November 30, 2003	Sunday	Shawwal 5, 1424

KARACHI, Nov 29: Poverty has now become a major business selling point for all the four provinces that are now literally in a run to outmatch each other in establishing the impoverishment of a bigger chunk of population in their respective jurisdiction.

As representatives of the four provinces and the federal government begin their efforts to find a new arrangement for distribution of national taxation revenue, poverty has emerged as a tempting marketing proposition for a few enterprising bureaucrats. These bureaucrats provide a backup support to the political leadership of their respective provinces in the proceedings of the recently-constituted National Finance Commission (NFC).

If any single segment in Pakistan’s ruling hierarchy is to be blamed for growing poverty, crumbling infrastructure, proliferation of shanties in urban areas and the backwardness of rural areas and the breakdown of health and education services in all parts of Pakistan, it is the bureaucracy of Punjab, Balochistan, NWFP, Sindh and that of Islamabad. Now the same bureaucracy has taken up the job to blow up poverty issue in all the four provinces during the proceedings of the NFC.

In the first meeting of the NFC held at Islamabad early this month, the Balochistan government representative was reported to have circulated UNDP and ADB documents to establish that poverty ratio in his home province was the highest and, therefore, it deserves a big share in any poverty alleviation resource allocation to be sponsored by Islamabad.

Punjab gets bulk of share in national resources, job quotas in armed forces and civil services and adequate and timely water supply by being on the upstream of irrigation system. Punjab rightly boasts of a vigorous emerging enterprising class that emerged after 1977 Martial Law and it now dominates Pakistan’s business scene. Punjab continues to send a big ratio of its population to Sindh and other provinces for private and government jobs (mainly police and law-enforcing agencies), admissions in professional colleges and in business. Yet the leadership of Punjab believes that it has the biggest number of poor people in its domain. Punjab’s leadership could not conceal its discontentment when the previous NFC decided to institute an annual subvention pool of Rs20 billion to provide special grants to Sindh, Balochistan and NWFP.

Not to be left behind is NWFP. When a bureaucrat with NWFP domicile held the fort of the finance ministry sometimes back, he organized a survey to show that per capita income in the rural and urban areas of his province was the least in Pakistan.

For long Sindh has been clamouring of fast rising poverty and growing unemployment in its rural and urban areas. Sindh’s ministers and top bureaucrats have been quoting survey reports which show 80 per cent population of five rural districts in the province are earning less than one dollar a day. Unemployment ratio was stated to be 35 per cent. Karachi, which continues to receive job-seekers from Punjab and NWFP, carries a burden of almost four million unemployed or under-employed men and women.

Recent reports suggest that the present government, set up after the October 2002 elections, has sponsored a fresh survey of income and expenditure of households. The previous military setup had discarded a survey report of the Federal Bureau of Statistics that found poverty on rise during two years after the military takeover in Pakistan. It was found to contain inaccuracies and technical deficiencies.

Till May this year, President General Pervez Musharraf and Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz were convinced that their policies had put a halt on poverty growth and even reversed the trend. President Musharraf was more than confident in April this year when he informed members of the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry that poverty ratio had been reduced by 0.8 per cent. In May, Shaukat Aziz claimed that poverty ratio would be reduced to 25 per cent in the next five years and that its growth had been effectively halted.

But then came bombshells from the IMF, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank — the donors that set Pakistan’s economic agenda. They expressed their concerns on Pakistan’s rising poverty.

And now when the elected political leadership of the federal and provincial governments is about to engage itself in NFC deliberations, the bureaucracy has found poverty a convenient tool to put them in a state of confrontation.

The question is whether confrontation alleviates poverty and brings justice or it is political maturity, wisdom and large heartedness mainly from the Punjab’s political leadership that can establish a stable economic and social order in the country.

The finance ministers of the four provinces are expected to hold a formal meeting on December 12 at Lahore, a day before the second meeting of the NFC. A lot depends on how and what the political leadership of the provinces decide to convince Islamabad of gradually reducing its control on economic resources and policies and pass it on to Karachi, Lahore, Quetta and Peshawar.