For over a decade, the country has been aiming at mass literacy and mass education. The goal remains as elusive now as it did when education was first pronounced as a desirable target to achieve.

While there have been many a slip in terms of supply of resources towards the above end either due to resource gaps or due to speech-action gaps, the demand for education has remained lacklustre primarily because of an absence of focus on a host of socio-economic variables that feed into the demand for education.

Educational projects, therefore, fail to turn over into education and education fails to turn over into the development that all would like to see. It is little wonder then that achievement, if any, in the sector of education is measured by 'enrolments' rather than 'graduates' at the primary and secondary levels.

For, the attempt is to conceal the large number of dropouts due to the ineffectiveness of either the educational projects or that of the conceptual underpinnings or both.

If evaluation of performance in such a noble cause smacks of dishonesty as above, it speaks volumes about the intent behind the educational programme per se and the sincerity of purpose with which it is driven.

This gap between stated and actual intent feeds into the lack of availability of resources for the purpose or their improper utilization or the lack of a sense of mission with which such programmes should be pursued which, in turn, leads to a lack of appreciation of the big picture.

Inability to see the forest impedes meaningful progress in the direction of education if education is all there is to development according to the view of the domestic and foreign elite who have exported this emphasis to us too in isolation of all the interacting variables that together can get us near the goal of development.

Education and development are presented to us almost like a bivariate relationship as though all other factors can be held constant in real life. Since other things are not constant in real life, neither educational projects convert to education nor education converts to development. A holistic view is, therefore, imperative to take.

If education is the penultimate goal, then it can be achieved only if people seek it out which they will only if they have a desire to acquire it. Desire for education is a function of a family's socio-economic status.

Education is either low or does not appear on the list of priorities of some 38 per cent population below the poverty line that remain caught in a struggle for day-to-day survival.

They require food, shelter, clothing, water, sanitation, and healthcare first and foremost. Mass education, therefore, remains an unrealistic target due to the above reality which many do not like to see and do something transformational about.

Until then, there will not be a full demand for education that the elite want to provide to all those who are not in the market for education for as long as there is underdevelopment. So, education and development go hand in hand.

The enthusiasts for education ought to see this linkage which they are currently seeing only in one direction. That is, they view development as a variable dependent only or primarily on education.

Education is viewed as an independent variable by them when its relationship with development is circular with many intervening and antecedent variables. Unless all of these variables are influenced together, intra-country integrated development too remains elusive.

And, these variables emanate from the entire network of socio-economic and political power in which web the common people remain trapped and deprived of the choices they need to make to progress on the fronts of socio-economic and political freedoms.

If the education target is scaled down in view of the above to now aim at the next 20-25 per cent around and above the poverty line, this too is a segment that remains deprived in terms of the basic socio-economic freedoms primarily because of a lack of opportunities in an underdeveloped country.

If education is then to turn over into gainful employment, opportunities need to be created in parallel for this segment as well. Otherwise, the demand for education in this segment will also remain low especially if they will not be able to correlate education with economic progress due to an absence of commensurate opportunities.

Or, if against the above dismal backdrop, they do go for education, there will result an even larger number of disgruntled youth who would also be educated. In either case, it is development thrust required essentially in parallel to either create a genuine demand for education or to avert a socially explosive situation in case this demand is contrived or forced upon people who will not know what to do with their educational certificates.

A pet elitist solution is self-employment in the small-scale sector. So, is development only about maintaining status quo for the wealthy and developing a nation of small-scale operators on the fringes of the wealthy core or is development about integration of the people with equity and justice which is also the hallmark of an Islamic society that is so much in vogue to talk about without appreciating its core values? Elitist response is that many big economies of the world rely on small-scale industry.

While resilience is provided by the small-scale sector, small-scale comes up in reflection of the larger powerful sectors of the economy. Otherwise, no big economy ever wanted to be reduced to a "nation of shopkeepers" that is envisaged for the less privileged who also comprise the bulk of our society.

Education and development, therefore, go together. While integrating equitous development efforts may precede mass education; education, by itself, cannot drive the process of development unless there is equity in the distribution of assets, incomes, opportunities, and freedoms.

In the absence of equity, education actually redistributes in favour of the haves as their highly educated youth then acquire greater skills in preserving their interests which, in underdeveloped countries, are promoted at the expense of the interest of the majority.

Thus there is a large market in such countries for equity, opportunities, and freedoms all of which are hogged by a handful upper crust minority. As for those middle-income families whose scions break barriers through higher education, the wards either get co-opted by elite interests or migrate due to a lack of opportunities in home countries.

In either case, the scores of educated and professionals in Pakistan have been unable to make a visible dent in the socio-economic situation of the nation as a whole due to the above reasons. This is actually a group that tends to refute the link between education and development.

And, this has happened primarily because education has always been viewed in Pakistan with a certain instrumental rationality. That is, as an entry level passport into the job market with "skills" to climb ladders irrespective of the walls they have been leaning against.

The upshot has been that the status quo remains unchallenged with a great premium on not only compliance but also on complicity. As the value system got turned on the head, smartness came to be equated with deviant practices to make quick bucks.

If anti-developmental attitudes took roots in upper- and upper-middle segments despite education, the very purpose and goals of education needs to be rethought.

This purpose ought to then graduate from an instrumental view of education to one of nation-building. In addition to considerations already mentioned above, education ought to be focusing on character-building if it is expected to turn over into development through the inculcation of attitudes, oriented towards development rather than the other way around, at least, in those small segments that have an appetite for education.

Education system would then be producing at least some agents of change without which the upper tier would keep getting reinforced routinely thus pushing the possibility of a macro-level national change further into the future.