Pak­istan’s Im­ran Khan gov­ern­ment has launched a ‘Naya Pak­istan Se­hat Card’, un­der which some 30 mil­lion fam­i­lies will be able to avail health in­sur­ance and each fam­ily will be able to spend up to Rs1 mil­lion on qual­ity health­care from des­ig­nated pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor hos­pi­tals. The tele­vi­sion and print ads for this gov­ern­ment scheme also have the pic­ture of a Sikh, in­di­cat­ing the Pak­istan Tehreek-i-In­saf (PTI) gov­ern­men­t’s in­ten­tion to send a mes­sage about bet­ter treat­ment of mi­nori­ties.

This is not just a health card but a health­care sys­tem,” the Pak­istan pre­mier said while launch­ing the scheme.” He added that “all cit­i­zens of Pak­istan can avail free health­care ser­vices worth Rs1 mil­lion per fam­ily an­nu­ally at both pri­vate and gov­ern­ment hos­pi­tals. Khan said the ini­tia­tive would en­cour­age gov­ern­ment hos­pi­tals to of­fer qual­ity health­care while in­cen­tivis­ing pri­vate hos­pi­tals to ex­tend health ser­vices in more dis­tant rural ar­eas. The gov­ern­ment would be spend­ing Rs 450 bil­lion on the first pub­lic health in­sur­ance pro­gramme for all cit­i­zens in Pak­istan’s his­tory.

The Sikh com­mu­nity hails such mes­sag­ing by the Pak­istan gov­ern­ment, but Im­ran Khan and his gov­ern­ment need to do much more to make mi­nori­ties -in­clud­ing Sikhs, Hin­dus, Ah­madiyya Mus­lims, ac­tu­ally be­lieve that they are equal cit­i­zens of Pak­istan.

Last week, when Im­ran Khan launched the PTI’s flag­ship uni­ver­sal health cov­er­age scheme on Jan­u­ary 26 for the cit­i­zens of Is­lam­abad fed­eral ter­ri­tory, a lo­cal Sikh leader was also on the stage with the prime min­is­ter.

In­dia can ex­ert moral pres­sure on Pak­istan by con­demn­ing the 80 ver­sus 20 talks at the high­est level. Open calls for killing Mus­lims at Dharam Sansads and a shame­ful Is­lam­o­pho­bic agenda aimed at com­mu­nal­is­ing the elec­toral cam­paign in Ut­tar Pradesh and else­where must be con­demned in loud­est terms.

It is a shame that Pun­jab’s elec­toral cam­paign is be­ing forced to lis­ten to deaf­en­ing si­lence from all po­lit­i­cal par­ties on this count.

Will Pak­istan tele­vi­sion ads shame In­dia?