Express Tribune Editorials 3rd January 2026

Need for talks

A broad-based dialogue among the stakeholders is a sine qua non for stability

Adviser to the PM on Political Affairs Rana Sanaullah pushed the envelope by reiterating that talks would help address the prevailing fragility and usher in some semblance. That, however, is not possible until and unless the government exhibits some magnanimity and initiates confidence-building measures. The minimum to start with is to provide the opposition with due political space, and let the judicial process come full circle by deciding on lingering litigations of political prisoners transparently. That could set the ball rolling for a tete-a-tete and rewrite a new charter of governance in civility.

The conditionality, nonetheless, put forward by Sanaullah for talks – asking the PTI to do away with its social media accounts propagating a hate campaign against national institutions – is like putting the cart before the horse. The PTI denies its involvement in any smear campaign and instead claims that there is bickering among its supporters due to non-compliance of the 2024 election mandate and subsequent ill-treatment meted out to the opposition. This is where some out-of-the-box thinking is desired to bring a disenchanted PTI to the dialogue table.

Sanaullah's plausible nod to the suggestion of Mehmood Achakzai and Allama Nasir Abbas meeting the incarcerated Imran Khan is the way to go, and he must walk the talk. The point to realise is that the government that is sitting pretty cool on the heels of successes on the military and diplomatic fronts is bogged down at the hands of the economy. That is so because of the pestering political instability and the uncertainty gripping the organs of the state due to the government's highhandedness on the administrative and legislative assertions.

The need of the hour for all stakeholders is to revisit their stated positions and explore a middle ground for brokering a rapprochement. The bandwagon can only move forward if petty political considerations take a backseat.

DOWNLOAD FREE CSS PMS BOOKS, NOTES, PAST PAPERS AND MORE

WWW.THECSSPOINT.COM | WHATSAPP +92 333 6042057

Education crisis

The recent Household Integrated Economic Survey reveals how far Pakistan still lags in terms of education. While some people would proclaim success by noting that the national literacy rate has inched upward to 63% and enrolment is also up, the figures are still among the worst in the world. Meanwhile, some 20 million children — or 28% of student-age kids — are not even enrolled in schools. This is nothing short of a national emergency, failure to address which will make it impossible for the country to ever truly shine.

The education statistics also reflect profound inequalities in society. The crisis is clearly gendered, with nearly one in three girls excluded compared to one in four boys. Geographically, 45% of children in Balochistan and 39% in Sindh are out of school, compared to 21% in Punjab, and even the figure for Punjab is atrocious in a global context. Shockingly, 1 in 5 children have never even been inside a classroom, while the other 8% dropped out, mostly for economic reasons, the blame for which often tracks back to other problematic government policies, such as austerity. The same survey also shows there has been a dramatic spike in food insecurity. A hungry child cannot learn, and a family in survival mode cannot prioritise education.

Also notable is the fact that education spending is now less than 1% of GDP. The only way to address this problem quickly is to heavily invest in measures such as direct financial support to students that could encourage poor families to keep their children in school, a massive scaling-up of alternative learning pathways and a massive spike in the education budget for primary and secondary education, rather than higher education, which can be open to abuse as a virtual subsidy for students from wealthier backgrounds and the professors and owners of universities.

Every child out of school is a failure of the state, and given the amount of blame there is to go around, the provinces would be well advised to put their differences aside and work on holistic national-level solutions, rather than just localised ones.

C-section surge

It has saved millions of lives by intervening when childbirth turns perilous

The Caesarean section is one of modern medicine's undeniable triumphs. It has saved millions of lives by intervening when childbirth turns perilous. Yet, like many medical advances, its misuse can hollow out its original purpose. In Pakistan, the C-section increasingly appears less as a life-saving last resort and more as a routinised, even commercialised, mode of delivery.

Global health standards are unambiguous. WHO has long held that Caesarean deliveries should not exceed 10–15% of total births, as higher rates show no corresponding improvement in maternal or neonatal outcomes. Pakistan, however, has drifted far beyond this threshold. In some hospitals - particularly private ones - C-section rates hover between 50% and 70%. The reasons are neither hidden nor complex.

Caesarean surgeries are predictable, faster and more convenient for doctors juggling overwhelming caseloads. They reduce the uncertainties of prolonged labour and, in private settings, offer significantly higher financial returns. But convenience and commerce cannot be allowed to override clinical judgment.

C-section deliveries carry substantial risks. Normal delivery, when medically feasible, remains the safer option for both mother and child. Even more alarming is the absence of credible, centralised data. In Sindh, the financial burden of these procedures strains already under-resourced public hospitals. In Punjab, private hospitals recorded over half a million C-section surgeries between 2017 and 2024, with numbers surging further thereafter. Between 2016 and 2024, Rs16.36 billion was paid out in claims for C-section births.

Yet the blame cannot rest solely with hospitals or doctors. Structural deficiencies have created conditions where surgical births become the path of least resistance. In this vacuum, informed consent often collapses into psychological coercion, with women frightened into surgery under the guise of safety or convenience. What is urgently required is a multi-pronged response, which includes mandatory reporting of delivery data and stricter enforcement of clinical and international guidelines.