HUMAN resources forming an important component of national wealth comprise raw labour, human capital and social capital. Here human capital implies resources developed in health-care environment through general and specialized education relating to any discipline, contributing to socio – economic development of individuals and country as a whole.
Greater the percentage of human capital, faster will be the economic growth rate and maximum socio – economic well being.
Unfortunately in almost all the low income developing countries including Pakistan, due to income inequalities or wide gap between rich and poor ,the component of raw labour dominates in their total human wealth.
Despite economic turnaround in recent years, efforts directed towards halting growing poverty totally failed and the ‘human development gap’ ( refers to what a country must achieve on HDIs at a level of income and what actually is) has become widely negative. Resultantly, raw labour continues to pervade the country’s human resources and this constant link between income inequalities and low pace of human development has become a vicious circle.
Income inequalities continue to swell and poor are inflicted with disproportionate burden of taxes, tariffs and sales tax etc. According to UNDP report of 2000 on ‘Human Development’, combined burden of income tax, excise duties and sales tax is 10 per cent for income of those with a monthly salary of less than $12 and 4 per cent for those with more than $40 a month.
Income inequalities apart from adding to income poverty ultimately enhance human poverty which is a very wide term. Encompassing in it (as stated in aforementioned UNDP report) are the denial of environment to live long, healthy and creative life, to be acknowledged, to enjoy a decent standard of living, dignity, self-respect and respect of others, which in fact are all ‘human development indicators’ (HDIs).
A country’s level of income inequality is the outcome of forces like cultural norms, historical facts and external factors like access to new technologies and infrastructure. Besides that governments policies relating to redistribution of income and assets through just taxation policy and putting in place social safety nets also determine the level of income inequalities.
To lessen income disparities, immediate steps are needed for the redistribution of assets, especially land holdings. This obviously can be done by bringing in land, giving ownership rights to tillers of soil now working as slaves on farms of big zamindars and waderas and have a representation of about 60 per cent in total population of the country. Secondly, serious efforts should be made to revamp taxation policy by bringing in social justice in distribution of incidence of various taxes and tariffs. Further, it is an imperative need to exercise strict check on prices of essential consumer items. Neglect at this count has already made the inflation rebound with full force.
According to UNDP Human Development Report 2003, improvement recorded in HDIs of Asian and African countries still remains insignificant. Pakistan’s HDI had shown some improvement during the period from 1975 to 1998 due to a little rise in GDP growth rate, improvement in life expectancy and some respite witnessed with regard to growing gender disparity in education, both in urban and rural sectors.
However, subsequent drop in primary education enrolment rate (from 70 to 51 per cent) and fast decline in GDP growth rate (from 6.8 to 3.7 per cent) until 2003 adversely effected the country’s HDIs.
Education reforms spelled out with focus on strategies to achieve Millennium Goal of ‘Education for all’ by 2015 is making some headway, but for targeted achievement, public private partnership will have to be promoted in view of the government’s budgetary constraints. ‘Adopt a school’ is an innovative private sector intervention to improve and expand primary and secondary level education facilities, thus ensuring 100 per cent enrolment of school going population.
To break the vicious circle of the growing income inequalities and the low human development level, it is essential to remove the disparity in standard of education between private and public sector educational institutions.
Although, now there is uniformity regarding curriculum prescribed by boards of secondary education for all categories of schools, there is a vast difference in the quality of education due to lack of professionally skilled teachers in government schools. The lack of discipline and total disregard for professional ethics, common to public sector schools are responsible for disparity in standards. Students from low-income groups without access to quality education will be deprived of opportunities for a better life. Thus the rich-poor gap would continue to widen.
All levels of government-sponsored education sector must give priority to uniformity of standards. As a first step in this direction, ‘adopt a school’ concept should be extensively promoted with the condition that adopting agency or the person must ensure bringing the standard of adopted school at par with highly rated private sector schools within five years (parameters for this can be set by the Education Ministry). This can be achieved by inducting additional quality teachers and upgrading skills of existing teachers through training arrangements.
To ensure quick results of this strategy, it must be made mandatory for government officials to enrol their children in the nearest government educational institution, instead of seeking admission in private schools or colleges or sending their siblings abroad for quality education. This will automatically develop due concern among government functionaries and the ruling elite to remove disparity in standards and give opportunities to students from low income families to acquire quality education, which is a must to develop human capital.
Another area of concern relating to education sector is high primary drop out rate. Apart from various factors impeding children’s access to education, it is the indispensability of children as breadwinners to supplement poor family’s income. In this regard, Punjab government’s intervention to promote girl child education among poor families, grant of monthly cash stipends of Rs200 to school-going girls from low income families is a step in the right direction. Similar initiatives are coming forward from various NGOs, but this task has to be taken up on a much wider scale to make the programme successful.
The educational sector reforms envisaged focus on higher and technical education also. It is unfortunate that even a single university could not get ranking among the world’s first 1000 high profile universities. Hence there is immediate need to expand opportunities for quality tertiary education without any gender disparity. Here also main concern should be to provide equal opportunities to students from low-income families by ensuring admission in prestigious colleges and universities, purely on merit and not ability to pay.
The recent decision to induct highly qualified teachers on contract, with performance-based rewarding system is yet another step to improve standards and ensure professionalism.
The government initiatives for reforming the health sector with focus on further improving longevity and survival rate of birth through deployment of trained health workers is the most needed intervention to ensure sustainability, which finally will have positive effects on growing poverty. However the success of the programme depends on availability of health workers even in the remotest areas.
The plan to provide milk and lunch to public sector primary students who are mostly undernourished, if implemented properly, would definitely enhance lifespan and give the nation a physically-fit workforce.
The public private partnership concept is being introduced in health sector also. The proposed reforms envisage making it mandatory for all private medical colleges to adopt one district hospital or to provide primary health facilities in affiliated teaching hospitals. However for success of the programme, vigorous monitoring is needed.
Implementations of development plans both in social and economic sector need vigorous follow-up by local governments on uninterrupted basis. This will help in achieving fast improvement in HDIs. It however depends on timely allocation and release of funds for public sector expenditures. Besides, funds must be used prudently through honest people at the helm, as until now lack of good governance has been the main impediment in closing the social gap and arresting rapidly growing poverty.
Further, the strategy in vogue to achieve macro-economic stability must not ignore its adverse effects on the poor. The structural adjustment programme and indiscriminate privatization of strategic assets have not only burdened the poor through aggravated unemployment and added to income inequalities, but also hampered projected growth trends.
To achieve overall improvement in HDIs, it is essential that macro-economic policies must be geared towards creating additional opportunities and resources for financially disadvantaged segments of population.
