Poverty and Development

It is widely recognized that development is about much more than growth of GDP. Equally, everyone appreciates that democracy is more than simply a matter of universal suffrage and the holding of regular multiparty elections, essential though these are. So we need to understand exactly what is meant by development and democracy today, in the twenty-first century.

There is a need to recognize the links between democracy and good governance on the one hand, and poverty, development and conflict on the other.

A strong, effective, accountable state is the first pillar of democracy and development. International institutions alone cannot and should not take responsibility for eradicating poverty, authoritarianism and conflict.

The foundations of a democratic state are worth recalling: a freely and fairly elected parliament that is broadly representative of the people; an executive (government) that is answerable to parliament; an independent judiciary; a police force that responds to the law for its operations and the government for its administration; and armed forces that are answerable to government and parliament.

The financial affairs of any democratic government should be monitored by parliament through a public accounts committee, and by an auditor-general answerable to parliament.

Civil society is the third pillar of pro-poor development and democratization. Building the capacity of citizens’ organizations and a free and well-informed media are critical for promoting citizen participation, holding government to account and empowering poor communities. Poor people and poor communities, for example, are in the best position to understand and articulate their own needs, and their voices should be heard directly within government. But they are not and here political rights and opportunities can be bolstered through community action.

The media plays an important role both in giving voice to citizens and in holding government and the private sector to account on their behalf.

Where international economic organizations such as the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO set down conditionality or constraints on policy, it must be in the pursuit of pro-poor development, and must work in ways that do not erode democratic institutions and human rights at the national and sub-national levels.

There is a need for responsibility, partnership and concrete actions – from the government, private sector, civil society and international community. Without responsibility on all these levels, development and democracy will remain rhetoric rather than become reality.

The principal aim of development no longer focuses on maximizing marketable production of goods. The emphasis now is on expanding opportunities and strengthening human capacities to lead long, healthy, creative and fulfilling lives. Development is about enabling people to have the ‘capabilities’ to do and be the things that they have reason to value. Poverty is the deprivation of basic capabilities and development as the process of ensuring that the most basic capabilities are achieved by all.

Basic capabilities include: being adequately nourished, avoiding preventable morbidity and premature mortality, being effectively sheltered, having a basic education, being able to ensure security of the person, having equitable access to justice, being able to appear in public without shame, being able to earn a livelihood and being able to take part in the life of a community.

Developing countries have a weak administrative capacity. Public officials are poorly trained or lack experience in public expenditure management. State institutions, such as ministries and judiciaries lack sufficient resources or are plagued by entrenched systems of corruption. Inadequate numbers of women at decision-making levels in the civil service and judiciary means that women’s interests are not represented in policy formulation and implementation.

Ill-health is also a cause of poverty. A single experience of sickness in a family can divert energy and resources, leaving the household in deep poverty. Diseases such as malaria, and tuberculosis are not only personal tragedies; a high prevalence of such diseases is associated with significant reductions in economic growth.

Many anti-poverty plans are no more than vaguely formulated strategies. Developing countries need a genuine action plans - with explicit targets, adequate budgets and effective organizations. They do not have explicit poverty plans but incorporates poverty into national planning. And many of these then appear to forget the topic.

The governments have difficulty in reporting how much funding goes to poverty reduction - unable to distinguish between activities that are related to poverty and those that are not. They confuse social spending with poverty-related spending. But much government spending could be considered pro-poor if it disproportionately benefits the poor. Under these conditions it is probably best to set up a special poverty reduction fund - to give a better financial accounting and to allow government departments and ministries to apply to the fund for financing for their poverty-focused programs.

