THIS piece proceeds from a easy reality: all accessible information, such because the multidimensional poverty index (MPI), tells us that social inequality and financial marginalization in Pakistan are correlated with geography. Taking a look at MPI or human improvement index maps exhibits us this reality clearly. There are clusters of low-poverty, reasonably developed districts round GT Highway (north and central Punjab); just a few districts do higher than their respective provincial common in KP (Hazara and the Peshawar valley); and Karachi presents itself as an outlier in Sindh. Balochistan is basically a excessive poverty and underdevelopment zone.
Now comes the troublesome half: this reality requires interpretation and evaluation. Interpretations carry policy-related penalties: what’s to be achieved. However in addition they carry political penalties: who’s accountable, who can repair this drawback, how can it’s mounted.
As a result of underdevelopment maps onto provincial variations and since provincial boundaries broadly (although not absolutely) correspond to ethnolinguistic divides, it’s believable to make a case for inequality and underdevelopment being a product of ethnic discrimination. What this implies is that prejudiced and discriminatory attitudes produced patterns of improvement spending and financial progress that allowed some areas to prosper significantly greater than others.
That is one customary interpretation made by events, activists and intellectuals from underdeveloped elements of the nation. The relative prosperity of some areas then turns into a operate of ethnic majoritarianism and ethnic energy related to Punjab.
If ethnic identities have been perennial standing teams, such assimilation can be significantly tougher.
Politics shouldn’t be meant to characterize clear, causal inference. It’s essentially messy, emotional and subjective. Prejudice and discrimination are felt by many throughout the nation, which is why ethnonationalist politics that mobilizes in opposition to majority prejudice and discrimination repeatedly finds its takers. To paraphrase Stuart Corridor, ethnicity is the language by means of which class (and inequality) is articulated in Pakistan.
However that doesn’t foreclose the opportunity of totally different interpretations and analyses, with the identical intention of addressing inequality and underdevelopment. Right here I feel different frameworks, such because the notion of ‘mixed and uneven improvement’ from the materialist custom, could also be extra helpful.
Put merely, the variation in improvement that we see is due to long-standing legacies of how states and markets advanced in numerous elements of northwest India. In central Punjab, and alongside the GT Highway all the best way to the Peshawar valley, improvement was carefully tied to colonial interventions in irrigation-based agriculture and grain market formation, and post-colonial continuities in state employment, navy recruitment and gulf migration. In Karachi, market formation was tied to migrant capital and the emergence of a personal sector that absorbed labor and created an expanded center class.
In different elements of the nation, nonetheless, continuities from the colonial period meant that the extraction of pure sources — water and carbon — shaped the premise of their integration into the nationwide financial system after independence.
A narrative of underdevelopment that ignores these patterns and depends solely on the premise of ethnic discrimination makes a few errors. The primary is that if prejudice, or standing discrimination, is the figuring out variable, we might not see variation in improvement outcomes/indicators throughout ethnic teams relying on their geographic location. Which is to say that Pakhtun populations settled in Rawalpindi and Karachi have totally different trajectories, of each financial outcomes but in addition social integration, in comparison with Pakhtuns within the so-called western peripheries.
Pakhtuns within the Peshawar valley have improvement indicators just like Punjabi audio system in neighboring districts to their east, however markedly totally different indicators in comparison with their co-ethnics instantly within the west (within the newly merged districts). Equally, Baloch assimilation has taken place in lots of districts of Punjab over the past a number of centuries, particularly within the south and the west, with appreciable illustration in land possession, navy service and even electoral politics. If ethnic identities have been perennial standing teams, such assimilation can be significantly tougher.
The second mistake is that there’s a frequent conflation of the demographic majority of Punjab province with an ethnic majoritarianism of Punjabis. The latter is tougher to ascertain as a result of Punjabiat, as a politicized standing id, doesn’t exist as an specific pressure imposed on nationwide politics. The truth is, an emergent Punjabi nationalist motion seeks exactly to get well language and cultural heritage within the service of its personal ethnic politics (which can pose a extra harmful drawback sooner or later). What does exist within the current, although, is the privileged place of Punjab as a geographical area.
It’s helpful to make this distinction exactly as a result of Pakistan’s mixed and uneven improvement doesn’t lend itself simply to comparisons with different, categorical types of ethnic or racial discrimination, comparable to that of black individuals within the US or Muslims and scheduled caste residents in India. All of those teams face discrimination due to who they’re and what id they’re ascribed with, no matter their geographic location throughout the identical polity.
None of that is to disclaim the existence of prejudice that exists between privileged and underprivileged communities throughout Pakistan and its actual impression on politics. Prejudice right this moment possible serves as an necessary think about sustaining some discriminatory insurance policies of the state, through racialized depictions of sure teams as ‘safety threats’ or ‘traitors’.
Nevertheless, throughout the narrower concern of inequality and underdevelopment, a unique lens could also be extra productive. The framers of the 1973 Structure have been actually on to one thing after they launched geographic quotas, as an alternative of linguistic ones, not simply because the previous is less complicated to manage but in addition as a result of it runs nearer to the actual causes of inequality.
An answer primarily based on this interpretation can also be put ahead by Rafiullah Kakar, who argues that fixing Pakistan’s federal construction by empowering the Senate is crucial. It will assist equalize political energy throughout provinces and rectify the present skew produced by the intersection of uneven improvement and geography.
Secondly, given how there may be such giant inter-district variation, even throughout the identical province, empowered and well-resourced native governments would additionally possible go a great distance in addressing developmental gaps.
The author teaches politics and sociology at Lums.
X: @umairjav
Printed in Daybreak, March 2nd, 2026
