POVERTY is not merely the absence of wealth. It is the absence of grit: the drive to acquire and apply essential skills for navigating life’s challenges. Such a deficit seems to define us. Occupational tasks are performed with low competence, muted motivation and poor accountability. Professional conduct, interpersonal engagement and service quality often feel transactional and contested, deepening discontent and distrust. These frictions signal a wider malaise — eroding trust and cohesion in society.
Pakistan’s bleak Human Development Index reflects more than economic fragility. It encapsulates lived despair in the form of food insecurity, preventable life losses, involuntary migration, conflict and declining access to education and healthcare. These aren’t abstract figures; they are realities endured by millions.
At the core lie two interwoven crises. First is unchecked population growth, straining public systems and compounding vulnerabilities. Unlike nations that embraced population planning to stabilise development, we remain in denial, watching challenges multiply.
Second is our entrenched learning poverty. This isn’t just about poor indicators. It’s a cultural condition shaped by decades of aversion to competence and scientific inquisition. Foundational learning, ie, numeracy and basic literacy and life skills, has diminished to the point where even basic comprehension remains undervalued.
Pakistan’s bleak HDI reflects more than economic fragility.
Its erosion has grave consequences. Violent mobs and unrest cannot be attributed to elite manipulation alone. They also stem from a societal decline in curiosity and the capacity to learn. We struggle to listen, empathise and reason. However, the ensuing cognitive void continues to widen.
The learning gap is no longer theoretical. Children in urban centres face exploitation not merely on account of poverty, but also due to an absence of basic life skills. Thousands leave school prematurely for labour — trading learning to survive and entrenching deprivation.
Low parental literacy curtails academic support to such children. Families without financial literacy often embrace social exclusion. Inability to comprehend safety instructions at work sites and plants can lead to amputations and fatalities. The lack of foundational learning also restricts the comprehension of labour contracts, pushing many towards informal work or migration, but these come at the high price of lack of protection and financial strain.
Without foundational learning, vocational training, formal employment and civic engagement remain inaccessible. Weak comprehension restricts voting and legal awareness. Misinformation spreads easily when people cannot assess credibility, fuelling sectarianism, extremism and unrest.
Even education, when divorced from critical thinking and emotional intelligence, fails to produce ethical and productive citizens. Rote memorisation of religious or academic texts without comprehension reinforces shallow learning cultures.
The lack of foundational learning affects labour productivity directly. Millions of young people enter the job market annually, yet most gravitate towards informal sectors, not by preference but by constraint. These sectors offer little social mobility and are flooded with under-skilled labour. Over 70 per cent of Pakistan’s workforce, per the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, are employed in informal jobs.
This misalignment restricts productivity and drives youth unemployment. It also triggers distressed migration, where workers often remain highly exposed to exploitation. Without foundational learning, Pakistan’s labour force remains unprepared for industrial, technological and the skills sectors.
The data echoes what the country feels. Aser 2023 reveals that only 13pc of grade 3 students can perform basic division, while four out of five 10-year-olds cannot read with comprehension. These are not just educational gaps. These are our moral failures. Consequent exclusion persists across gender, geography and ethnicity.
Foundational learning must no longer be treated as a technical checkbox. It is a national promise, which is vital to the democratisation of society, economic equity and social mobility. Reimagining public policy around it is imperative.
To fulfil this promise, reforms must be deep and inclusive: integration of early learning into public health awareness, embedding financial and legal literacy in community uplift programmes, modernising teacher training and producing multilingual, accessible content.
For every child to read, count and thrive, this promise must be kept, not through lofty declarations but committed action. Pakistan’s youth are not assets by default; they must be equipped with the tools to shape their own destinies.
The writer has been amplifying foundational learning reforms for over two decades.
Published in Dawn, August 13th, 2025