The scope of development policy has become broader, making ‘pro-poor development’ a vital additional analytical category that orients attention towards those people most in need. Recognizing that ‘development’ is still used loosely in the policy world to refer to development strategies, rather than particularly for poor people, it is important to distinguish and promote ‘pro-poor development’. Development policies aimed at the general population may have a more limited positive impact on particularly disadvantaged groups. Pro-poor development concerns those policies that are specifically designed to enhance the quality of the lives of the poor. Asif J. Mir, Organizational Transformation

The Pounding Head of Poverty

Future trends show that the world poverty is decreasing and we are nearing the era when the poor of today will live the standard of the average rich of today. Contrary to this trend, in Pakistan poverty levels are going further up. Although many Pakistanis have greatly improved their standard of living since 1947, yet over 30 percent of them—around 42 million people—still live below the poverty line. The gap between the rich and poor has widened with some gaining financial comfort while others are finding it impossible to permanently escape from destitution.

Poverty is hunger. Poverty is lack of shelter. Poverty is being sick and not being able to see a doctor. Poverty is not being able to go to school and not knowing how to read. Poverty is fearing the future, living one day at a time. Poverty is losing a child to illness brought about by unclean water. Poverty is powerlessness, lack of representation, and freedom.

Poverty has many faces, changing from place to place and across time, and has been described in many ways. Most often, poverty is a situation people want to escape. So poverty is a call to action—for the poor and the wealthy alike—a call to change the world so that many more may have enough to eat, adequate shelter, access to education and health, protection from violence, and a voice in what happens in their lives.

For many, lack of access to income-generating activities, coupled with lack of basic services in education and health, is the determining factors behind acute poverty. In Pakistan, lack of access to credit, training in income-generating activities, basic social services, and infrastructure are critical factors behind the persistence of substantial poverty, especially in underserved rural and urban areas. Poverty levels also differ depending on where people live. The metropolitan poverty rate differs greatly between suburbs and the central city.

At the Millennium Summit in 2002, major development organizations looked at development goals, which had been agreed at international conferences and world summits during the 1990s, and distilled them into eight goals with eradication of extreme poverty and hunger at top. The Goals were formed in response to what was seen as uneven development progress, where globalization benefits millions, but poverty and suffering still exist.

This is scarcely surprising considering that those who live below the poverty line and that any supplementary income from working children becomes unavoidable for their families to make ends meet. We have to understand as why children go to work. If parents don't send their children to work I am sure factories will not be able to consume them. No mother likes her child to go for work. It is financial crisis, which forces. Our understanding should be little more practical as no parents want their children work at the age when children are to study and play.

The stress on a gradual approach towards eliminating child labor is the correct one. At the same time, poverty alleviation efforts must be stepped up, so that the loss of an earning member of the family is not felt, so actually and over an indefinite period of time.

Poverty is no longer just a matter of calories or of pricing a consumption bundle. It has to do with the poor defining and achieving their well being themselves and living a life in a participative society where the State is an enabling rather than a hindering institution. It is not that income or consumption level is unimportant. It remains at the core of any definition of poverty. But we must view it as an input as much as an outcome. It is an input which contributes towards well being. But just as important are public goods – health care, clean water, literacy, and healthy environment.

Pakistan's rural sector accounts for more than 70 percent of employment, and roughly two thirds of rural employment is in agriculture. Less than a third of rural households get loans, only 10 percent of which are from institutional sources. Pakistan's credit institutions are not helping the country accelerate agricultural growth and reduce poverty.

To improve performance in the rural economy and efficiency in financial institutions, rural credit markets must be liberalized.

Produce and price controls must be replaced by prudent regulation and supervision, combined with policies to stabilize the economy. Commercial banks must operate in a competitive environment. They must be allowed to set interest rates for rural lending that cover their transaction costs. Credit must be made available to support productivity growth for agricultural smallholders and small producers of the rural non farm sector, where Pakistan's growth potential lies. Credit must be made available to women and to the rural poor for consumption smoothing and for sustainable income generating activities.

Policy should be directed at developing a market based financial system for rural finance, but because of market failures to support disadvantaged groups, a special priority program may be needed to get credit to women, smallholders, and the rural non-farm sector.

