Despite adequate funding and provincial autonomy following the 18th Amendment, Sindh’s performance is alarming. It has the highest proportion of households (14%) without any toilet facilities, worse than the so-called backward province of Balochistan (12%) and far behind Punjab and K-P, which are both around 5% each. Among the other disheartening statistics is that rural Sindh relies more on hand pumps for drinking water than any other province and has the lowest rate of using powered pumps. And while literacy figures are not the worst around, there is a full 10% gap between Sindh and Punjab, which leads the country with a literacy rate of just 68%, which itself would rank among the worst in the world. Almost 40% of Sindh’s school-aged kids are not enrolled, and only two-thirds are fully vaccinated, compared to 79% in Punjab.
It is also worth noting that Sindh does not have to deal with political instability in the same way as most other provinces, as the same party has held comfortable majorities for the past four election cycles. And while militancy and terrorism threats are concerns, K-P and Balochistan often put up more impressive development stats despite having to absorb the brunt of the violence and its aftereffects. But it is not all about Sindh. Unless progress is made across the board in all provinces, real national progress becomes impossible. Uneven development can derail a country’s long-term planning and create divisions among its people that make it impossible to meet development goals.