On August 21, President General Pervez Musharraf launched Vision 2030 at a grand ceremony held in the Aiwan-i-Sadr. The document has been prepared by the Planning Commission and approved by the National Economic Council.

The Vision 2030 contains policy papers on population, education, gender, water and energy sectors, foreign policy, finance/revenue sharing, health, urban infrastructure development, poverty, rural-based employment and agro-based industrialisation, demographic pattern and many other important areas of great concern under the title “Strategic Direction Paper. ”Its contributors include eminent professionals and experts of various fields like Dr Ishrat Husain, Najmuddin A, Shaikh, Dr Zeba Sattar, Tasleem Siddiqi, Dr Sulaiman Shaikh, Pervez Hoodbhoy, Arif Hasan and others. The document aims at building an industrialised, just and prosperous Pakistan.

Though the strategic papers have been written by leading professionals , the approach of the participating civil society bodies was more commercial rather than development-oriented. Only a selected few were consulted while preparing the provincial document for Sindh and hence various flaws and weaknesses are found in it.

In future, Pakistan will face acute shortage of water, food insecurity, environmental degradation, rise in inflation, falling literacy rate, increase in rural-urban income gap, crumbling institutions, burden of external debt etc as a result of mismatch between growth and development.

In the past also many visions were put forward such as the Pakistan Water Vision 2025 by Wapda, General Musharraf’s Water Vision 2020 and Education Vision 2025. However all these visions remain on paper as most of them were prepared by those sitting in the air-condition offices in Islamabad and these do not correspond with ground realities. Hence such visions cannot be implemented.

There is no disagreement over as to why Pakistan should not become a dynamic and advanced country. However, all this requires a full participation by the people with a full political and social commitment from the government and the development experts and institutions.

Any kind of vision can only be achieved through representative democracy based on respect for the Constitution and the rule of law; justice for all without any discrimination; respect for fundamental human rights; increase in literacy rate, with, special focus on girls’ education, ensuring allocation of five per cent of GDP on education ; restoration of rights over the natural resources to federating units; just and equitable distribution of finances and water; equitable industrial and agriculturaldevelopment ; achieving MDGs in time; tackling poverty on priority basis and narrowing down the rural-urban gap. The document preparation needed a very careful attention and extensive knowledge of the issues of development. Even the exercises being conducted at provincial levels such as surveys and studies were not up to the mark. The people who were involved to carry out a study of the critical issues of Sindh, were not fully aware of the ground realities.

In fact, the Sindh Vision 2030 of the Planning and Development department of the government of Sindh contains wrong policies at the expense of provincial resources.

Even the survey questions were constructed in a manner that the respondents could rank only the seven selected areas mentioned in it. Almost all of these seven areas pertained mostly to "urban-oriented" issues and priorities.

Thus no matter what answers are given, they favour very large cities, reduce the role of Sindhi language, ignore the serious problems of acute poverty and lack of education and health facilities in rural Sindh. This survey was constructed to deny the rights of rural Sindh and must be withdrawn.

For example, notice be taken of the following question in the survey: "Language of education should be standardised throughout the province. Main medium of education should be English. Urdu and local languages should be taught as separate subjects." The questionnaire mentions about English and Urdu specifically and bluntly ignores the Sindhi language.

There is another question asking survey takers to assign priority from one to seven to "building dams". One wonders if the purpose of this question was to later misuse it to justify the Kala Bagh dam.

Following points were addressed to the government of Sindh Planning Commission department for inclusion in the main document in the consultative process.

Education: Sindhi has been the national language of Sindh for ages. Its teaching be made mandatory up to 12th grade and it be encouraged as one of the medium of instruction in Sindh.

Educational opportunities and facilities in rural Sindh are the worst among all regions of Pakistan. There is an urgent need to improve these opportunities and initiate equal opportunity and affirmative action programmes be devised for rural people.

Poverty: All studies indicate that rural Sindh suffers the highest poverty rates (except rural Balochistan). Programmes should be introduced to alleviate this poverty initiating equal opportunities for those living in the rual areas. .

Health: The health facilities in rural Sindh are worse in Pakistan. There is an urgent need to improve the health facilities.

Employment: Employment opportunities in rural Sindh are very limited and need to be improved. Laws and regulations need to be introduced requiring the private and semi-government companies earning massive amounts of revenue from the oil and gas fields of Sindh to hire people from rural areas.

The Vision 2030 should also consider the following:

No new dam or reservoir on Indus due to acute shortage of water; NFC award on the basis of multiple criteria with special focus on revenue collection, poverty and backwardness; royalty on the resources available in Sindh; agro-based industries be set up; export processing zone be established at Hyderabad; an international airport including cargo services be built at Hyderabad and Sukkur; ports should be constructed at Keti Bander and Shah Bander; Thar Coal be used only in Sindh.

The exercise of survey and questionnaires is a link in the strategy to divert resources from the rural Sindh to few selected urban areas.

It is every Pakistani’s dream to make Pakistan a developed, industrially strong and prosperous country where true democracy exists and the citizens enjoy complete freedom of expression, political freedom, economic justice and equal opportunities for all. But the sad aspect of this academic work-building visions- is that the dreams shown in papers do come true.