This paper addresses two topics which essentially compliment each other. The first is the empirical investigation of the relationship between aggregate agricultural productivity and poverty in Pakistan through the course of time. The second is the estimation of the central inputs or determinants of agricultural production, again on an aggregate level and through time. The main empirical findings of this research suggest that increases in agricultural productivity have alleviated poverty in Pakistan but not to the extent to which the negative forces of a high population growth and increasing food prices have worsened its incidence. In the case of the determinants of agricultural productivity, the results show that accompanied with the size of the cropped area, fertiliser off-take has played the most significant and powerful role in increasing agricultural productivity through time in Pakistan, especially at the onset of the Green Revolution __ the introduction of High Yield Variety crops and seeds in the late sixties.
KEYWORDS: Agricultural productivity, rural poverty, Pakistan, alleviation of poverty.
JEL: N/A.

The crisis in East Asia has tempered the loud enthusiasm of many economists, magazines and multilateral institutions for unbridled international flows of capital. Since its start some prominent economists and financiers have expressed doubts that market mechanisms, left to themselves, necessarily end with a desirable outcome. Perhaps this is the first step to questioning whether free flows of capital between countries are desirable at all. Oddly enough, despite all that has been written in textbooks and journals extolling international capital flows and all the romanticisation of ‘globalisation’ in television advertisements, there appears to be no systematic examination of the gains and losses to be expected from them. One reason may be that economic theory, as it stands now, is ill suited to carrying out such an examination. International economic theory has two strands, the one to explain how trade in finished products and raw materials is determined by comparative advantages and the other, using quite separate assumptions, to explain the balance of payments. In the former it is assumed that capital flows are negligible, in the latter they do little more than accommodate trade imbalances. Neither address the question of what determines capital movements or what their effects might be.
KEYWORDS: Globalisation, market mechanisms, balance of payments, economic development, capital movements, trade barriers..
JEL: N/A.

The majority of Pakistani womanhood belongs to the silent, invisible peasantry in the rural areas. Essentially belonging to an underdeveloped region, the rural female toils relentlessly from morning till night. Her status is highly complex. In certain roles she is exalted; on other counts her very being is negated, which, when translated to human development indicators, depicts the profile of a woman with a very disadvantaged status, in fact, one of the lowest in the world. This study collects and collates data to present the profile of the rural female of Pakistan. It clearly shows that without concrete moves to do so, the mere acceptance and recognition of her contribution to society would do much to elevate her status. In Pakistan the role of the woman is strongly defined by religious and cultural/social norms. Due to illiteracy and misinterpretation, the latter is vastly perpetuated (UNESCAP 1997 p 3) under the garb of the former. There is “widespread misconception about the place Islam accords to women...” (Report of the Commission of Inquiry for Women 1997 p ii). Pakistan is a classic case where steady economic growth has not been accompanied by concurrent growth in the social sector. Within the confines of this phenomenon, the rural population suffers from inequitable distribution of resource availability and human development services. The condition of rural women is not hard to conceptualise, given the above circumstances.
KEYWORDS: Profile, Rural Woman, Pakistan.
JEL: N/A.

Is there a conflict between development on the one hand and democracy and/or human rights on the other? The issue began to be seriously examined some forty years ago1 and the controversy has simmered because there has been empirical evidence to indicate at least some shortterm validity to those who do see a conflict and press the primacy of growth. They take off from premises like Einstein’s, “An empty stomach makes a poor political adviser.” The controversy in recent years has not so much been for and against human rights as over which category of it should have precedence: civil and political rights or economic, social and cultural rights. Originally, the bill of rights had remained confined only to the first category. But after World War II, when the newly formed United Nations began to consider the need for a universal declaration and, later, for a binding covenant on the subject, inclusion of economic, social and cultural rights was vehemently and successfully argued, especially by the socialist bloc of countries. Later the issue even became an element in the cold war. While the West assumed the title of ‘Free World’ on the basis of its relative guarantees of civil and political rights, the East claimed credit for its primacy to economic rights. The developing countries too, unable or uninclined for various reasons and to varying degrees to accept international standards in guaranteeing the freedoms to their people, began when challenged to claim an overriding need to concentrate on the economic
KEYWORDS: controversy, democracy, growth, United Nations, economic, social and cultural rights.
JEL: N/A.

