PAKISTAN needs to target an economic growth rate of seven per cent, according to the Asian Development Bank, to take care of three per cent increase in labour force per annum.

This appears an uphill task for the policymakers owing to multiple challenges facing the economy while the average growth rate for the past four years has been less than three per cent.

Growing unemployment is a serious issue for Pakistan and much of the rest of the world both during economic slump when firms and states shed jobs, and in times of growth that do not produce jobs or enough jobs. The problem has assumed severe proportions in economic models pursued over the past four decades. Unemployment could worsen if the Europe and United States are hit by double-dip recession from which Pakistan cannot remain totally immune. And there can no economic recovery without full employment.

While policymakers have looked at past growth models around the world— Japanese and South East Asian and American varieties included—- they have all disappeared like soap bubbles over time. It is now time to bank on the nation’s collective wisdom and evolve an indigenous system suited to the country’s soil.

It may be pertinent to revisit ideas thrown up in July 1945 by the Economic Planning Committee set up by Quaid-e-Azam to suggest policies and objectives for India’s economic reconstruction. The EPC report said state intervention and individual enterprise both were extreme types of economic organisations and a new way has to be found. For determining this fresh approach, the guiding points were spelt out: “full employment, adequate wages and reasonable prices.” It considered the size of the population as the basic issue in sound economic planning.

The experts on the committee did not see western system of social security as a salvation for the unemployed. “Great Britain is engaged in protecting a system of social security through unemployment allowance. The system implies enforced idleness and cannot be conducive to self-respect of persons who are capable of contributing to the general welfare, to live as a charge (burden) on the community…… Nor can social order be maintained for long under such a process.”

Unemployment benefit was not a productive pursuit and it was no remedy to replace demand for work by demand for maintenance of livelihood. It was no substitute to the people’s claim for the right to work, adequately remunerated and appropriate to the mental and physical capacity, training and aptitude.

The EPC defined its core objective in the following words: “we are primarily concerned with the standard of living” of the masses. Advocating “state intervention for equitable distribution of wealth,” it observed that the ‘great difference in incomes’ was ‘ a menace to social order.’

In the economic plan submitted by the committee every attempt was made, not only to assure gainful occupation ‘for all’, but to ensure that the profit derived was divided in accordance with ‘ the cannons of distributive propriety.’

Poverty is an unnatural condition, which the EPC felt, should be relieved by finding employment for the masses. “Why, it is asked, has society been so organised that the majority of the people in India are suffering from want and deprivation through enhanced idleness and are unable to provide for themselves the essential needs of adequate food, clothing and shelter?” After six and a half decades, the country is nowhere near these stated objectives . Unemployment is rising, prices are skyrocketing, and one hardly ever talks of fair wages for workers. Nor the occasional minimum wages prescribed by the government are fully enforced by the private sector.

The job situation in the developed world is no better. To quote The Economist, “today’s joblessness is a particularly dangerous sort. A disproportionate share of those out of work are young, and youth employment leaves more scars, in terms of lower future wages and greater likelihood of future employment. Joblessness is also becoming more chronic… Long term unemployment is harder to cure, as peoples skills atrophe and they become detached from the work force. Its shadow lingers, reducing future growth rates, damaging public finances and straining social order for years to come.”