The past experience has proved that the areas which contributed to the overall advancement of country, if deprived of resources, develop bad feelings about the federation. Sometimes, if the deprivations continue unabated they result in total alienation of the populace. This has abundantly been the case of Balochistan, a province providing natural gas to the commercial, industrial and residential consumers of the country for the last 45 years although it is itself still the least developed region of Pakistan. Similarly, the share of Sindh in the production of oil is 62 percent, in natural gas 48 percent and coal 31 percent but the areas of Sindh from where these mineral resources are being extracted are still highly underdeveloped. The funds which the provincial government gets from the federal pool in the form of royalty and surcharge on oil and gas is not utilized for the development of the contributing areas i.e. districts Badin, Dadu, Sanghar, Kahripur and Sukkar. Most of these areas are still dirt poor despite being rich in resources. In the financial year 2006-07 Sindh received rupees 29.52 billion straight transfers from royalties on oil and excise duty and surcharge on gas and in the subsequent year the receipts were raised to 35 billion. However, entire amount went to the pool of which major share went to the big cities. -BASHIR AHMED QAZI, Old Hala, via e-mail, June 18.