Subsidizing interest rates is not the way to help marginal borrowers. Instead, they can be helped through fixed cost subsidies and self-selected targeting. NGOs should be encouraged to help, keeping in mind such success stories as the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and Badan Kredit Kecaratan (BKK) in Indonesia.

Pakistan needs to make the policy choices to help it translate economic gains into real poverty alleviation for its citizens. It needs social protection, human development, and a well-coordinated rural strategy. Issues of governance are at the heart of many of the difficulties encountered in mitigating poverty and broadening access to social services for the poor. Asif J. Mir, Organizational Transformation

Saving the Mother Earth

It is true to say that we live on a planet that is undergoing rapid changes due to the increases in population and industrial development. It is easy to feel environmental concerns, but they must be taken into account when considering our future.

It is now a proven fact that since the industrial revolution the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased significantly. As levels of this gas and other greenhouse gases also recently building up effect the way heat is distributed, it is predicted that there will be an increase in global temperature. It is certain that global population growth will continue for some considerable time to come. A larger global population will put expanding demands on global resources of food, water and energy and will accelerate climate and environmental deterioration.

The level of air pollution in Pakistan's two largest cities, Karachi and Lahore, is estimated to be 20 times higher than World Health Organization standards, and continuing to rise. The situation is depressing by reason of futile preparation and inept execution. Good and not so good regulations have never been enforced forcefully. In addition, enforcement does not imply effectiveness, and even if regulations were strictly enforced, many industries would be unable to comply. In 1996, only 3% of industries were able to pass the test for compliance.

For lacking combined effluent treatment facility, the wastewater is being allowed to flow into the nearest streams and causing pollution. The sub-soil waters of textile centers are highly saline and as such are unsuitable for producing high quality finished textile products. The saline or brackish sub-soil water is unfit for human consumption and also unsuitable for most of the industrial uses.

Air pollution has also become a major problem in most cities. There are no controls on vehicular emissions, which account for 90 percent of pollutants. The average Pakistani vehicle emits twenty-five times as much carbon monoxide, twenty times as many hydrocarbons, and more than three and one-half times as much nitrous oxide in grams per kilometer as the average vehicle in the United States.

Pakistan’s Perspective Plan (1988-2003) and previous five-year plans do not mention sustainable development strategies. There have also been no overarching policies focused on sustainable development and conservation. All our programs focus on reaching self-reliance in food production, meeting energy demands, and containing the high rate of population growth. Sorry to say, no priority has been accorded for curtailing pollution or other environmental hazards.

Consequently, deforestation has contributed directly to the severity of the flooding problem faced by the nation in the early 1990s. No solution has been found for the solid and liquid excreta that are the major source of water pollution in the country and the cause of widespread waterborne diseases. Because only just over half of urban residents have access to sanitation, the remaining urban excreta continue to be deposited in farms or on roadsides, into waterways, or incorporated into solid waste. Thus the vegetables grown from such wastewater have serious bacteriological contamination. Gastroenteritis, widely considered in medical circles to be the leading cause of death in Pakistan, is transmitted through waterborne pollutants.

Transportation contributes to four of the six criteria pollutants: ozone, carbon monoxide, particulate matter, and nitrogen dioxide. Pakistan’s transportation planning (if it all there is any) must take into account the impacts on both the natural and human environments. Transportation projects should closely see how they might impact the community, the natural environment, and our health and welfare.

In crowded streets filled with buses, trucks, automobiles, and motorcycles, often honk senselessly. Traffic noise should be reduced through a program of shared responsibility. Thus, provincial and local governments should practice compatible land use planning and control in the vicinity of roads. Local governments should use their power to regulate land development in such a way that noise-sensitive land uses are either prohibited from being located adjacent to a road, or that the developments are planned, designed, and constructed in such a way that noise impacts are minimized.

The EPA should also promote bicycle and pedestrian transportation accessibility, use, and safety. A long-range plan is needed to provide the development and integrated management and operation of transportation systems and facilities, including pedestrian walkways and bicycle transportation facilities.

