Pakistan: A slow learner

There was no expectation at the launch of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) human development report 2013 ‘The Rise of the South’, that there would be good news for Pakistan contained therein. The subtitle of the report was ‘Human progress in a diverse world’ — progress for some perhaps but not Pakistan and whichever party or parties form the next government they need look no further than this important report for their policy agenda. The report is designed to stimulate debate on global development issues and indicate trends for policy makers. Developing countries can and should act as powerful development forces themselves, and the rise of the countries of ‘The South’ in the last decade tells us that development is no longer the sole prerogative of the developed. Countries of the South have emerged quickly in a way that is unprecedented in speed and scale, but alongside success the report also chronicles in unforgiving detail the failures as well. The Multidimensional Poverty Index, which is an alternative measurement to the income-based calculation that provides an imperfect picture, indicates that 49 percent of the people of Pakistan are poverty-stricken. Pakistan is better off than India with 54 percent and Bangladesh with 58 percent but there is little to crow about, and Pakistan is ranked at 146 out of 157 countries with a Human Development Index (HDI) of 0.515 which places us in the lowest category of human development. There has been a global convergence towards higher levels of human development, and the speed of progress has been fastest in those countries which rank in the ‘low’ to ‘medium’ categories, so perhaps all is not lost. Progress upwards needs to be maintained at a greater than average level, but will not be sustained if there are increasing disparities in income — the rich getting richer at the expense of the poor. High military spending and low social cohesion — areas of particular weakness for Pakistan — inhibit development. With our military budgets grossly skewing expenditure on key areas like education and public health, there is no prospect of a turnaround in the foreseeable future. In the last five years our development as a country has actually declined, a stinging rebuke to the outgoing government. Between 2007 and 2012 our HDI went up by 3.4 percent, as against the 18.9 percent between 2000 and 2007. Our spending in the social sector is lower than that of some countries in sub-Saharan Africa such as the Democratic Republic of Congo that manages to spend 6.2 percent of GDP on education and 1.2 percent of GDP on public health. Pakistan is unlikely to reach the former figure in this decade. Poor policy making and politics that have not diversified much beyond the ‘100 families’ that have run the affairs of state since partition contribute to our poverty of development. For Pakistan to change and improve its HDI, the politics of power have to change. Our colourless and vapid ‘democracy’ needs to develop both muscle and courage if we are not forever to be among the group of nations that feed on the bottom of the global pool.