One Flag, Different Fates

Authors : Esha Shahzad . Haneen Tariq . Hamna Ahsan Khan

On winter mornings in Sheshi Koh, the road disappears first.

Ice loosens the mountain soil above the valley. Meltwater carries rocks and debris into the narrow paths below. By afternoon, parts of the dirt track crumble into the river, cutting entire villages off from the rest of the district.

Men arrive with shovels, ropes, and wooden planks. Among them is 42-year-old Rahmat Deen, who has spent much of his life rebuilding the same road by hand.

“There is no one else,” he said, pressing a rusted shovel into frozen ground. “If we don’t fix it, we stay trapped.”

More than 300 kilometres away, Islamabad continues to expand. Roads widen, flyovers rise, commercial zones take shape, and delayed infrastructure projects become headline news. But in villages like Sheshi Koh, development arrives differently.

It arrives in survival.

The contrast reflects a divide that has shaped lives for decades. According to World Bank estimates, nearly 61 percent of Pakistan’s population lives in rural areas, yet access to healthcare, roads, sanitation, and education remains concentrated only in urban centres.

For Rahmat, that inequality is not measured through policy reports. It is measured through distance.

Six years ago, during winter, his six-year-old son slipped near the edge of a narrow mountain path close to the village. The nearest medical facility was nearly an hour away, and the road had already partially collapsed. Rahmat lifted the unconscious child into his arms and ran downhill, hoping someone would appear with transport.

“I picked him up and ran,” he recalls quietly. “I thought if I could just reach the road, maybe someone would help.”

Help never came in time.

“Agar road hoti,” he said, staring down at his hands, “toh woh zinda hota.”If there had been a road, he would still be alive.

Across rural Pakistan, emergencies are often shaped by the same absence. The World Health Organization estimates that only 25 percent of Pakistan’s healthcare facilities are located in rural regions, while most certified doctors live and work in urban areas. In many places, ambulance services are limited or unavailable, turning injuries, childbirth complications, and sudden illness into races against geography.

Rahmat now leaves Sheshi Koh every year to work as a construction labourer in Islamabad. His wife and five children remain in the village. He returns........

© The Patriot