PUNJAB’S prosperity cannot be realized while parts of its population remain systematically excluded.

Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif-led government appears to have internalized this foundational truth of developmental governance. Over the past two years, Punjab has architected one of the most expansive social protection frameworks, a constellation of targeted, data-driven programs designed to empower persons with disabilities, transgender individuals, women, religious minorities, children and the economically marginalized. Taken together, they represent a paradigm shift in how the state defines its obligations to its most vulnerable citizens.

The fiscal architecture underpinning this vision is formidable. Punjab’s Budget 2025–26, valued at a landmark Rs5.335 trillion, is the most ambitious people-focused fiscal plan in the province’s history, with 73% of total expenditure dedicated to public welfare and inclusive growth. The development budget alone has surged by 47.2%, now standing at a record Rs1,240 billion. This is not incremental reform but a structural reimagining of provincial governance. At the centre of this human-centred agenda is the Himmat Card Programme. In the 2025–26 budget, the CM Himmat Card for Persons with Disabilities has been allocated Rs 4 billion, a significant scaling up from its pilot phase, which originally covered 40,000 individuals and has since expanded to nearly 65,000 beneficiaries. The quarterly stipend of Rs 10,500 offers something more profound than financial relief; it confers economic agency on a population historically condemned to dependency. For a person with a disability in rural Punjab, this card is not a handout but an architecture of dignity.

Complementing this is a large-scale Assistive Devices Distribution Programme, supported by over Rs1 billion, through which more than 17,000 registered individuals have received wheelchairs, hearing aids and artificial limbs. These are not acts of charity but investments in human capital, the language global development institutions have long championed. A child who receives a hearing aid attends class; a young man fitted with a prosthetic limb enters the workforce. The returns, both human and macroeconomic, are compounding and generational. The government has also confronted the economic exclusion of transgender community with unusual directness. Vocational training under the Punjab Skills Development Fund now offers market-oriented certification and entrepreneurship support, creating viable pathways from marginalization into the formal economy. In the lexicon of global equity frameworks, this is social inclusion in practice, not performative, but structural.

For women, particularly those in South Punjab, the provincial government has pursued a dual-track strategy that is both evidence-based and contextually intelligent. A Rs2 billion livestock distribution program is delivering productive assets to approximately 11,000 widows and divorced women, while thousands of rural women are being trained in digital entrepreneurship and freelancing, connecting them to the global gig economy. This convergence of traditional asset transfer with digital skilling is precisely the kind of policy innovation that development economists advocate: meeting beneficiaries where they are while equipping them for where the economy is heading.

The Punjab government has earmarked a Rs70 billion social protection package, with Rs40 billion dedicated to the Maryam Nawaz Social Security Rashan Card, supporting food-insecure households. The Dhee Rani Programme aids low-income families during daughters’ weddings, while the Apni Chhat Apna Ghar scheme, with Rs150 billion, promotes homeownership for the underprivileged. A Minority Card ensures religious communities remain visible and targeted investments in children’s cardiac surgeries and mobile medical units bring healthcare to the most underserved districts, extending the state’s protective reach to those furthest from economic and geographical centers of power.

The education sector has received Rs101 billion, health over Rs72 billion and social welfare Rs44.2 billion in new allocations for FY2025–26. A zero new taxes policy reflects acute sensitivity to inflationary pressures on households, even as the government expands its revenue base through digitalization and compliance reform. Undergirding these programs is a push for institutional deepening. The establishment of District Welfare and Rehabilitation Units decentralizes service delivery, closing the implementation gap between policy announcements in Lahore and lived realities in remote tehsils. Renewed enforcement of employment quotas for persons with disabilities seeks to embed inclusion not merely in welfare transfers but within the labour market itself, a shift from remediation to prevention.

What Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif’s government has produced is not a patchwork of electoral concessions but a credible, financed and institutionally grounded first draft of a genuinely inclusive social contract. The vision is coherent, the financial commitment is unprecedented and the policy architecture is more sophisticated than anything Punjab has previously attempted. Whether it endures will depend on rigorous monitoring, transparent implementation and the political discipline to course-correct when delivery falls short. Inclusion is not a destination policy reached in a single term; it is a direction that must be held to, year after year, with accountability to the people it serves.

— (The writer is a Lahore-based public policy analyst.

© Pakistan Observer