👨👩👧 Human Development
Naseer Memon
Constant decline
April 6, 2024
THE UNDP’s Human Development Report for 2023-24 ranks Pakistan 164th out of 193 countries. Last year, Pakistan stood at 161. Its decline on the Human Development Index (HDI) did not create much of a stir in the country. Perhaps few were surprised, considering the protracted political instability, the colossal losses resulting from the 2022 floods, poor governance and staggering inflation.
Forgotten schools
January 3, 2024
FLOOD devastation is often characterised by breached embankments, collapsed houses, broken roads, loss of crops and traumatised masses. Sindh witnessed all these forms of devastation in 2022. Consequently, rehabilitation initiatives have tried to address these aspects. But what has remained missing from the debate is the colossal loss to schools and education.................
Destitute people
May 18, 2023
TOGETHER, Pakistan and India are home to the largest number of poor people in the world. Yet, instead of jointly addressing the plight of the people, they continue to quarrel and periodically engage in conflict. Even the recent visit of Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari to Goa to attend a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting was met by the pejoratives of hawks on both sides.................
The lost human capital
May 14, 2023
Pakistan Human Capital Review, released by the World Bank, depicts a gloomy picture of Pakistan in various areas of human capital development. One of the key findings is that Pakistan’s Human Capital Index (HCI) value of 0.41 is lower than the South Asian average of 0.48; Bangladesh stands at 0.46 and Nepal at 0.49.
The state of human capital development in Pakistan is comparable to that in Sub-Saharan Africa, which has an average HCI value of 0.40. This sombre fact is a wakeup call for policy makers,................
Floods and the status of SDGs
April 2, 2023
The Asia and the Pacific SDG Progress Report, 2023, launched recently, has revealed that the Asia-Pacific region is set to miss the 2030 target year by several decades to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. According to the report of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) as the midpoint of delivering the SDGs approaches, the targets are still off track.
From the analysis of the available data and progress achieved so far, it appears that the Asia-Pacific region will miss 90 percent of the................
Educative facts
June 11, 2017
The chief minister of Sindh had to face an embarrassing situation when a recalcitrant mafia trashed his strict instructions against cheating during the school examinations in Sindh. The media ridiculed the writ of the government by airing footages of unrelenting cheating in the examinations and leaking of exam papers on a daily basis. The situation reached a level when the government of Sindh had to summon the counter-terrorism department to bring the haywire examinations machinery under control.
Sindh was the leading province when it came to education indicators during the early decades of the country.................
Drink to death
February 5, 2017
Only two days after the Chief Minister Sindh, sitting inside a cozy drawing room near Manchar Lake, rhetorically claimed that supply of safe drinking water to the people of Sindh is being ensured, a flabbergasted head of the judicial commission on drinking water wondered how people of Sindh are alive after drinking sewage every day.
The Supreme Court constituted one-member judicial commission in December 2016 to investigate the causes of poor sanitary conditions and the shortage of potable water in Sindh. While hearing a petition at its Karachi registry, a two-judge bench mandated ................
Dangerous divides
November 13, 2016
Although income-based poverty in Pakistan has declined from 57.9 per cent in 1989 to 29.5 per cent in 2013-14, the country experiences substantial level of multifaceted inequalities. Urban-rural, men-women, inter-provincial and intra-provincial and rich-poor divides are of appalling proportions that keep fuelling social disharmony and political instability in the country.
According to a report of the World Bank, the per capita income of the top 10 per cent population is $2,100, which is twice higher than the national average. Some 42 per cent of the national income is captured by top 20 per cent of the population.................
A lose-lose game
October 30, 2016
India and Pakistan are entangled in a fresh spate of border conflict. At the edge of war, both the countries have severed even cultural ties by banning movies and TV plays aired from other side of the borders.
Mired in chronic penury, illiteracy and morbidity, both India and Pakistan boast their nuclear arsenal amid hysteric war anthems. Media incessantly sprinkles fuel to keep the flame of hatred alight. Amid all this mania, almost one and a half billion people remain on the tenterhooks. A foreboding Global Hunger report predicts that India and Pakistan are among the countries where hunger would relentlessly hover even after 2030, rendering................
Salvaging education in Sindh
October 16, 2016
A chronically ailing education sector in Sindh has prompted a belated emergency by the incumbent chief minister. Before enduring this inexorable rot during the recent decades, Sindh was the torch-bearer of education in the country. Decay of education indicators in Sindh coincided with an overall failure of education sector in the country.
Although no province has shown enviable performance in the education sector, the pace and magnitude of decline is mind-boggling in Sindh. It is widely believed that education in Sindh was subjected to a systematic degeneration since the Zia-regime. Following the footprints of the martial law regime,................
What went wrong?
August 21, 2016
Almost seven decades after its inception, Pakistan is still scrambling to deliver on the promises it made to its citizens. While there is much to cheer, there is also a lot that causes consternation. What independence means to a common citizen need to be analysed with a people-centred lens.
Lofty political concepts such as independence and democracy lose meaning if they can’t provide health and security to people. Personal safety, rule of law, justice, protection of human rights and access to affordable basic services are some of the key determinants of................
