PAKISTAN is still running on a 1970 administrative map with four provinces, but the country was six crores then and is touching twenty-five crores now. The cities have exploded, problems have changed, but the system is the same, and that is why the gap between the state and the people keeps growing. The demand for new provinces from South Punjab, Bahawalpur, Hazara is not a manifesto of any party, it is a public need. A farmer in Rajanpur, a student in Bahawalpur, a shopkeeper in Hazara, all say the same thing – they have to travel three hundred kilometers to Lahore or Peshawar for a small file work. People are tired of it.

In this debate, Mohsin Naqvi has not stepped back, he has become silent, and there is a big difference between the two. Anyone who has actually run Punjab knows that such big reforms are not made with daily press statements. His........

© Pakistan Observer