KARACHI: Speakers at the concluding day of the international conference held at Karachi University (KU) on Sunday called for revisiting policies of governance to bridge the widening gap between the haves and the have-nots and achieve the true essence of democracy and development.

The conference titled ‘The Challenges of Social and Human Development’ was organised by university’s faculty of social sciences in collaboration with the Higher Education Commission on the campus at the arts auditorium.

Adviser to the Balochistan chief minister, Dr Kaiser Bengali, said social development had been Pakistan’s major goal since its independence, which was mentioned in every budget speech.

“However, even after more than six and half decades of drum beating about social development, the country has the highest infant mortality rate in the region. This shows failure of all our social development policies,” he said.

Pakistani society, he pointed out, was divided between the elite and the common man. “Elites have access to all the luxuries of life while the common man has no or less access even to basic necessities of life,” he said, adding that education had now become a commodity.

The director at the Pakistan Study Centre of the KU, Prof Syed Jaffar Ahmed said provincial autonomy was a popular demand of Pakistani political leadership, but when it met with the 18th amendment, the leadership failed to reap its benefits.

“Pakistani society is changing fast. We need to revisit our policies of governance in order to achieve the goal of social and human development,” he said.

Prof Anwar Shaheen in her paper spoke about the plight of poor women in Pakistan and said that they were among the least empowered in society, whether they lived in urban or rural areas. “Their ownership of individual and collective assets as well as access to resources of human development is highly limited,” she said.

Dr Najam Abbas from the East West Institute Belgium said developing countries should invest in their institutions of higher education so they could present solutions to their societal issues.

“Adequate importance must be given to the education sector and to modernize technology to boost the industrial and economic growth,” he said.

Syed Jazib Shamim of KU’s department of international relations in his paper said the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) of India was involved in the disintegration of East Pakistan in 1971 and incumbent Prime Minister Narendara Modi had openly admitted India’s secret role in the 1971 crisis.

He also criticised the government for what he described as muted response to Indian aggression on the Line of Control (LoC). “India violated the LoC 230 times this year and the presence of Indian naval submarine in the Pakistani seas is a clear violation of the United Nations Conventions.

“The political leadership, however, took a lot of time to announce the new army chief and kept the nation guessing over this highly sensitive issue when our enemy forces are killing our civilians daily on the border,” he said.

Presenting her paper, Prof Sumanasiri Liyanage from SANASA University in Sri Lanka appreciated late economist Dr Mahbubul Haq for his work on human development focusing on poverty alleviation and education, which, she said, added new dimension to the development discourse.

Director of the Area Study Center for Central Asia at Peshawar University Prof Sarfaraz Ahmed Khan, Prof Hasan Askari Rizvi, Dr Sadiq Ali Khan of KU’s computer science department and Szabist dean of social sciences Prof Riaz Ahmed Shaikh also spoke on the occasion.

Published in Dawn, November 28th, 2016