This nation is afflicted by multiple social, ideological and political contradictions. What a keen observer would immediately notice in our society is that truth is unwelcome to us; corruption is a norm of life with us; sycophancy is a certificate for success; injustice is no scourge; unity and discipline are meaningless; faith suffers many misinterpretations; we are poor but feign rich; we are small but pretend big; we pose as champion of Islam, Islamists and pan-Islamism; we are ripped apart by sectarian fragmentation; we antagonize neighbours and seek friendship thousands of miles away; we talk much and do little; we have meagre means but over-indulge in consumption; we are proud to be a nuclear power but cannot protect our children from predators and rid our streets of overflowing sewerage. This is the unwelcome truth about our nation. The list of our derelictions is painfully long. This rot began from the birth of the country. We suffered from inherent contradictions in our nascent nation. The leaders, alien to this part of the Sub-continent, did little to understand these contradictions and prevent them from becoming more pronounced. The wise and prudent counsels were ignored and political and ethnic impulses followed aggravating ethnic and linguistic divide. Karachi, the Queen of Asia, with nominal secretarial infrastructure was chosen as the capital of the new country, and bore the brunt of the mistakes of our rulers. A city with infrastructure for a population of a few hundred thousand inhabitants that being not more than 400,000 in 1947 was subjected to whimsical orders of the Prime Minister to accept in a period of three years over 600,000 immigrants. Communal riots were incited to force the non-Muslim local inhabitants to flee to make room for more refugees. The protestations of the Chief Minister were ignored and decisions bulldozed. Karachi was finally declared a federal city independent of its parent province, Sindh. The infamous Evacuee Property Scheme was launched throughout the province and Sindh Mohajir Boards formed without representation of the local leaders enabling the refugees to grab the properties including urban houses and agricultural lands of the fleeing non-Muslims. The scheme gained notoriety for corruption and deceit. Those, with some influence in the Mohajir Boards minted fortunes grabbing good and commodious urban dwellings and hundreds of thousands of agricultural land. Though most of the refugees being from non-agricultural professions, they were allotted 517,585 acres of agriculture land. Almost all refugees acquired houses in cities of Sindh. An office bearer of the then Sindh Muhajir Board, quoted by a known author and columnist, Babar Ayaz, as having humorously narrated that if all the claims filed by the Muhajirs were to be calculated, the total perhaps would have been bigger than the whole of India. A political party winning 90% of the National Assembly constituencies in Punjab with no representation from other provinces can form the federal government reducing other federal units to peripheral political significance Sindhis buried the hatchet and forgot what was meted to their land – first cutting Karachi from it followed by allotment of all the agricultural lands and evacuee properties of the non-Muslims to Muhajirs to the peril of the local tenants. After 72 years, the MQM Pakistan -baptized with sacramental waters of patriotism by the establishment and certified as party of conscious citizens by the Prime Minister – has resurrected this long buried fissiparous issue and began claiming 40% of Sindh as evacuee property in exchange for what their forefathers left in India. Could there be a more sinister chicanery than this? They have been indulging in provocations of this magnitude to ignite controversy in Sindh since 1947. They are once again fuelling ethnic antagonism under the nose of our intelligence agencies which spells dangerous consequences for national cohesion. Federations are inhabited by many ethnic and linguistic groups or sub-nationals. The historically and geographically compact land of a province cannot be cut into pieces to please a group of immigrants. They left their ancestral country in exodus and did not own the land where they were resettled and, unlike refugees in other provinces, have been obstinately refusing to assimilate into the local population. The bloody ethnic divide being witnessed in the province since the birth of the country is just a painful example of human folly. It is gratify that the federally administered tribal agencies have been mainstreamed. Now that peace and normalcy has returned to the region, the displaced population of the erstwhile tribal agencies who had taken temporary residence in Karachi and other cities of Sindh may be resettled in their home lands. The urban centres of Sindh are already overburdened by an enormously increasing population owing to the lack of facilities of employment, healthcare, education and security of life in rural regions. Being strategically situated with a long coastal line and endowed with natural resources, Balochistan has unluckily been in the eye of storm and vulnerable to the travesties of history, political intrigues, unrepresentative political administrations, mal-governance and bureaucratic corruption. It has borne the brunt of three military operations in the past. The fourth one is ongoing since over a decade and half and weakening the nation from within. Now that the PTI government is getting on well with the security establishment, it should undertake serious efforts to find a political solution of this long simmering insurgency and the rehabilitation of the displaced populations in the province. The PTI should not forget its promises to the people of Southern Punjab for a province. Punjab is the biggest province of the country with a politically unwieldy population. The province with its largest number of National Assembly seats has been the cause of serious political anomaly in the country. A political party winning 90% of the National Assembly constituencies in Punjab with no representation from other provinces can form the federal government reducing other federal units to peripheral political significance. This anomaly becomes more pronounced if viewed in the context of the province being preponderantly represented in the federal institutions of the country including the armed forces. The establishment of the Southern province will decentralize the enormous political and administrative dominance of the province and strengthen political stakes of smaller provinces in the Federation. The writer was a member of the Foreign Service of Pakistan and he has authored two books