KARACHI: “Today began yesterday,” pointed out former politician and intellectual Javed Jabbar while explaining ‘The human resource development challenge for Pakistan’ as part of the distinguished lecture series organised by the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Karachi, here on Thursday.

He was replying to Dean Faculty of Social Sciences Prof Dr Moonis Ahmer, who after introducing the guest lecturer, wondered, “Why Pakistan stands at 144 in the world in human resource development? And when will we be able to overcome poverty and underdevelopment, especially in the social sector, etc.?”

Taking it from the very beginning, Mr Jabbar spoke of the problems that came up as a result of Pakistan’s ‘overnight’ creation with a 1,000 miles distance between one part of the country and the other; and India and Afghanistan, which weren’t in favour of its existence, being in between. The people in East Pakistan were clearly in majority but West Pakistan, where the population was less, made decisions for both of them.

And from 1947 to 1971 human resource development in both East and West Pakistan was distorted due to external threats, weak political leadership, military intervention in policies and other internal and external factors. Still, in those 24 years, Pakistan showed capacity for productivity in agriculture, manufacturing, enterprise, exports, etc., though human resources here developed very slowly in comparison.

The next 43 years, 1972 to 2015, saw the renewal of the concept of Pakistan with rebuilding self-confidence and reviving civil and political process and also witnessed interruptions by two prolonged phases of military-led rule.

Still, this country has remarkable natural resources in the form of agriculture, minerals, topography, climate, rivers, sea-line, an exclusive economic zone, coastal and hilly wind and plenty of sunlight. Other resources included some man-made ones such as small, medium and large manufacturers, transportation, financial and professional services along with 8,000 plus years of heritage.

With 190 to 200 million people, Pakistan is the sixth most populous country where 56 per cent or 110 million people fall in the age group of 15 to 64 showing a rich potential. “My subjective definition of human resource is the process by which every human being is enabled to develop and apply his or her potential to lead a healthy, productive and rewarding life,” said Mr Jabbar.

And in order to be able to do that, there is a need for literacy, education, health, access to safe water, etc. but even if we had that, there is a problem of low gender equity. Then we have fallen behind on all our millennium development goals (MGDs). Also, out of 186, Pakistan’s global ranking index (GDI) is 146.

“And yet, Pakistan has two Nobel laureates of village origins and we have produced remarkable people in medicine, IT, engineering, aviation, diplomacy, nuclear power, science, arts, media and culture. Despite the 1971 [debacle] and the Kargil [adventure], we see exceptional facets of competence and courage with training operations of such a high quality that we have so many of our soldiers in the UN peace-keeping forces. Dubai, East Asia, Africa, UK and US have all benefited from Pakistani entrepreneurs,” he said. One of the biggest challenges in the development of human resource is a decline in education standards as about 60 per cent of the budget allocated for education in Sindh in 2014 remained unutilised; the other challenges being that the laws on compulsory education are not enforced; the equipment bought for scools in villages are left to rot in the absence of teachers; and there is also a wastage of human resource or misemployment e.g. hundreds of women graduates from medical colleges do not go on to practise.

“In Pakistan we have the well-educated, the educated uneducated, the mis-educated and the non-educated. What waste it is to leave intelligent people uneducated. When you are out of school, college or university, you are out of the run!” he remarked.

Stressing that in order to overcome the human resource challenges here, we needed nothing short of a revolution in education.

Mr Jabbar also pointed out that Pakistan shared its human resource issues with other countries as well. “We should learn from others, who have also dealt with these things, how to cope with such issues. We should work together with other countries who have done better under similar circumstances. But the basic responsibility for improving things is our own,” he concluded.

Published in Dawn March 6th, 2015

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