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| July 14, 2008 | Monday | Rajab 10, 1429 |
Gender benders, please
Managing Manchhar
OTHER VOICES - North American Press
Education scene in South Asia
Revival of conflicts
THE tradition of human development reports is not very old in South Asia. The UNDP report that was launched in 1990 explored some new aspects of development, i.e. education, health and, after the Beijing conference on women, gender empowerment.
MOSCOW has refused requests to seek international arbitration over its increasingly tense standoff with Georgia as the government in Tblisi threatened to shoot down any Russian planes that flew over its territory.
INFLATION is a global phenomenon. Pakistan just could not have escaped it, however we might wish to. The inflation data for the last fiscal also underlines this fact. The headline inflation rose to 12 per cent against the target of 6.5 per cent and from 7.77 per cent in the previous year, and was driven mainly by rising global oil and food prices. The June inflation escalated to 22 per cent, highest in a month. Food prices were up 32 per cent from 28 per cent in May — again highest in the country and the region but well below global food price index that has jumped to 54 per cent. Global petroleum markets continue to escalate — with crude futures nearing $150 per barrel — and food prices are projected to remain strong in the near term. Simply put, there is little hope of inflationary pressures on the economy easing over short term. Economists expect inflation to exceed the target of 12 per cent for the current year as the government phases out oil and other subsidies to seek support from multilateral donors to shore up its foreign exchange reserves that have dropped to above $11bn from over $16bn in October.
Seen against this backdrop, what should the government’s response to inflation, which refuses to subside despite the tight monetary stance being pursued by the central bank since 2005, be? That said, one cannot help talk about millions of poor, particularly the urban poor, whose life has been hit hard by the increasing food costs. Even a slight surge in food prices erodes their purchasing capacity and forces them to cut back on other essentials.
The government needs to protect the poor to lower income groups from the impact of the surging food prices. It cannot control the global inflationary pressures or tide domestic prices, but it can hedge the poor households by giving targeted subsidies. Price controls and indirect subsidies in the past have helped poor consumers only partially. The government needs to strengthen the social safety net targeting the poor and the vulnerable to help them through tough times. We have been hearing of such programmes but they have not made much of an impact so far. Projects such as direct subsidies for poor households in the form of cash transfers and provision of basic food items — wheat flour, pulses and ghee — at lower rates need to be more focused and made effective. True the government has already announced a cash transfer programme but when it will actually become operational and thus prove to be the starting point is not very clear. It would have to be done now, without any further loss of time. Unless the government moves rapidly, we may find millions pushed below the so-called poverty line.
A WOMAN’S education has always been seen as a cost rather than a benefit. The developing world has rarely viewed it outside the confines of monetary gain. Therefore, education policies have hardly focused on individual choice and equality. Societal benefits of educating the female will penetrate generations by decreasing infant mortality, fertility rates and unwanted pregnancies — as emphasised by the World Bank in a recent statement on World Population Day. The Bank believes that “fifty-one million unintended pregnancies in developing countries occur every year to women not using contraceptives” and that improved access to birth control and education will slash these abysmal statistics considerably. Unsurprisingly, education will also arm women with skills and independence, enabling them to secure jobs, delay marriage and have a say in the number of children they want — rewards that will be the birthright of their girl progenies, bringing the curse of male supremacy to a welcome end.
However, for Pakistan these ambitions are still mere musings. According to the Education Development Index, Pakistan surfaces at the bottom of the list, behind Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. The Economist’s Intelligence Unit’s latest review of education sees “Pakistan’s education system…among the most deficient and backward in Asia”. Meanwhile, local surveys reveal that 10.3 million children in Pakistan cannot afford to go to school out of which seven million are girls and 42 per cent of the country’s women cannot read. This is despite the fact that Pakistan is a signatory to the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and its article 10 clearly specifies that women will not be discriminated against and will enjoy ‘equal opportunities in the field of education’. Goal three of the Millennium Development Goals also speak of promoting gender equality. It specifically calls for the elimination of gender disparity in primary and secondary education. Pakistan is obliged to strive to achieve this goal.
The great paradox, however, is that female emancipation cannot be achieved without educating and sensitising the male. The government must focus on inculcating insight amongst men through perhaps, door to door campaigns that include family counselling sessions and emphasise social behavioural reforms — force conservative clans to see the schooling of a girl child as an ‘investment’ rather than a futile expense. On the other end, new means of penetrating orthodox environs have to be sought such as increasing the number of schools on wheels and home tutorial projects. These initiatives need donors who believe in the promise of gender equality in learning and also in a woman’s right to her body and mind.
THE release of toxic water from the Manchhar Lake to the Indus makes headlines every year since that fateful summer that claimed scores of lives in Hyderabad and surrounding vicinities. Yet, officials concerned have to date done nothing to manage the issue effectively. That there have been no direct casualties in the intervening years despite the routine release of water is no reason for the irrigation department to feel elated about. It has been so only because of the wet cycle that is mercifully visiting the region for the last few years, allowing enough water downstream to dilute the toxins. This is simply about turning poison into slow-poison. Once the cyclic pattern is over, concentrated contaminants will be at it again. Lack of vision on the part of the leadership and lack of commitment on the part of official machinery are apparently the two main stumbling blocks. Whatever little is done to fill official files with meaningless paperwork is limited to focusing on the lake itself. The fact is that no improvement can be brought about at Manchhar without taking care of the Main Nara Valley (MNV) Drain that happens to be the conduit through which flows the load of poison into the lake.
