The Punjab government is hopeful about improvement in governance and meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), NWFP is not. Perhaps one major reason for this difference in the approach is that NWFP has to run a longer stretch to achieve the MDG targets committed by the Federal government.
On all counts - health, education, sanitation and clean waters availability and poverty - NWFP startoff point is much behind Punjab.
This observation is based on my meeting with some of the bureaucracy and civil society representatives of both the provinces last week in Lahore and Peshawar. Punjab Chief Economist Dr Shujat Ali says that the governance in the province has gone through a sea-change. "Mainstreaming of poverty in planning has now become a new paradigm," he maintained while explaining the policies of the Punjab government. Previously he says "documents had only tables and numbers, but now each has out-put and the rationale which can explain how these actions would contribute towards poverty reduction.
Interestingly Dr A. R. Kemal says "people's perception is that there is no improvement in governance." His comment was based on the findings of 54 dialogues held by his team in 21 districts of Pakistan (including many Punjab districts) to find out about change in the last four years.
SOME OF THE OTHER FINDINGS OF THESE DIALOGUES WERE THAT: access to primary education has increased for both boys and girls; significant improvement in market access infrastructure (road etc); access to micro-finance has also increased; only a little improvement in healthcare facilities; only slight increase in employment opportunities.
But other civil servants of Punjab also feel that the governance has improved in the province "mainly thanks to the fact that we have a strong Chief Minister who is conscious of the fact that he is intellectually weak hence he relies on good officers and does not let ministers push their secretaries around." The bureaucrats may call this free hand given to them by the CM as good governance, the public doesn't. However, on comparative scales with other provinces people in Lahore admit that they are somewhat better.
The Punjab government's claim that they are on track to meet the poverty reduction targets set by the strategy papers in the light of MDGs are challenged by some civil society representatives.
For instance, the Punjab government says that in four years between 2001-02 to 2005-06 literacy rate has jumped by 13%, net enrolment rate at primary has shot up by 20%, under five child mortality rate has dropped from 119 per 1000 to 80, (now that is the difference of 39), percentage of fully immunised of children 12 to 23 months has gone up by 16 points, and contraceptive prevalence rate has surged by 14%. These figures civil society representatives, who work at grass-root level, feel, are exaggerated.
Credibility of government statistics in Pakistan, or for that matter in almost all developing countries, remains low. So Punjab is not alone, almost similar reservations about NWFP government figures regarding the achievements in social sector were expressed by the civil society representatives.
Frontier Chief Economist Hassan Mehmood did not defend his data as all this was fed by the concerned departments. These departments have to show their performance hence their honesty remains questionable. When such data is cross checked in most of the cases it does not tally. For instance in Sindh the primary enrolment figures provided by the district education departments were found inflated by the economists working with the federal government.
While some manipulation of data may be deliberate to show government performance, many discrepancies also creep in because of defective methodology of survey and the quality of questionnaires. Dr Taj, who is a former Health Minister of NWFP and paediatrician by profession, pointed out that child immunisation figures are distorted as uneducated parents in NWFP have little understanding what full immunisation means "even if there child has been given just the polio drops, they think he/she is immunised fully. She also says that while diarrhea among children is rising because a less number of mothers are breast feeding young children, the official figures are showing reduction in such cases.
Another important issue related to MDGs, which was pointed out by Dr Kemal at a workshop on PRSP II, was that while Pakistan is committed to meet the targets set by the UN in this regard, this for the first time that an exercise has been started to assess the cost of this commitment. For any political leadership in power reiteration of commitment to achieve the MDGs is tempting and telling the poor people to dream of a new world in 2015 is essential for remaining popular. Generally most political leaders here do not care whether Pakistan can have: a 100% primary enrolment and those enrolled complete their education, 88% adult literacy rate, gender parity literacy ratio of 1:1, under five mortality rate down to 52 per 1000, 100% lady health workers coverage to target population, maternal mortality rate of 140 per 100,000 or it will fall short of these targets when 2015 comes. Out here the rulers are usually worried about the near future, ten years are too far. In this tradition the government has started mainstreaming poverty in economic planning and an exercise to prepare costing of meeting the MDGs; it is indeed a good beginning.