December 15, 2003	Monday	Shawwal 20, 1424

Matters of secondary importance are usually relegated to committees. Matters of extreme urgency may also be relegated to committees if organizational structures degenerate into ineffective bureaucracies like the General Motors’ (GM) had at one time when the GM would allegedly tend to set up a committee even for killing a snake if one was found on its premises.

Also, if some sense of urgency is to be created for an issue that is not viewed as a core issue, the committee may be called a task force. Creation of a task force for an issue as central as poverty eradication or alleviation, either betrays lack of importance assigned to poverty alleviation in an economic policy driven primarily by neo-liberal considerations, or indicates a continued inability to deal with this issue, or both. This inability could be emanating from misplaced priorities and/or misplaced efforts.

With faith primarily in market reform and structural adjustment which aims at getting the market structures right, poverty alleviation gets pushed down the agenda by default. Dealing with it then requires a side-bet effort perhaps by creating a task force when this pervasive issue requires a look at all those power structures that keep generating poverty and will continue to do so until the structures responsible for poverty creation are set right.

While these kind of structural reforms would, eventually, also throw up the right kind of market structures desired ardently by the neo-liberals, such fundamental reforms are only being hoped for. One hoped to, at least, see them on the terms of reference (TOR) of the Task Force on Poverty Alleviation and Employment Generation constituted on December 4. The task force’s TOR clearly show that there has to be reliance on public sector effort implying that private sector cannot be solely responsible for employment generation which is a lesson the neo-liberals have learned in Pakistan, with difficulty.

While the hope for employment generation and poverty alleviation is not given up through the private sector either, the TOR’s emphasis remains on the government’s current thrust in the direction of poverty alleviation and employment generation. As said for the American businesses at one time, for poverty alleviation, we too, are continuing to dig deep in the same direction for gold even if the gold is 20 feet to the side. But the American businesses did this because they continued with the business strategies that worked in the past, failing to realize that a strategy that worked in the past will not continue to be effective if the environment has changed. As for our poverty alleviation strategy, we in Pakistan are carrying on with a strategy that neither worked in the past nor in the present, nor is it likely to show results in future.

One, therefore, hoped that through the task force, we would begin digging in a different direction now. While the TOR, primarily revolves around assessment of the existing poverty alleviation programmes and intensifying efforts to rectify the misplaced efforts and priorities within the same paradigm, it is in identification of “specific new initiatives” (ibid) that one can still see a ray of hope against hope for a major change in the direction towards poverty alleviation and employment generation.

One, therefore, hopes that the task force will allow “specific new initiatives” in a new paradigm. That is, a new paradigm would be a major “new initiative” that the task force would gather courage to propose out of the dictates of their conscience and not out of the compulsions of the prestigious offices assigned to them by the country’s ruling elite. That is, if a discrepancy between their private and official positions on the issue of poverty is minimized or eliminated, we will have made a transition to the bold new paradigm required to take care of the issues of unemployment and poverty. It is the “you don’t say” culture that requires a major change for the country’s poverty issue to be addressed.

This is where we strike a common ground with the “you don’t say” culture and poverty. Both of these are rooted in the country’s feudal values that keep churning out both the “you don’t say” attitudes as well as poverty which cannot be rooted out for as long as those within the ruling system “don’t say” that the roots of poverty lie in the country’s power structures strongly entrenched in the countryside where productive assets are grossly maldistributed. This iniquitous land distribution keeps the bulk displaced and unemployed. Unless the tiller is engaged on the land he tills and is given a sense of actual ownership, the issue of engagement of the bulk of country’s population will compound.

With 38 per cent of the population below the poverty line, another 20-25 per cent around it, and another 10-15 per cent slightly above, where is the purchasing power and the market around which our market structures can be securely built? Market structures can perhaps be set right for 15-20 per cent population which is inadequate for a viable industrial base that is also highly vulnerable now to competing imports. Under such circumstances, how can private sector, that also prefers capital-and technology-intensive, and thereby, labour-saving processes, be at all expected to generate employment for such a large number of job seekers? To rely on private sector, engaged in its own survival battles in a prematurely liberalizing environment for them, is to be overly optimistic about the potential for private sector growth and its ability to absorb the country’s labour force.

What then can a public sector also do which, in turn, requires resources generated within the country to function? A poor people and poor sectors combined with poor ethics all contribute to meagre public sector resources. Even if, hypothetically speaking, public sector has all the resources it needs to feed, nourish, educate, and cure the poor; the concept is based on dole which will do more harm than good as it will tend to create more dependents than independent, productive, and efficient individuals.

Even if this may not happen, how and where will all those lifted from poverty be absorbed gainfully? Are they all expected to be self-employed by the roadside for the 20-30 per cent of the affluents and the rich in the country most of whose needs will be met through luxurious imports facilitated by liberalization? This is a highly dualistic future with some grandees at the centre and small shopkeepers, merchants, and traders comprising layers of peripheries, one enveloping another. So, the current within-the-paradigm poverty alleviation emphasis will hardly get to what is meant by economic development.

While poverty alleviation is not philanthropy as the recipients should become independently-earning members of the society; power to earn, unless matched with equality of opportunity, will not lead to an equitous, egalitarian society that remains at the heart of a truly developing nation. Equality of opportunity is a societal mindset that is difficult to acquire in Pakistan for as long as the gods of pelf and power are worshipped with impunity. To shatter these idols, it is the source of this decadent value system that should be taken a jab at. For as long as those with pelf and power are viewed arrogantly as the “chosen people” and the poor as “kameens” facing “divine wrath,” the culture of “you don’t say” will prevail. So will poverty!

Sources of the above morally repugnant culture are known to all. In common and technical parlance alike, these are called feudal values which inhibit equality of opportunity and promote poverty almost in sync. We have come full circle.

A silver lining on the above dark clouds is the Pakistan Human Development Report (PHDR) 2003 which says: “Redistribution of assets through land and tenure reforms is a key requirement of any programme to reduce the poverty and empower the poor and marginalized section of the society” (ibid). The PHDR further observes that the universal primary education is necessary but insufficient medium term national goal for poverty reduction. This again challenges the view of neo-liberals who are now pushing the universal primary education almost as an alibi for their own failures in poverty alleviation and unemployment whose remedy they earlier sought only through market reform and less government.

Advocacy for mass education, although required, serves to push the real causes of poverty on the back burner. For, while the lack of education may feed into underdevelopment, education, by itself, may not lead to development unless backed by the prerequisites, supplementary, and complementary variables required for developing. In the absence of demand for educated, education may make one a Sri Lanka but not necessarily an East Asian tiger.

While none dispute the importance of mass education, it is other variables discussed herein that need to be pushed on to the agenda for development and poverty alleviation that require a massive paradigm shift, if pursued earnestly. A step in this direction could be the inclusion of the authors of the Pakistan Human Development Report 2003 in the Task Force on Poverty Alleviation that may require fresher approaches to the issue. “New initiatives,” as in the task force’s TOR, can be facilitated by the outside members with lower stakes. Such members can play a crucial role in, at least, getting a new paradigm on to the agenda as a first step in the direction of quantum change needed badly for the purpose that cannot be served by just going through the motions over and over again.