Protecting public health, as well as preserving Pakistan's natural wonders, has made environmental protection increasingly important. Environmental issues attach more significance because under provisions of a World Trade Organization (WTO) agreement, Pakistan will have difficulty after 2005 exporting products from industries without adequate environmental safeguards.

Because Pakistan, along with other developing countries, has argued that it needs to be free of emission ceilings in order to develop its economy, the country has not taken on any emission reduction commitments under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, nor is Pakistan a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol.

There are many things we can do to help reduce damage to our local, and therefore global, environment. An obvious one is attempting to reduce unnecessary consumption of products and power. Good insulation, lower heating thermostat settings, turning off appliances, solar heating and so on, as well as sensible use of water could be considered. Care can be taken to try to purchase goods which use less packaging waste and if possible less transportation. Where meat eaters should of course be concerned about animal welfare, vegetarians should be careful about the total amount of energy used in the production and transport of their food, which in some cases can threaten the effective environmental benefit of such a lifestyle.

The only course of action for us must surely be to make our individual effort to care for our world and encourage others, especially the young, to do the same. By working together at a local, national and international level it should be possible for our Mother-earth to have a viable future. www.asifjmir.com Organizational Transformation

Making a Dead Set at Corruption

Corruption is an insidious plague that has a wide range of corrosive effects on society. It undermines democracy and the rule of law, leads to violations of human rights, distorts markets, erodes quality of life, and allows organized crime, terrorism and other threats to human society to flourish. As defined by Transparency International: “Corruption is the abuse of entrusted power for private gain.” According to Kofi Annan, “Corruption hurts the poor disproportionately—by diverting funds intended for development, undermining a government’s ability to provide basic services, feeding inequality and injustice, and discouraging foreign investment and aid.”

The good news is that future of corruption is not so bright it will not entirely finish though.

No country is entirely free of corruption. Efforts to fight corruption encourage transparency and accountability, thanks to an increased understanding of corruption's social and economic costs. There is the need for expanding the econometric framework, as well as to more general future research directions and policy implications in the field of governance.

Corruption is principally a governance issue, a failure of institutions and a lack of capacity to manage society by means of a framework of social, judicial, political and economic checks and balances. Good governance and globalization (at both the country as well as at the city level) do matter for performance in terms of access and quality of delivery of infrastructure services.

Corruption is deeply embedded in the political culture and poverty of Pakistan. Regulatory bodies are particularly vulnerable to corruption as they have the power to make key decisions on profit-making activities. Corrupt regulatory bodies can thus dangerously impede economic development.

Discretion creates more opportunities for corruption than where regulatory requirements are laid out through clear, precise and formal rules. Debate about corruption tends to focus almost exclusively on the receivers of corruption, rather than the purveyors. Corruption is alive and well and living in myriads of places. Bribery is simply the way business is done in Pakistan.

Within Pakistan's political dynamics, corruption figures as a very critical element. Prevalence of corruption in various political regimes has been the main cause of their downfall. The incumbents have placed accountability and the anti-corruption drive very high on its agenda in form of NAB its operational approach is rather controversial.

Corruption increases the number of capital projects undertaken and tends to enlarge their size and complexity. The result is that, paradoxically, some public investment can end up reducing a country’s growth because, even though the share of public investment in gross domestic product (the total of all goods and services produced in a country in a given year) may have risen, the average productivity of that investment is dropped.

For a private enterprise, getting a contract to execute a project, especially a large one, can be very profitable. Therefore, managers of these enterprises may be willing to offer commission to politicians who help them win the contract. Conversely, in many cases the act of bribery may not start with the enterprise but with the officials who control the decisions. It is apparently impossible to win a government contract in Pakistan without first paying a bribe. Interestingly, the laws of certain major industrial countries regard commissions paid by domestic enterprises to foreign politicians as not only legal but also tax deductible.

