The famine-like situation in Thar is disturbing enough; now a report coming out of Balochistan speaks of a very high incidence of acute malnutrition. Ten of the total 20 high food insecure districts of the country are in that province, the report points out. And further that after Sindh, Balochistan has the highest level of food insecurity. About 63 percent of households face a dire situation, with 18 percent of them classified as "food insecure with hunger" and 11.5 percent as "food insecure with severe hunger." Overall, 90 percent districts of the province are classified as "extremely high" to "high" food insecure. As a result, the number of under-five children having stunted growth runs as high as 52.2 percent while 39.6 percent are underweight. Nearly half of them are anaemic and vitamin A deficient. The province has the highest number of infant and mother mortality rate. And the surviving babies of undernourished mothers are usually underweight.
These depressing details highlight the fact that it is not enough to satiate hunger, food must include micronutrients ie, vitamins and minerals, that help in the physical growth and mental development of children. And for children and adults alike, proper nourishment is essential to build immunity against disease. At present, the government's Nutrition Cell together with WHO and UNICEF is helping people in the nine most malnutrition-prone districts of the province. It is a commendable effort, but does not offer a complete or lasting solution which must deal with the basic cause of malnutrition. As it is, most of the land in Balochistan is arid and water scarce and hence unsuitable for agriculture. Consequently a very small fraction of the population grows its own food. Besides, the population centres are separated by long, difficult to traverse distances, making access that much difficult. But the key factor, as in the case of Thar, is the problem of pervasive poverty. These people can eat better if they have cultivable land or jobs to earn enough money to be able to buy foodstuffs.
Poverty of course is not peculiar to Balochistan, but that is where it exists in its extreme forms because of the province's relative economic backwardness, which for long has been the main issue in a litany of Baloch complaints. The previous government did give a lot of money to the province but almost all of it went into the pockets of the ruling alliance members' pockets instead of job creation and social uplift development projects. Under the recently revised multiple criteria of National Finance Commission resource distribution formula, there has been a substantial increase in Balochistan's share. It needs to be utilised for the wellbeing of the common man. The present Chief Minister, Abdul Malik Baloch of the National Party, boasts reputation of an honest and progressive thinking politician. Hopefully, he is cognisant of the hardships ordinary people face in his province, and can be expected to come up with a well thought-out longer term strategy to address extreme poverty and the attendant scourge of hunger and malnutrition.
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