Prescription of a common syllabus for all children in Pakistan is the demand of social activists. The author feels that this is not a feasible proposal at this time as there is a huge gap between the life experiences in the two worlds that exist within Pakistan ---the world of the privileged and the world of the deprived. Children of the poor fail to develop certain essential pre-literacy skills (Zafarullah, 1996) and are therefore unable to compete with their more fortunate counterparts. These underprivileged children lack an orientation towards literacy: 1. They lack certain essential pre-literacy skills, 2. Their home language is different from the school language, 3. They lack the motivation to become literate. Privileged children, on the other hand, have few such shortcomings. In fact they are overly motivated, competent and competitive in the area of school learning. Hence, if we have a combined syllabus we will either have to downgrade the educational standard of the advanced children (bringing them down to the level of the backward children) or up-grade the disadvantaged children and take them closer to the level of their more fortunate counterparts. The second option is obviously more desirable. This paper briefly describes some of the methods employed by the researcher to rapidly upgrade under-privileged children before and during elementary schooling. These methods have been implemented and tested by teams led by the researcher and have proved dramatically successful.
KEYWORDS: Competition, Pakistan, economic growth.
JEL: N/A.

Some would claim that charity is a core cultural trait of mankind. The urge to help others is a selfish act of survival of the group and hence individual security. In today’s world, welfare has assumed a wider meaning and is linked with the economy of the state, the concept of human rights of society, structure of society and cultural expression of welfare. The state may be willing to contribute towards welfare but poor economic conditions may not allow welfare programmes or only allow low key programmes. With poor level of governance most welfare work comes to a standstill. In such situations the burden of poor economies can be shared by all rather than the poor alone. Human rights, as defined by the UN, impinge on the basic concept of welfare as seen by individual states. The right of all people to shelter, security, health, job, education as well as freedom to speak, associate and practice religion are concepts difficult to swallow for many societies and states. Social disparity may not allow many to grant rights to others. Yet social welfare is a practical arm of human rights and not an act of charity to be left to individual whims. In Islam, social welfare is the right of the underprivileged and not an act of charity extended by the state or individual. On the other hand the welfare of all the citizens of the state is vital for economic and social development. There are more than 94 indicators to measure social development. Each country’s performance in this area can be monitored following each intervention. Although social welfare had been debated by philosophers for a long time, it only became important after the Industrial Revolution in the 1840s. This was the time of the birth of modern cities with all its problems of communal living and compression of people into tight compartmental life, dynamics new to the first generation rural society. Since the Industrial Revolution started in England, the first city to cross the 2 million mark inhabitants a hundred years ago was London. The responsibilities of the new industrialised state was projected in the domain of social welfare of its people. Social welfare was the responsibility of the parish but with a large number of new towns, this became impractical. The Poor-Law Amendment Act was passed in 1834 and the Municipal Corporations Act in 1835. These were the basis of social welfare in the Britain of the future (Hill, 1997). Social welfare at the level of local government started in the middle of the 19th century West and emerged as a profession. Social welfare work in the hospital started in Massachusetts General Hospital, USA in 1905 (Morales and Sheafor, 1989). Social welfare departments in hospitals in Pakistan started in 1963. The Lahore Journal of Economics, Vol.3, No.1 106 The concept of a welfare state was introduced in the 1910 budget by David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill which was blocked in the House of Lords. In the USA Child Welfare was started in 1912 and social welfare was introduced during the Roosevelt era in 1935. The Social Security Act of 1935 was a significant landmark for the US. WH Beveridge (1879-1963), born in Rungpur, now Pakistan) is considered as the father of the modern welfare state when he produced the Beveridge Plan in 1944. The Beveridge Plan recommending war on Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor, and Idleness formed the basis of post war liberalism (Dean, 1994). It was after World War II that the Labour Government in Britain put the theories of social scientists into practice with great enthusiasm. It was a combination of “Keyesian economics and Beveridgean social concern that gave the welfare state its strong political legitimacy and popular appeal”. Health, education, housing, minimal wages, money for the unemployed, care of the handicapped and destitute were assured by the state.
KEYWORDS: economy, cultural expression, welfare, Human rights, UN.
JEL: N/A.

