The bickering over the issue of carving up a new province in Punjab continues. This time the PML-N has expressed its reservations against the Parliamentary Commission set up by the PPP government that it was formed without consensus and secondly its chairman should be a former judge of the Supreme Court. The PPP’s response has been affirmative, and expressed readiness to resolve these differences provided the PML-N did not politicise it. The problem lies in the parties’ failure to look ahead where this race for popularity will lead them to. Both the local people’s perspective and the impact it would have on national unity are being miscalculated by the mainstream parties, who seem to have given in to the shenanigans of a handful of parochial elements. It must not be forgotten that they have their own axe to grind. That a large chunk of south Punjab remains mired in poverty is a reality but this needs a good dose of development and administrative reforms. The ethno-linguistic fragmentations existing in society will deepen; it is obvious that people from other ethnicities will think it well within their right to stand up for their own demands for autonomy, a scenario that further could give succour to communalism. Where and when this game will come to an end, no one knows but perhaps it could go as far as reducing the country’s map into a jumbled up jigsaw, each piece, out of place and ill at ease with itself.