In a few days Mr. Shaukat Aziz will be called upon to cut the cake to celebrate his elevation to the lofty position of prime minister of Pakistan. But as he goes through these rituals he must remember that there is another cake which he must cut , and cut it as judiciously and as honestly as he can, the cake of national wealth.

It is an unfortunate fact of our history that the betterment of the poor has never been an important, let alone the centrepiece of government policy. Poverty has been 'an' issue, never 'the' issue. Elimination of poverty was not point No. 1 of 7-point agenda of President Musharraf in November, 1999.

The focus of economic planning has always been the enlargement of national wealth. The rich and powerful have been saying to the poor, "you wait for now, let us first make the size of the 'cake' larger and then we will think of cutting a bigger slice for you." And that time has not come. Is it that it never will?

That is the question before Mr. Shaukat Aziz. On an election tour of Tharparker, he saw the question writ large on the faces of the poor. Reading it rightly, he said that he saw a "ray of hope on their faces ".

This ray of hope epitomises the sentiments of all the poor people of Pakistan that a day will soon dawn when " a bigger slice " will be given to them. Unless the present policies are reversed the ray will only remain a ray. It will not break into sunshine.

Pursued and haunted by the ever-growing spectre of poverty, the top-brass is following an ostrich-like policy, by refusing to face or tackle the reality. The 'Gini co-efficient', a measure of inequality, has been rising in Pakistan.

The trends are so hard to hide that the government in the Economic Survey 20003-04, decided to omit the chapter on income distribution completely and talked about it only cursorily. It did not want to give the continuing bad news to the people.

Similarly the development expenditure reduced from 7.5 of GDP in 1991-92 to a low 2.2 per cent of GDP in 2002-03. The cutback in development expenditure hurt the poor who depend on state-provided services on health, education, social welfare and other services. The share of the richest 20 per cent of the country in the national wealth increased from 44 per cent in 1988 to 48 per cent in 2000.

Correspondingly, the share of the poorest 20 per cent of the population came down from 9 in 1988 to 7 per cent in 2000.But to gloss over these harsh and unpalatable realities, those in power, are putting forth the thesis that there has been a 4 per cent reduction in poverty.

The 'Pakistan integrated household survey' conducted by the Federal Bureau of Statistics, which sampled 14,536 households, showed a 3 per cent rise in poverty during 1999-02.

The government did not accept the results and carried out a household survey on sample of 5,046 households to support its stand of 4 per cent reduction in poverty. The Social Policy and Development Centre (SPDC) is an NGO headed by Mr. Kaiser Bengali.

He has called the government's methodology as " questionable and spurious and the results clearly questionable". Such garbled versions are nothing but a travesty of truth and will satisfy no one. Rather these are making the credibility of the government reports very suspect.

Poverty does not exist by itself as an independent phenomenon. It is a creation of deliberate acts of the powers that be. The cause is the policies of the government and the effect is the poverty of the masses.

Just a few days ago, President Musharraf has formally announced in a policy directive that projects and programmes for reducing poverty must be formulated and implemented. Credit must be given to him for being the first ruler of Pakistan for at least initiating a call for a focused poverty specific programmes.

This policy initiative will and should strengthen the hands of Mr. Aziz for countering the vested interests who would not want that appreciable resources should be allocated to such projects.

Mr. Aziz should have a lot of sympathy for the poor. He admits that he comes from a middle-class background. He has worked abroad for more than two decades, and he knows more than anyone else, that the leaders of private sector companies are not paragons of virtue, rather the opposite.

Were it not so, the Western countries would not have been affected by successive and recurring waves of corporate scandals. It is the moral bankruptcy, which has led to financial bankruptcies.

In our own country the scandals of defaulted loans and write-offs have been well known for decades. There is a need, a dire need, for changing the basic presumption, of financial trustworthiness.

It is the poor who are more trust worthy than the rich. Grameen Bank of Bangladesh was based on this premise, and it proved to be a resounding success. Now they are considering of setting up a 'beggars bank'!

Mr. Ghulam Mohammad, Chaudhry Mohammad Ali and Mr.Ghulam Ishaque Khan, were three bureaucrats, who assumed political power. All three had a background of finance. Neither did anything so good which has left an indelible mark on the consciousness and psyche of the nation.

In fact, it can be asserted without fear of contradiction, that no leader has done anything for the betterment of the poor, for which he can claim an abiding place in the history of Pakistan. What about Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto? He gave nothing but slogans. He gave neither 'roti' (other than the failed Roti Corporation) nor 'kapra' nor 'makan'.

Not too long ago Pakistan had foreign exchange reserves for hardly three or four weeks of imports. Today the reserves are more than $12 Billion, enough for a year's imports. Pakistan has reduced its foreign debt by $2 billion. For the first time Pakistan has 'prepaid' a loan of about $1 billion taken from Asian Development Bank.

For the first time more than Rs200 billion have been provided in an annual budget (2004-05) for the PSDP. For the first time all the crucial socio-economic factors have come together to create a propitious environment for the initiation of a visible change.

What is needed is a catalyst. Will Mr Aziz choose to be it? Without a doubt, he stands on a crossroad. He has the option to be a suave member of the team. Flow with the tide, as did his predecessors and have a good time as a Prime Minister? Or he can be circumspectly assertive, knowing his strength in finance, and the great need and demand for his expertise, at this crucial juncture of our national life, and be an agent of change. If he chooses the latter path, he can carve out a niche for himself both in the history of Pakistan as well as the hearts of its people.