The fifth decennial population Census was held after 17 years and its data is now being processed. Originally the Census was scheduled to be held in March 1991. The exercise had been actually initiated that year from Sindh but was soon abandoned when two major ethnic groups in the province started accusing each other of resorting to false enumeration in order to achieve a fake majority in the province. Some of the prominent Punjabi politicians also objected that the head count figures in Sindh were being engineered in order to stake claims to more resources for the province at the expense of other federal units. The Census was postponed in view of the objections and it was announced that the exercise would be undertaken in October the same year. This time the Balochistan government announced that it would reject the Census results if thousands of Afghan refugees living in the province, many among whom had acquired fake Pakistani identity cards, were not first repatriated to their own country. As the federal government failed to do this, the Census had to be postponed without any new date being fixed.
KEYWORDS: Census Problems, Pakistan, Afghan refugees, Punjabi politicians, NWFP, PKMAP.
JEL: N/A.

In any economic system, be it a free market or a command economy, the elementary functions of production, distribution and consumption take place within the natural world. The natural world provides the raw materials and the energy inputs for the production process whereas production and consumption leave “residuals” or waste products which go back into nature. The manner in which the residuals are handled will infact tell us how they may lead to pollution or the degradation of the natural environment. (a) explains nature in its role as a product of raw materials and (b) explains what the impact of residuals is on the natural world. Therefore we can see that environmental economics draws from two angles. Primarily it is the study of waste flow management and secondly, it studies the impacts of human activity on environmental resources. Thus one’s misconception of environmental problems only being constrained to pollution are removed. Infact, environmental economics focuses not only on pollution oriented problems but also looks at issues such as habitat disruption caused by human activities in an economic system. A good example of this is a housing development scheme which will disrupt the natural habitat and at the same time bring an array of problems such as sanitation, house waste disposal, etc. Analysing the environment from the perspective of an economic system we have to establish how this
KEYWORDS: Environment, Economic Systems, pollution, nature, resources, environmental problems.
JEL: N/A.

Tariq Banuri, Shahrukh Rafi Khan and Moazam Mahmood (ed.), Just Development: Beyond Adjustment with a Human Face, Karachi, Oxford University Press, 1997. Pp. 207. Price not mentioned. The Oxford series of books published on the occasion of the golden jubilee of Pakistan’s independence constitute a welcome and high quality addition to material on various facets of life in the country. “Just Development” reviews Pakistan’s development from the human angle and looks at the structural adjustment programme, debating whether it is possible to have “adjustment with a human face”. Perhaps the most enduring element of our development strategies has been the relegation of social objectives to low priority and the consequent neglect of social sectors. This has been as true of decades of high growth – 1960s and 1980s – as of those of low growth – 1950s, 1970s and 1990s. Why?
KEYWORDS: golden jubilee, Pakistan’s independence, constitute, human face, government, bureaucracy.
JEL: N/A.

S.M. Burke and Salim Al-Din Quraishi, Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, his personality and his politics, Karachi, Oxford University Press pp 412 Rs. 495/-. A convincing vindication of the Quaid’s Conversion from Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity to founding father of Pakistan. A book which most Pakistanis have been waiting for for the past five years or so, has at last been published by The Oxford University Press, Karachi (1997) as part of their Jubilee Series. A dispassionate study of the Quaid’s life and his personality illustrates that he was a luminary in three different walks of life. Firstly, as one of undivided India’s renowned legal practitioners; secondly, one of it’s leading legislators and, thirdly, as one of it’s leading politicians. It is universally recognised that the Quaid attained not only world stature, but won a permanent place in world history. Through his dynamic and inspiring leadership, he not only won independence from the then British colonial rule, but had the sole distinction of altering the world map by carving into existence the largest Muslim state of its time in the comity of nations – bigger than the United Kingdom and France put together. It is the role of a leading politician which this latest publication principally deals with.
KEYWORDS: Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, personality illustrates, legal practitioners, legislators, politicians.
JEL: N/A.