There is a quiet significance in the fact that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif is opening the ACT For Nutrition conference at the Serena Hotel this week, alongside the Director-General of the World Health Organisation and the Unicef Representative in Pakistan. Heads of government do not usually open conferences on child stunting. That they are doing so here reflects a shift that has been underway in Islamabad for some time: nutrition has moved out of the health column and into the national economic plan.

A doctrine, not a gesture

That shift has a name. URAAN Pakistan, the National Economic Transformation Plan launched by the Prime Minister at the end of 2024 and anchored in the 13th Five-Year Plan, is built around five pillars, of which Equity, Ethics and Empowerment is one. The plan directs a substantial share of a multi-trillion-rupee public investment envelope towards the social sectors, a deliberate reweighting away from decades of infrastructure-first budgeting.

Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Ahsan Iqbal has been unusually direct about the reasoning. He has described malnutrition, and stunting in particular, not merely as a health issue but as a matter of national security, and has argued that the coming era will be decided by brain power and capability, which a stunted child cannot supply. He has also spoken of shifting development priorities from conventional brick-and-mortar projects towards investment in people.

This is a meaningful piece of political framing, and it deserves to be recognised as such. Governments in Pakistan have historically found it far easier to inaugurate a building than to fund a supplementation programme, because one produces a photograph and the other produces a statistic ten years later. Choosing the statistic is a harder political decision, and........

© Dawn