Daily Times

The misplaced priority for a strong Centre has always put the federal structure of the country at greater risk. For a quarter of a century, the federal structure was hamstrung by conflicts between the eastern and western wings over the division of financial resources and political and administrative positions.

After losing the Eastern wing of the country, we continued to have rancour among the four federating units of the country owing to the same financial, political and administrative fault lines. The provincial autonomy allowed by the 1973 constitution was circumvented by political, administrative and legal manipulations by the powerful state institutions dominated by Punjab. This has continued unabated notwithstanding the increased quantum of provincial autonomy provided in the 18th Amendment.

Punjab has been the proverbial elephant in the room. It has all the political and administrative levers to dominate the federal structure by its larger population, the overwhelming majority in the state institutions including the National Assembly, federal cabinet, judiciary, the armed forces and civil bureaucracy, public sector enterprises, and corporations.

The province’s dominant position in the state institutions proportionate to its population would not have been so intractable had there been political will, fairness and transparency on the part of its political and bureaucratic leadership to implement the constitutional clauses particularly Article 158 to maintain political, economic, financial, and administrative equilibrium among the federating units.

Punjab has been the proverbial elephant in the room.

Over the world, the federations respect the constitutionally defined autonomy of their federating states and recognize them as the sovereign owners of the hydrocarbon, marine and land mineral resources found within their boundaries.

To safeguard their rights, the upper Houses with equal representation from the federal units have been made more powerful than the lower Houses. The federal governments exercise jurisdiction over a limited number of subjects, which normally include defence, foreign and security policy, foreign trade, Federal Reserve Bank and currency.

These federations successfully withstand vicissitudes of political and economic differences. Where such institutional checks and balances are weak or non-existent, conflicts of a serious nature including violent campaigns for secession have invariably arisen.

We have a politically, financially and administratively lopsided federal structure which even the Constitution of 1973 did not correct. The framers of the 1973 constitution reverted to the population as the fundamental basis for the division of the central pool of economic and financial resources.

This situation, to a greater extent, was corrected by the 7th NFC Award in July 2010. This NFC Award stipulated that the financial share of federating units would be increased instead of being reduced in future NFC Awards. For this reason, the powerful quarters have stalled the 8th NFC Award since 2015. Unfortunately, there are now audible murmurs about changing the unanimous formula of the NFC Award.

The relevant Articles of the 1973 Constitution give first right to the federal constituents over their marine and land resources including mines, minerals, coal, oil and gas etc. discovered or produced within their boundaries. The historic record of exploitative management of such provincial resources by the powerful federal governments paints a dismal picture in Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The power generation stations and deposits of coal, gas and oil, gold, copper, rare earth metal (REM) and other precious minerals are located in these small provinces.

These provinces historically have had very little say in the exploration and exploitation of these resources. Balochistan has been producing massive coal and natural gas since the 1950s. The contracts of its large gold, copper and REM mines in Saindak and Reko Dik have fetched billions of dollars to the Federation without any financial benefit to the province.

Federal governments established Sui Southern and Sui Northern Corporations with thousands of high-salaried positions with little representation from Balochistan. Sindh too produces the second largest quantity of natural gas and oil. The gas is taken in the national pool and resold to the owner provinces. A similar practice is followed in the case of electricity generated in Sindh and KPK.

Sindh has the largest lignite coal mines. The federal government imports coal for its few power stations at the exorbitant rate of Rs 70, 000 per ton whereas the lignite coal produced from Tharparkar-Sindh is priced at Rs 27, 200, and the royalty to the province is ridiculously calculated at this rate. Two power stations of 600 megawatts are run on this coal in Tharparkar. The power is taken through Matiari transmission lines to the national grid and resold to Sindh.

What is more ironic is that Balochistan and Sindh have a coastline of 990 kilometres and the Seaports located within their boundaries continue to be treated as a federal subject with all the economic benefits accruing to the federal government. According to economist Kaiser Bengali, China owns 90 percent of the shares of Gwadar Seaport.

Ironically, Balochistan has had no say in the contract. The Baloch leaders claim that local people were carefully kept out of this huge employment opportunity. While the bulk of the lands around the Seaport was earmarked for security purposes, the remainder had been sold to the estate dealers who rushed from the big cities to avail of the bonanza.

The cumulative effect of these wrong policy decisions is that the country is, today, in turmoil with insurgencies, terrorism, sectarian clashes and political polarization and economic meltdown shaking its very foundation. We have neither an Islamic nor a democratic system of governance. Owing to the stark extra-constitutional meddling by the powerful institutions, the elections, barring a few, have always confronted the country with serious crises. We experienced this in 1970, 1977, 2013 and 2018. The crisis triggered by the recent elections of February 2024 seems to prove the mother of all. Unfortunately, the epicentre of all these post-election crises has been Punjab.

All is not lost. The Punjabi leaders still have time to review their role in unmaking Pakistan which came into being with the epic support of Sindh and Bengal. History will never forgive them.

(Concluded)

The author was a member of the Foreign Service of Pakistan and he has authored two books.