In some of these phases, a strategically placed high-level official or elected leader can manipulate the process to select a particular project. He can also tailor the specifications of the design to favor a given enterprise by, for example, providing inside information to that enterprise at the time of issuance of tender.

The enterprise that pays the commission rarely suffers from the payment of the bribe, since it is fairly simple to recover that cost. First, if corrupt officials of winning the bidding competition assure it, the enterprise can include the cost of the commission in its bid. Second, it can reach an understanding with the influential official that the initial low bid can be adjusted upward along the way, presumably to reflect modifications to the basic design. Third, it can reduce its spending on the project by the amount of the bribe by skimping on the quality of the work performed and the materials used. Fourth, if the contract is stipulated in a cost-plus fashion, the enterprise can recover the cost of the commission by overpricing.

The first step towards tackling corruption is preventing it. In attempting to prevent the laundering of proceeds of corruption mechanisms need to set up to review suspicious transactions, and analyze financial information.

Transparency and accountability in matters of public finance must also be promoted, and specific requirements established for the prevention of corruption, in particularly critical areas of the public sector, such as public procurement.

Citizens have the right to expect a high standard of conduct from their public servants. They also have to participate in preventing public corruption. For these reasons there is a need to actively encourage and promote the involvement of non-governmental and community based organizations, as well as, other elements of civil society, and to raise public awareness of corruption and what can be done about it.

There is a requirement for the prevention of corruption in the judiciary. Decision-making should be entrusted to committees rather than individuals. Although this adds to the cost of regulation, it may eventually save money by facilitating mutual monitoring and accountability.

New attitudes, better financial systems, prosecution of the guilty, better management of diamonds and real accountability to the people … this is the agenda for change. In taking it forward, the leading role must obviously be taken by the people and Government. But tackling corruption effectively requires a real focus, coordinated action and shared responsibility. Everyone’s energies must be thrown behind this anti-corruption strategy. It is the key to a better future for the people of Pakistan. (www.asifjmir.com)

Emphasizing Well-being

In recent years, psychologists studying measures of life satisfaction have largely confirmed the old adage that money can’t buy happiness—at least not for people who are already affluent.

A nation is successful not when it’s rich but when its people are happy. If you are very poor, there is no doubt that greater income can improve your life. But once the basic needs are secured, well-being does not necessarily correlate with wealth. The social and psychological needs of human beings also shape our cultures, and help to determine whether our civilization is sustainable or not. Good life is redefining prosperity to emphasize a higher quality of life, rather than the mere accumulation of goods.

The Prime Minister is busy sketching up plans for making continuing increases in gross domestic product (GDP) as a chief priority of domestic policy, under the assumption that wealth secured is well-being delivered.

Whether due to curbs on hundi business as a post-9/11 scenario or owing to connoisseur planning, foreign exchange reserves (FER) of Pakistan touched highest levels ever in the previous government. With increased GDP and FERs the number of suicidal deaths also grew larger when poverty ridden people take their lives. This situation demonstrates that some link was broken somewhere. And that’s about social moorings and calls for a shift in paradigm.

The government must focus on delivering what people most desire. Indeed, a new understanding of good life can be built not around wealth but around well-being: having basic survival needs met, along with freedom, health, security, and satisfying social relations. Consumption would still be important, to be sure, but only to the extent that it boosts quality of life.

Pakistani society if focuses on well-being will involve more interaction with family, friends, and neighbors, a more direct experience of nature, and more attention to finding fulfillment and creative expression than in accumulating goods. It should emphasize lifestyles that avoid abusing our own health, other people, or the natural world. In short, it will yield a deeper sense of satisfaction with life than many people report experiencing today.

What provides for a satisfying life? The disconnection between money and happiness in wealthy countries is perhaps most clearly illustrated when growth in income is plotted against levels of happiness. In the United States, for example, the average person’s income more than doubled between 1957 and 2002, yet the share of people reporting themselves to be very happy over that period remained static.