There are serious reservations about the efficacy of the Right Bank Outfall Drain because of the bad experience with its predecessor, the Left Bank Outfall Drain. This calls for treating the effluents before the MNV empties itself into Manchhar. While officials tend to reject the notion straight away, citing the ‘huge cost’ supposedly involved in such an arrangement, a simple, cost-effective, indigenous solution lies buried somewhere in the files gathering dust at the irrigation department. Based on the electro-static process, the proposal entails putting up electrodes every eight kilometres along the MNV route. It envisions managing 90 per cent of the problem in much less than Rs50m. But after showing initial interest and declaring it technically and financially feasible, the authorities have been sleeping over it ever since. It would be the nation’s good luck if they wake up before the wet cycle comes to an end.
There he goes again
The New York Times
THIS has been a week in which the stock markets lurched sickeningly downward. The treasury secretary had to swat away rumours that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the pillars of the mortgage business, may be crumbling. Oil prices spiked, again. Airlines cut schedules and raised prices, again. And the best that could be said about one of the nation’s biggest companies, General Electric, was that it didn’t do worse in the second quarter than Wall Street had expected.
All of that made it more clear than ever why this nation desperately needs the next president to have a clear-eyed vision for the economy — and the federal budget in particular. And yet, the biggest news that Sen John McCain made last week was his renewal of a pledge to balance the federal budget by 2013. How? Who knows?
Mr McCain’s main campaign promises, if fulfilled, would lead to huge budget deficits. Extending the Bush tax cuts, enacting more tax cuts of his own and staying the course in Iraq would cost hundreds of billions of dollars more, every year, than the small-bore spending cuts he has specified. Mr McCain cannot balance the budget on a crusade against pork and a one-year freeze in a sliver of federal spending. Either he has a secret plan to balance the budget or he’s blowing smoke.
It is safe to assume there is no secret plan. To balance the budget in the face of ever-increasing tax cuts would require untenable near-term cuts in Medicare, one of the biggest drivers of budget imbalance. That, in turn, would harm elderly Americans, arguably Mr McCain’s most important constituency.
Do not misunderstand our argument. Controlling Medicare costs is essential to restoring budget health. But no politician, least of all Mr McCain, is simply going to slash the life out of the programme. Even reform of Social Security, which Mr McCain has also promised and which also must occur to restore long-term fiscal balance, would not right the budget any time soon. Any feasible reform (not that Mr McCain has one) would have to phase in over decades. Which leads us to conclude that Mr McCain is merely talking the balanced-budget talk.
Mr McCain and his advisers must know that his numbers do not add up. But adding up is not their point. Their point is to perpetuate the fantasy that Americans can have ever bigger tax cuts and a balanced federal budget. They cannot. The unbalanced budgets of the Reagan years and two Bush presidencies are proof.
… Saving more is ultimately the only way to dig out of the budget hole that the nation is in. That will be painful, because higher government savings, done properly, means higher taxes and restrained spending. Candidates for president do not like to be pessimistic, or even candid, really, about the economy. But a leader who wants to steer the nation through tough times should not spend the campaign telling Americans they can have it all. — (July 12)
This was followed by the Mahbub ul Haq Human Development Centre (MHHDC) report in 1997. In both these pioneer reports, Dr Mahbub ul Haq’s contribution was pivotal.
Since then the centre has published reports on different aspects of human development. Such reports by independent organisations are different from the dull and sometimes misleading documents published by the government, in three important ways: first, they provide independent data without the compulsion of underscoring the rosy side of the picture; second, they give a comparative view of the data in South Asian contexts; and third, these reports present data in a way that facilitates readers in interpreting it in a meaningful way.
The latest MHHDC report, Human Development in South Asia 2007, is a 10- year review (1997-2007) of human development in South Asia. Here I’ll focus on just one aspect of human development: education. In the last 10 years the governments of South Asia engaged in political rhetoric about improvement in education but in reality the priorities were quite the opposite. In 2004, defence spending as a percentage of education and health expenditure was 55 per cent in India, 38 per cent in Bangladesh, 40 per cent in Sri Lanka and 178 per cent in Pakistan. The figure for Pakistan is alarmingly high and shows how the education and health sectors are being ignored as resources are directed to one side alone.
In 2005, South Asia’s average literacy rate was 58 per cent, net primary enrolment stood at 87 per cent and 13 million children were out of school. If we compare these figures with those for 1995 we see some improvement. But this improvement falls far short of what is required. If we compare Pakistan’s performance with the average in South Asia, we realise that we are still below the average literacy rate of South Asia which in 2005 was 58 per cent. In Pakistan we could not mobilise our resources to provide a large number of students with access to schools. The result is that 6.5 million children are out of school. Not a single country in the world has more out-of-school children. This fact becomes more painful when we consider the high ratio of youth in our population. This youth, with proper education, could have been converted into useful human capital that could play an important role in national development.
