October 12, 2003

GENERAL Pervez Musharraf, his Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, the military in general, and the IMF and the World Bank in particular, will be delighted by this UNDP report produced by Dr Akmal Hussain. On the other hand, political economists and serious social scientists will be hugely disappointed. Those who will be happy with this report will be pleased largely because it ignores serious political issues and explains much of the underdevelopment and poverty in Pakistan, in terms of governance failure in the past. Those who will feel disappointed will do so for precisely the same reasons.

The report begins with a review and explanation of the ‘multifaceted crisis’ in Pakistan’s economy, with discussion on three sets of crises: the financial crisis which focuses largely on Pakistan’s huge debt problem, which for the author, has emerged primarily because of poor governance, with non-development spending being used by governments to ‘prop up their power’. Discussion on the economic crisis follows with a section on the crisis of the human condition which looks at data in different sectors ranging from health and education to the crisis in poverty and issues related to gender and children.

The next chapter deals with economic policy and the structure of the economy, both with a focus on poverty followed by a chapter which looks at the nature and structure of poverty as it exists in Pakistan today, based an a survey conducted for this report. The survey results try to show the process of poverty creation, inform us about how the poor cope with their poverty and give us a great deal of information about the characteristics of the poor from the survey.

Since NGOs are seen as a solution for most of Pakistan’s economic and social ills, the next chapter on NGOs looks at involvement and engagement with the devolution process. Sadly, the most important contribution of this report, notably the creation of a district level Human Development Index (HDI), is lost somewhere in all that follows. The HDI ranks 91 districts in Pakistan, and on its own would have been a very useful contribution to the development literature in the country. In this report, unfortunately, other than a simple ranking, there is no explanation as to why these ranks exist. While most districts in Balochistan are at the end of the list, one would have wanted to have analytical explanations for why Ziarat is second, Haripur third, and Lahore 12th. There are no such explanations. Most interesting is the unexplained fact that Balochistan’s per capita GDP is far higher than that of the NWFP.

This report on poverty has numerous problems with it. For example, although the meltdown of the economy in the 1990s is documented, there is not even a passing reference to structural adjustment, conditionality, the WTO, the IMF or the World Bank. How one can talk about economic and political developments in the 1990s without mentioning these factors belies the imagination. Also, while the report has too much of a rural imbalance, extraordinarily, there is no discussion, leave alone endorsement, of land reforms. How poverty is to be reduced with the help of NGOs and local organizations — autonomous organizations of the poor — without land reforms, is anyone’s guess.

Although the report does, correctly, talk about the exploitation of local power, local administration and landlords, there is no linking-up with the larger political economy of the state, of the military or of international financial institutions. Even ‘governance’ is, after all, a broad political issue. For the author, the issue of power seems to be one only at the local level. But this is not always the case as the Okara farmers’ agitation shows. There seems to be a very conscious decision made by the author to distance himself from the larger political economy of the state. This, unfortunately, takes away the merits of the solutions proposed.

The self-promotional tone of the author detracts from its credibility. There are far too many references to the author’s own work, and far too few to texts on poverty and agriculture by distinguished Pakistani social scientists. Mahmood Hasan Khan, Rashid Amjad, M. Irfan, and numerous important papers by A.R. Kemal, Shahrukh Rafi Khan and Haris Gazdar are not even cited. The chapter on the NGOs, for example, has eighteen footnotes, eight of which cite the author’s own research; surely, there is a far greater body of literature on NGOs, than the selective use here. Worse still is the sloppiness in the references cited at the end: nine references do not even have the year of publication and many are located out of sequence. This UNDP report on poverty is very similar to others produced in recent years and adds little new to our understanding.

 

Pakistan National Human Development Report 2003: Poverty, Growth and Governance

By Dr Akmal Hussain

United Nations Development Programme, Pakistan, 9th Floor, Saudi Pak Tower, 61-A Jinnah Ave, Islamabad

Tel: 051-9251-2800133

Website: www.un.org.pk/undp

ISBN 9-69-873600-X

179pp. Price not listed

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