Happiness is best predicted by the breadth and depth of one’s social connections. People who are socially connected tend to be healthier—often significantly so. More than a dozen long-term studies in Japan, Scandinavia, and the United States show that the chances of dying in a given year, no matter the cause, is two to five times greater for people who are isolated than for socially connected people.

International development professionals also now acknowledge that strong social ties are a major contributor to a country’s development. The World Bank, for instance, sees social connectedness as a form of capital—an asset that yields a stream of benefits useful for development.

Creating a higher quality of life requires us to help create new political, physical, and cultural infrastructures of well-being. Pakistan has no such infrastructure and is thus ranked 167 out of 180 countries in Well-being Index. Sri Lanka ranks 49 and Bangladesh 131. Interestingly, Nigeria ranks 133, a position better than Pakistan.

Year after year, the Human Development Index report shows Pakistan lagging behind the rest of the regional countries. Our investment in realizing the human potential remains the lowest in South Asia. The HDI report lists a shocking situation of the poor quality of life in Pakistan.

The standard tool used to measure societal health, GDP, is much too narrow to serve as a yardstick of well-being because it sums all economic transactions, regardless of their contribution to quality of life. It also ignores entire swaths of non-market activity that contribute to individual and society well-being.

A well-being society would offer consumers a sufficient range of genuine choices rather than a large array of virtually identical products. Businesses would be encouraged through economic incentives to deliver what consumers really seek—reliable transportation, not necessarily a car; or strong neighborhood relationships in lieu of a large house with a big yard. Choice would be redefined to mean options for increasing quality of life rather than selections among individual products or services.

If focused on well-being Pakistani society would ensure that everyone in it has access to healthy food, clean water and sanitation, education, health care, and physical security. It is virtually impossible to imagine a society of well-being that does not provide for people’s basic needs.

Making the transition to a society of well-being is a challenge to the new premier given people’s habit of placing consumption at the apex of societal values. All the same, any move in this direction starts out with two strong advantages. First, the human family today has a base of knowledge, technology that can be invested in well-being rather than in continued material accumulation for its own sake. A second advantage is simple but powerful: for many people, a life of well-being is preferred to a life of high consumption.

By nurturing relationships, facilitating healthy choices, learning to live in harmony with nature, and tending to the basic needs of all, the PPP Government will leave its indelible footprints in history if it shifts from an emphasis on consumption to an emphasis on well-being. This could be an apposite response to the growing number of suicidal deaths due to poverty, and to be his great achievement in the twenty-first century.

Desperate need for apt policy planning

The stump oratory must have reached people about sharpshooter or inept public managers’ actions, GDP growth rate is declining; foreign exchange reserves are depleting fast, record downfall in exports and of foreign investment. Ipso facto, no previous government in past decades confronted issues like these when financial stability has become a forgotten song, it has miserably. Yes, the government has completely failed in efficient service delivery to the poor. Consequently, it has contributed sweet nothing in reducing poverty and hunger that goes on to sustain stark national inequalities in wealth, assets, incomes and opportunities.

The Asian Development Bank estimates that 40 million people in Pakistan live below the poverty line. In its stated bid to ensure national security, Pakistan is spending more on arms and defense, and less on social security and protection, public distribution systems and welfare programs.

In the direst situations suicide rates among the poor are on the rise. Ironically, while national level defaulters on debt benefit from enhanced facilities to restructure debt and continue borrowing, the overwhelming burden of national debt is borne by the poor.

Lacking job opportunities in rural areas cause migration to urban cities. This takes the form of low quality jobs in the informal economy, or in the case of women and girls, prostitution or domestic service. Migration under conditions of economic stress exacerbates food insecurity. Owing to weak economic and social profile of the country, the adult population could not be gainfully employed, resulting in an 8.3 per cent current unemployment rate (more than 10 per cent in urban areas), plus substantial under-employment. Today, of the current workforce of some 48.40 million- as many as 8 million- are unemployed.

