Following Zohran Mamdani's historic electoral victory in New York City's Mayoral race, a slew of politicians in Pakistan have jumped on the bandwagon and claimed his politics as perfectly reflective of their own. These sentiments are, sadly, little more than delusions.

PPP was the first to latch onto Mamdani's focus on bread and butter concerns within a larger socialist project, with Mr Bilawal Bhutto tweeting that his win "reaffirms that Roti, Kapra aur Makan remain universal rights, a manifesto of dignity shared by people from Karachi to New York". As anyone from Sindh will profess, however, the slogan in question is merely an empty string of words today.

The party's performance in Sindh since the 18th Amendment has been abysmal on all salient human development indicators. At the end of 2023, the literacy rate for ages 10 and above in Sindh stood at just 57% whereas 47% of children between the ages of 5-16 were out of school. Even more shockingly, only 27% of primary schools in the province were found to have access to electricity, 56% had available drinking water, 53% had a functional toilet, and 58% had a boundary wall! On the health front, under-5 mortality in the province was approximately 5% (1 in 20) in 2023, whereas half of those who survive end up experiencing some form of stunting. Only 1 in 3 receives age-appropriate immunisation, and pregnancy-related maternal deaths occur in around 35 out of 1000 deliveries.

Furthermore, except for Karachi, Hyderabad, Larkana and Sukkur, at least 35% of the inhabitants in every district of Sindh were below the poverty line — with the entirety of the southern belt (Thatta, Sujawal,........

© The Express Tribune