February 2024. Maryam Nawaz took oath as the chief minister of Punjab. More than two and a half years on, this is the question that matters: What has changed in the lives of Punjab’s 128 million people? Not how many schemes have been announced. Not how many projects carry her name. What has changed?
Has service delivery improved? Have public resources produced measurable results? Is governance more accountable? Seven tests: Fiscal management. Sanitation. Health. Education. Agriculture. Law and order. Local government.
Fiscal management first: Debt clean-up is the real achievement. The government says Punjab cleared its outstanding commodity debt in FY26. It retired Rs719 billion of commodity debt over three fiscal years, making FY26 the first year in Punjab’s history with zero outstanding commodity debt.
Sanitation: Suthra Punjab. The government reports expenditure of Rs270 billion. Villages got sanitation services on this scale for the first time. It also claims it created more than 200,000 jobs. The CM promised ‘zero waste’ in three months. Twenty-two months later, a seven-day deadline. Ghost workers on the payroll; the system caught its own fraud – penalties of Rs10.5 billion. Clean water this year: Rs4 billion. The brooms are working; the pipes are still on paper.
Health: The government claims 30 million patients through 911 Clinics on Wheels. For the first time, X-rays, lab tests, ultrasounds – free, at the doorstep. Health budget this year: Rs500 billion, down Rs130 billion. Yes, the clinics are on wheels, but the budget is in reverse.
Education: Last year, education development: Rs148 billion – a record. This year: Rs63 billion, down by more than half; 567 schools had no teacher; 5,400 had one. So 13,000 schools went to private operators. Out-of-school children in Punjab: still at 21 per cent.
Agriculture: Nine hundred thousand Kissan Cards and Rs360 billion in interest-free loans. Twenty-four thousand tractors – four in ten to farmers who had never owned one. Fertiliser without the middleman. April 2024: support price Rs3,900, market price Rs3,200. The government stopped buying and farmers stopped planting. Wheat production fell 8.0 per cent. Flour hit a near-record.
Law and order: Reported crime down 32 per cent, robberies down 50 per cent. Lahore robbery down 78 per cent. No previous government has shown numbers like these. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has charged the Crime Control Department with extrajudicial killings. Local government: Last election in 2015; councils dissolved in 2021. Thirty-two months of this government, zero elected councillors. This year, billions are allocated to local government functions; not one rupee passes through an elected local hand.
CM Maryam Nawaz has retired debt, delivered projects and expanded services. Yes, the numbers deserve recognition. The government counts rupees spent. Citizens count what changed. Punjab’s citizens gained cleaner streets, greater access to healthcare and improved policing. They lost ground in education and farmers’ incomes.
The writer is a columnist based in Islamabad. He tweets/posts @saleemfarrukh and can be reached at: [email protected]
