He alleged that the recent bomb blasts in Khuzdar and Quetta were engineered by secret service agencies and that members of the Baloch Students Organization were being victimized on "fictitious charges".

There were other charges, too, including the familiar one against the "establishment" - that it was suppressing the small provinces. What is astonishing is that Mr Mengal dismissed the development programmes now in progress in Balochistan as an attempt to turn the Baloch into a minority in their own province.

Undeniably, Balochistan has suffered long years of neglect. But the important point is that Balochistan is not alone in that category, for the entire country is in a mess.

One cannot, of course, use this as an argument to justify the injustices to which Balochistan has been subjected. But the idea here is to stress that the people of Pakistan on the whole are far from that stage where they would have been if rulers - both in uniform and in mufti - had been a little more responsible in their conduct and run this country democratically and constitutionally.

What precisely are Pakistan's problems? The country is mired in poverty. In terms of literacy, higher education, technological development, healthcare, child welfare and women's rights, Pakistan is far behind many other third world countries.

Even within the Saarc region, Pakistan lags behind in matters of literacy and higher education. The failure to effect land reforms and liberate the tenantry has militated against the emergence of a prosperous and vibrant middle class.

Industrial development has been lopsided, with industries concentrated in a few pockets. In addition, repeated military interventions have served to retard the growth of democratic institutions and spawned parochial tendencies.

The growth of religious militancy is the direct result of policies in whose formulation the people's representatives had no say. Pakistan can get out of the poverty trap, and the problems mentioned above, through a democratic struggle aimed at changing the existing order of things.

The aim for all political parties should be the overall progress of the nation as a whole within a democratic framework. It is towards this end that all political parties - even those with a limited, regional programme - should work. There is no denying the government's mistakes in dealing with Balochistan.

If a major Baloch party headed by a veteran leader has broken off talks, then the government must try to know the reason for it. The charges of victimization of BSO members must be investigated, and those in the agencies who have acted irresponsibly and arrested the innocent should be held answerable for their misconduct.