Development deficit
January 10, 2016
Human Development Report is a barometer of the state of human development in different countries of the world. The report is not only an ultrasound of individual countries but also shows relative ranking among regions and countries. The Human Development Index is an aggregate value of a range of human development indicators. It encompasses a wider spectrum of vital indicators of human development sectors e.g. health, education, environment, gender and income.
Launched in 1990, the flagship annual document of UNDP provides an empirical evidence of commitment, or lack of it, of governments to develop its people. Gone are the days when development ................
Vortex of inequality
February 8, 2015
A globally recognised organisation, Oxfam, has recently issued a report "Asia at a crossroads" that underlines the challenge of spiraling inequalities in Asia. The succinctly written document identifies the factors that engender a complex vortex of poverty adjacent to islands of profligacy of millionaires.
Income equality has an undeniable paramountcy among the multiple factors that fester the widespread imbalance of human development in Asian countries. Plagued by pathologically anti-poor public policies, frequent natural cataclysms, authoritarian regimes, ubiquitous corruption, malevolent conflicts and regional animosities; most................
Human insecurity
November 2, 2014
The UNDP has released its flagship document Human Development Report 2014 entitled "sustaining human progress: reducing vulnerabilities and building resilience". The annual report provides status of all countries against vital indicators of human development.
Pakistan, ranked at 146 out of 185 countries, has been bracketed among low human development countries. Pakistan barely maintained last year’s ranking when it shared 146th position with Bangladesh. However, Bangladesh this year moved four rungs up and stood at 142nd position. With such an ignominious ranking, a nuclear power, flaunting atom bomb has been outshined by all other SAARC countries except the................
Insecure aid workers
December 25, 2012
THE Aid Worker Security Report 2012 has grouped Pakistan among the five countries where aid workers face the most attacks.
The other four include Afghanistan, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan. The report was released only a few days before the country witnessed the brutal killings of several anti-polio campaign workers in Karachi and parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa within two days.................
Lacklustre performance
December 12, 2011
PAKISTAN has slipped 20 rungs on the ladder of human development this year. Last year, Pakistan was ranked 125th on the Human Development Index (HDI) and was in the category of ‘medium human development’.
This year Pakistan has been ranked 145 and thus falls in the category of ‘low human development’ countries. The latest annual Human Development Report of UNDP has ranked 187 countries on the HDI. Among the Saarc countries,................
Development disparities and the MDG targets
October 8, 2007
The Millennium Development Goals (MDG) report 2006 on annual update produced this year, provides information on the state of human development indicators up to year 2005.
It reveals development gaps within different parts of the country. A total of 98 districts have been ranked on various development indicators. The report confirms that politically skewed development paradigm has left the underprivileged areas less developed. Disparities in the level of................
Featured Articles
Canal controversy
DAWN • August 7, 2026
RECENTLY put into trial operation, Jalalpur canal has stoked a new controversy between Punjab and Sindh. A summary of the Sindh government, raising objections against the project, was already pending with the Council of ..........
Geographic Shield
July 18, 2026
PAKISTAN’S stance on India’s unilateral suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty is rooted in its legal rights concerning the Indus basin’s western rivers under the treaty. Walking away from the treaty is a breach of obligation by India. Moreover, the threat to stop flows to the lower riparian is a human............
Encroachment risks
July 2, 2026
REGIONAL weather forecasts indicate that El Niño conditions may influence the coming monsoons. International meteorological forums anticipate excessive heat spells and below-normal rainfall, especially in Pakistan’s plains. However, this forecast does not rule out the possibility of occasional cloudbursts that generate torrential spates in the highlands and urban flooding in the plains. Similarly, excessive heat can melt snow at a ........
Looming danger
May 21, 2026
EL NIÑO is set to grip South Asia this year. This weather phenomenon is characterised by warming of the ocean surface in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific. The ocean’s temperature influences South Asia’s climate, particularly the intensity of the summer monsoon. As the Pacific’s water gets warmer, atmospheric convection moves eastward, drifting away from the Indian Ocean. Hence, the region experiences a weak monsoon due to suppressed rainfall ............
Hydro war crime
March 24, 2026
WATER is as precious a commodity as oil for countries of the Middle East. In the absence of freshwater resources, the region relies heavily on expensive, desalinated water. During the current war in the Gulf, the protagonists have not only aimed projectiles at oil depots, they have also decimated two water purification plants. If more water plants are targeted, the fallout could be worse than the consequences of blasting oil stocks. Iran has claimed that the US attacked a freshwater desalination plant on Qeshm Island, disconnecting water supply to 30 villages...........................
Kharif relief
April 15, 2026
THE Indus River System Authority has declared a modest 15 per cent water shortfall in the Indus system this kharif season. Irsa’s advisory committee took this decision at a time when storage in reservoirs was at its highest point in five years in the first week of April. Water availability in the rivers and dams this year is far better than it was last year when Irsa had to declare a 43pc shortfall in April 2025 due to severe drought. Irsa had to restrict water availability to drinking needs in that month...........................
Food for thought
May 5, 2026
A PROTRACTED blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has imperilled global food security. UN Secretary-General António Guterres has warned that if the disruption continues “through mid-year”, 32 million individuals will be “pushed into poverty”. Another 45m, he said, would face extreme hunger as fertiliser stocks run low and crop yields fall. More ominously, if severe disruptions persist to the end of the year, “we confront the spectre of a ...................