The MHHDC’s 10-year review suggests some improvement in some indicators of education in South Asian countries but efforts and resources seemed be insufficient. The 1997 report had lamented that “South Asia is the poorest, most illiterate and least gender-sensitive region in the world.” This should have been a wake-up call for South Asian governments to speed up initiatives for improved systems of education to combat the challenges of access, quality and dropout rates. We see a large number of projects funded by multinational companies together with some expensive consultants. But despite tall claims of progress the ultimate result is that the region “continues to be the most illiterate region in the world containing around 379 million illiterate adults — the highest absolute number amongst all regions in the world” (MHHDC report, 2007).
Another problem that plagues the so-called progress in education in South Asian countries is that the outcomes of increased literacy numbers were not distributed equally among the masses. Inequality in terms of ethnicity, gender, geographical position, social class and economic resources prevails in most South Asian countries, including India where relatively more effective educational reforms were initiated. The recurring inequality and disparity suggests that something is lacking in our educational systems.
Why didn’t reforms in South Asia bring the desired results in the last 10 years? Why couldn’t enhanced literacy rates lead to equal distribution of opportunities and benefits? The experts have tried to look for the reason in low allocations for education. The average allocation for education in South Asia is less than three per cent which is on the low side. Low utilisation is another aspect of the problem, as is inappropriate spending. A few experts consider the governance of education as the root cause of the problem. All these analyses are based on certain truths and are quite convincing. The only problem though is that we try to analyse the issue in isolation. We must understand that education is not a neutral and passive phenomenon whose dissection can be carried out on a sterilised table in a lab environment. On the contrary it is a highly political phenomenon that needs to be studied in relation to society.
While we try to find the answer to the problem, we need to take into consideration the socio-political systems of South Asian societies. With a few exceptions, most South Asian countries are directly or indirectly ruled by military governments. In some countries, civilian autocratic governments are in power. Most of these governments have a limited and confined view of development that hinges on the physical side of development — dams, roads, shopping plazas, etc. In this kind of development the human aspect, for example education, health and gender parity are either ignored or underestimated. Most of these countries have a political system that discriminates against the poor and marginalised groups. It is this unfair socio-political system that acts as a resisting force and hampers educational reforms.
Bringing a change in the outer orbit of the socio-political system is not that easy but at the same time it is not impossible. For that we need to work on the quality of our education which means that instead of targeting an increase in functional literacy, we need to go beyond and encourage critical literacy. Instead of going for the inflated numbers, which is a political need of every government, we need to work for qualitative improvement. For this the role of civil society becomes central to creating awareness among the masses. In this campaign, private organisations can play a very important part by producing research-oriented reports like the one presented by the Mahbub ul Haq Human Development Centre.
The writer is director of the Centre for Humanities and Social Sciences at the Lahore School of Economics and author of Rethinking Education in Pakistan.
shahidksiddiqui@yahoo.com
Georgia’s ambassador to Russia flew back to Tbilisi on Friday, having been recalled after Russia admitted sending fighters to overfly Georgia’s breakaway republic of South Ossetia on Wednesday.
The regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, part of Georgia during Soviet times, have been described as “frozen conflicts” since the early 1990s, when vicious wars left them de facto independent and heavily dependent on Russian support. But in the past months, the frozen conflicts have been thawing quickly, as both sides accuse the other of provocation and the threat of renewed conflict looms.
Georgia has accused Russia of several incursions into its airspace in the past few months, including an incident where an unmanned Georgian spy drone was shot down over Abkhazia, but Russia has always denied its planes were involved.
This week’s incident was the first time Russia admitted an incursion. The Foreign Ministry statement said the flights were to prevent a potential invasion of South Ossetia by Georgian forces and “cool hotheads in Tbilisi”. Georgia responded furiously, withdrawing its ambassador from Moscow and calling on the international community to condemn Russia. It denies considering a military solution to either the Abkhazia or South Ossetia conflicts. Russia mounted the overflight while the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, was in Tbilisi. She gave her support to the pro-Western President Mikhail Saakashvili, and said Russia “needs to be a part of solving the problem and not contributing to it”. Ms Rice proposed talks to discuss Abkhazia, involving Europe, the US and Russia, as well as the Georgians and Abkhaz, a proposal the Russian Foreign Ministry brushed off. “We don’t see any reason for anyone’s mediation in settling relations,” a source in the ministry told Interfax news agency.
In recent weeks, a series of bomb blasts have rocked Abkhazia, causing several casualties. The Abkhaz authorities blame the Georgians and say the attacks are aimed at disrupting the tourist season. Thousands of Russians visit Abkhazia’s palm-fringed coastline each summer for bargain-basement holidays, and the money they spend is a main source of revenue for the impoverished region.
Georgian officials deny any involvement in the blasts.
— ©The Independent, London
