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The crises in Pakistan’s economy have had a disastrous impact on society during the past decade, getting only worse after the military took over. The choice facing Pakistani youth for years has been: jobs or jihad? Since there are hardly any jobs in the declining economy, the youth, fired by religious motivations in the madrassas, opt for jihad.
According to the Human Development Report on South Asia, ‘‘While less than one-third of Pakistan’s people are income poor, nearly one half suffer from serious deprivation of several opportunities of life. Nearly two-third of the total adult population (and as much as three-fourths of the adult female population) can’t read or write.
Access to basic services like primary health care and safe drinking water is denied to nearly half of the population. About 38 % of the children under five are malnourished.’’
The latest report also suggests that poverty in Pakistan has increased from 21% in 1990-91 to 35% in 1998-99 and the number of poor as per government criteria, increasing at the rate of nearly 6 million per year now touches almost 58 million. Per capita income in Pakistan in early 1980’s grew at an average 12 % per annum. But by 2000-2001 the figure dropped to half of that.
Pakistan’s economy used to derive great benefit from expatriate labour abroad, especially the Gulf countries.
This was traditionally unskilled labour engaged in the construction boom of the post-1973 oil price hike shock. However, the opportunities for unskilled labour in Arab countries have been reducing due to the economic changes taking place there.
The result: the number of Pakistani expatriates in the Gulf countries now hovers around one million (compared to nearly 3.8 million Indians). The result has been reducing remittances declining from over $2.5 billion in early 1980s to around $800 million by the end of the ’90s.
Pakistan’s labour force is growing at the rate of 2.4%, and the unemployment rate is growing at an alarming rate of 6% per annum in the last five years.
Coupled with the decline in jobs abroad, the economy’s capacity to generate employment opportunities has been decreasing, which can be figured out from the low growth rates. With the high rate of population growth, the figure for unemployed Pakistanis are likely to go up further.
There is a mismatch in Pakistan in the supply and demand for skills. It’s basically education levels in a country that creates employment skills; studies indicate that Pakistan’s literacy rate is one of the lowest in the world and is worse the countries which have per capita GNP equal to or close to Pakistan.
Less than three-quarters of its school-age population attends primary school. Expenditure on education as a percentage of GNP has been less than 3 % in the last decade.
Similarly, health, another important social sector remains deprived and expenditure on health as a percentage of GNP has been, on an average 0.7% cent in the last decade (compared to the average of 6.4% spent on the military during the past two decades). This level of expenditure incidentally is less than what Pakistan has spent in six months on the deployments rather than cut back jihadi terrorism in India.
Curiously General Musharraf, in his latest interview to Time magazine, is totally dismissive of the costs of military confrontation on the borders and believes that only India is suffering!
Inefficiency in the education system, high rate of poverty and unemployment in Pakistan has led to more and more Pakistanis in madrassas. Swathes of rural areas do not have public schools, but the madrassas located all over Pakistan give them free food, shelter, clothing and education. Madrassas, in fact, are a lifeline for most Pakistani parents who find it impossible to provide their children with the basic necessities of life.
(The writer is a New Delhi-based
research scholar specialising in Pakistan)
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