FOR a just, prosperous and secure Pakistan, defending democracy and defeating rogue outfits with obscurantist mindset are vital.

Reorienting the decadent state structure that protects and promotes parasitic segments at the cost of dynamic sections and ideas is also essential. All this naturally is a tall order and is impossible to achieve without public pressure and active citizenry.

There is an undeniable need for improving data, planning, financing, coordination, institution-building, delivery arrangements and development deals, but the experience of the first 15 years of the current millennium at our end has only endorsed the perception that tangible progress in the desired direction will need democratisation and decentralisation at both planning and implementation tiers.

This time around the federal government got the plan endorsed by parliament and made an effort to embed the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in itsgrowth strategy.

It engaged not just the provinces but also the districts, as the responsibility of the social sector has been devolved in the wake of the 18th Amendment.

The engagement of the United Nations with the corporate sector also mobilised various subsidiaries active in Pakistan to incorporate some goals in their programmes. The UN and its multiple organisations are doing their bit as well.

But SDG implementation continues to be an exercise that people know nothing about. On their own initiative, some media houses cover the subject every now and then but this is certainly not enough as the word is not yet out; not with any degree of intensity.

Political parties and leaders might agree with the goals, but do not find them worthy of propagation. On condition of anonymity, a senior official said the governments led by different parties in each of the four provinces are too focussed on the general electionsdue next year to really care about any global agenda like the SDGs.

`Honestly speaking, SDGs are treated as something of mere academic value, and alien in the world I move in. I am not saying that development is out of sight. No, in KP a lot been has done in the health and education sector but all that is independent of the SDGs,` a top bureaucrat said over the phone.

Pakistan was among the first few countries in the 2000s to translate the MDGs into national goals and draw on paper a detailed framework complete with quantifiable indicators and annual benchmarks for each of the eight goals. In the concluding report in the termination year 2015, Pakistan accepted that goals were missed, some like health and climate, by a wide margin.

Sadly, the country continues to fare low on most Continued on Page 5