of sectarian proliferation and jihadi culture. Insufficient handouts from Islamabad failed to improve living conditions. Meagre funds transferred to the province were misused by the establishment’s chosen elite. This ongoing practice has led to the gradual decline of social and economic sectors.
In 2020, the United Nations Development Programme published a comprehensive National Human Development Report (NHDR 2020) on Pakistan. The UNDP report, in its Chapter 3, titled “Measures of Regional Inequality”, confirms that the depth of Balochistan’s structural neglect underscores that its decline is not accidental but the outcome of long-standing policy, financial, and institutional exclusion.
The report confirms that over the past two decades, Balochistan has experienced systematic economic decline, falling from the second-highest per capita income to the lowest in Pakistan. The report further reveals that “Pakistan’s largest province in terms of land mass, Balochistan, has the poorest performance on human development indicators. Applying the categorisation used by UNDP’s global Human Development Index would place Balochistan’s HDI value at par with Sierra Leone in West Africa, which ranked 181st out of 189 countries on the global index in 2019.”
Balochistan’s systematic underdevelopment is a known fact. Policymakers and the powerful establishment are still reluctant to understand the gravity of underdevelopment and its correlation with ongoing conflict and frustration. Hence, the low-quality leadership produced through social and political engineering has proven lethal.
To undo the damage, a far-sighted approach is needed. Along with a fair political process and transparency in governance, the federal government should come up with phase-wise plans through inclusive consultation to narrow the growing provincial inequality.
A well-thought-out strategy should focus on structural transformation, governance reforms, and the immediate addressing of basic service deficits — roads, quality education, healthcare facilities, and water and sanitation.
The development deficit in Balochistan is not a mystery. The facts are evident. The pathways are known. What remains uncertain is whether Pakistan is willing to commit the time, resources, and political attention that are needed, or continue to ignore it.