More and more workers, especially women, are being forced from the relatively protected formal sector to the unprotected informal sector. This is accompanied by concentration of assets and resources in the hands of the rich and newly prosperous, who have been able to take advantage of the economic opportunities offered by modernization and globalization.

Graft and corruption in government are a significant cause of continuing poverty and hunger. Despite NAB being there, corruption is on the increase and being accentuated by the companies of the developed countries through their underhand dealings with the national officials.

Sitting in luxurious offices the economic managers of Pakistan juggle with statistics rather than conducting surveys. This is often done to draw statistics acceptable to donors or financial institutions. To duck the WB in 2001, for instance, it drafted the poverty reduction strategy, just about the time when the WB initiated a new line of credit (PRGF) for countries that were equipped with such a strategy.

The increase in the tax-GDP ratio is apparently marginal but in the numerical terms, bulk of the burden has been shifted from direct to the indirect taxes and the share of the regressive sales tax being recovered at the highest rate over the globe has sharply gone up. It is affecting the whole population. The sales tax formed over 44 per cent of the total tax collection during the fiscal 2002-03. The result is that quantum of sales tax has grown from 27.11 in 1998-99 to 42.33 per cent during July 2004-January, 2005.

The Oil Companies' Advisory Committee fixes the prices of various products on fortnightly basis. It is claimed that the committee fixes the prices in a very transparent manner keeping in view the international prices. But the transparent formula was never made public either by the government or the committee. Oil companies have thus been licensed to plunder the poor.

Pakistan currently has about 74 percent of the population living on $1 per day and 86 percent living on $2 per day, implying that one out of every three households going to sleep hungry every day.

The narrow focus on economic growth has not only failed to eliminate poverty, it has also resulted in policies that have created new forms of, or aggravated existing conditions of poverty and hunger. Shaukat Aziz institutionalized policies that opened up economy and shrunk government’s direct responsibility for redistribution of assets and benefits. Public support and subsidies were systematically torn down, and market based price systems were made the primary determinant of allocation and distribution. With privatization and withdrawal of government subsidies for domestic industry, a significant proportion of the work force was shunted into the informal sector. By and large, previous government achieved economic growth at the cost of well being of workers, small-scale agricultural producers and consumers. The greatest beneficiaries of PM Shaukat Aziz’ adjustment programs were the rich, large private producers, distributors, traders, and MNCs.

Poverty and hunger are violations of human rights. They result in exclusion and feelings of hopelessness and helplessness. The human rights of people to housing, water, and sanitation—guaranteed under international law and commitments of development targets made at global summits, including the Millennium Summit and the World Summit on Sustainable Development—drag on to erode. By ratifying a number of international human rights instruments, such as, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Pakistan has voluntarily accepted the obligations to progressively realize human rights to food, health, adequate housing, water and sanitation, which are essential for the well being of its citizens.

Pakistan needs policies that protect the rights of people to water, land, forests, other natural resources, biodiversity and indigenous knowledge. Policies are also needed that ensure people’s access to a services essential to their development especially among the poor and historically marginalized, this includes education, social security, healthcare and information, etc. Access must be equitable and the quality of services must not vary according to socio-economic or gender backgrounds. (www.asifjmir.com)

Technical Education

In Pakistan technical education and vocational training systematization focuses on the development of human resource in terms of skill up-gradation, which is demand-driven, meeting the current needs and hence unapt, obsolete and not futuristic.

Although the market and its needs ought to be taken into account, they cannot be the sole guideline for vocational training systems and policies. Markets have short-term views and reasons which if followed unconditionally, may lead to decisions apparently correct for immediate purposes but counterproductive in the long term. The necessary matching of training supply and demand at micro level must not be taken as a substitute for serious long-term policies and preparation our youth for up and coming technological changes.

Pakistan’s technical institutions should contribute to the strengthening of industry and to the full and sustainable development; promote technical education for industries of today and tomorrow; and impart vocational training in line with modern technologies.

In the coming decade we will see body amplifiers that expand human endurance and strength. We will see novel devices that do not rely on wheels, where our own limbs are augmented, where we can traverse very rough terrains with a very high metabolic economy or efficiency. The forecast is that people for certain situations will not want to use wheels anymore, because their legs, augmented by technology, far outperform wheeled vehicles. The technologies—from carbon nano-tube microprocessors and self-driving cars to biosensors and quantum cryptography—are works in progress. Each development holds the promise. The question that can be asked: Are we preparing our workforce for such changes?

A great revolution is coming next—Nanotechnology is a revolution more radical than the industrial revolution is probably occurring. All scientists unanimously agree that this is going to be the largest breakthrough of 21st century.

The present economies are largely based on the scarcity of (materialistic) products. This kind of economy will therefore quite likely disappear almost completely. Within ten years nano-products will dominate a multi-trillion dollar market. All conventional industries will be turned to obsolete chunk.

India prepared its workforce in IT. Pakistan focused on supplying unskilled labor to Gulf and did not adopt IT in management and production functions. It is once again ignoring the upcoming technologies.

Demographic factor is another catalyst for strategic change. Today, national and global demographic changes are a potential catalyst for a long-term systemic imbalance.

According to the Employment Policy Foundation of the USA, a systemic labor shortage is expected to transform the workplace over the next 25 to 30 years as the gap between aging population and entrants of college-educated workers widens due to the senior population’s mass retirements. If the US economy continues to grow at three percent per year—the economy’s consistent average since 1948 — the workforce will have to increase by 58 million employees over the next three decades if the same rate of productivity is maintained. Yet, if the current population trend continues, the number of workers will only increase by 23 million. This trend would create an overall US labor shortage of 35 million workers. Most of these projected shortages are expected to involve workers having specific skills. To counter this systematic shortage the US will import skilled labor force from Asia and Africa.

Europe’s total fertility rate is about 1.4—well below the 2.1 replacement level. Over the next 15 years, West European economies will need to find several million workers to fill positions vacated by retiring workers. European countries will thus accommodate growing immigrant populations (chiefly from Muslim countries). Otherwise they will face a period of protracted economic stasis that could threaten the huge successes made in creating a more United Europe.

The aging of Japan’s work force will reinforce dependence on migrated workers from South East Asia.

The demographic structures in the West and Japan over the next decade produce considerable challenges to education planning and vocational training in Pakistan. Herein lies a potential training challenge for preparing the workforce meeting the technological needs of those countries.

Migration has the potential to help solve the problem of a declining work force in the USA, Europe and, to a lesser degree, Japan and probably will become a more important feature of the world of 2020, even if many of the migrants do not have legal status.

The likely emergence of Pakistan as a new major Asian player—similar to the rise of Germany in the 19th century and the United States in the early 20th century—can transform the geopolitical landscape, with impacts potentially as dramatic as those of the previous two centuries.

Is Pakistan ready to prepare its workforce for meeting the needs of USA, Europe and Japan? How Pakistan exercises its growing power and whether it relates competitively in the international system depends largely on the way it plans (or plans not in the slightest)?

Pakistan must prepare workers for offshore employment. It needs to develop a workforce at par with the workforce of industrialized countries; respond to the industry demands of today and of the future; prepare workforce to meet the demographic gap of the West; push a program to modernize the system of technical education and vocational training; increase the supply and productivity of skilled labor in key sectors of the economy; increase, relevance, internal efficiency and quality of existing technical education and vocational training; and least but not the last, improve the opportunities for gainful employment in the formal and informal sectors of the economy.

According to Neil Edmunds, former president of the American Vocational Association, those who will lead vocational education into the 21st century must be shareholders in a unifying vision; these leaders must understand the broad scope of vocational education. They must be skilled communicators; they must be as comfortable outside the educational setting as within it, moving easily among people from government, education, and business. The question: does Pakistan offer this leadership? (www.asifjmir.com)