This paper is the first systematic attempt at understanding the nature and extent of hazards faced by child workers in the construction and related industries, which perhaps are not only growing more rapidly but have far greater hazards than any other set of occupations in which children are employed. This study is based on a field survey of 400 child workers in 200 small-scale establishments in Lahore. Section I places the study in the overall perspective of child work in Pakistan. An estimate of the total number of child workers in the country is made, the latest legislation on child labour discussed and the working conditions of children in the major occupations are analysed. Section II is devoted to a discussion of the specific working conditions of children in the construction and related industries, based on gleaning the available secondary sources. In Section III the evidence of our own field survey which is focussed on the issue of hazards faced by working children in the construction and related industries is presented. The major hazards in addition to sexual abuse and employer violence against child workers are examined on the basis of quantitative data. The numbers of casualties resulting from each type of hazard and in each type of industry are indicated. An attempt is made to construct a standardised index of hazards so as to assess the degree to which a particular hazard is lethal. Similarly, a standardised “Danger Index” is constructed to enable us to assess the degree to which a particular industry is dangerous with respect to work safety risk and accidents. Section III also analyses the survey data on wages and age groups of child workers, the income of their families, their family status and employer education. The paper ends with Section IV with a discussion on a three fold policy response and action that needs to be urgently undertaken in view of the survey findings.
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Pakistan experienced the reverberations starting in 1988 of the changes that swept the Asian emerging markets. To create an investment friendly environment the GoP adopted liberal economic policies of deregulation, privatisation, opening of capital markets to foreigners, liberalisation of foreign exchange regulations and dismantling of investment control - policies that lead to a significant increase in direct and indirect foreign investment in the country. These changes resulted in a drastic increase in the financial assets of Pakistan with stock market capitalisation rising from Rs.l88 bn in 1991 to Rs.547 bn at present, daily trading volume improving from 2 mn shares in 1991 to 50 mn shares at present and number of listed companies rising from 542 in 1991 to 788 at present. Despite the global trend of a significant increase in financial assets and the surge in domestic market capitalisation, an average Pakistani investor is still skeptical about entering the market. The reasons for this skepticism are:  lack of information about capital markets.  inherent risk involved in investing in stocks. Therefore, it is crucial for an ordinary investor to understand the way in which to overcome these drawbacks. An efficient and a risk averse mode of doing this is by investing in a mutual fund. A mutual fund is simply a group of stocks and other financial assets managed by trained investment professionals. Such a fund offers its shares to the public who in turn, become its owners. Typically, the fund advisor uses investors' money to acquire stocks .and bonds within the legal framework of the Corporate Law Authority. In other words, investors invest in a mutual fund to purchase a single portfolio (a portfolio is a basket of stocks).
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In 1995 the Republic of Korea (ROK) was officially admitted to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). This organisation groups together industrially developed countries of the world. Recently, the World Bank has also released a study of China that predicts that China is going to become the second biggest economy in the next fifteen years if its economic growth follows the pattern of the last fifteen years. ROK is the only country from among the developing countries to join the ranks of the developed industrialised countries in the last thirty years. However, it is still a small country compared to China. Hence when China completes its transformation into an industrialised country the whole world will be affected. How did South Korea achieve such an accelerated transition to prosperity? What measures were adopted by the Chinese leadership that has allowed China to grow so rapidly? There are many factors that have been cited to explain Korea's miracle, and rapid Chinese growth. However, In the following we will highlight the role that education, science and research and development (R&D) have played in their success. General prosperity with mass consumption has been achieved in the present century only in those countries that have transformed themselves from agrarian to industrial societies. They rely on massive industrialisation, mass production and mass consumption. They build huge power plants, country wide electricity grids, gas and oil pipe lines, refineries, dams, highways, ports, airports, huge mechanical, chemical, and electrical complexes. These industries use enormous amounts of energy and material and are generally based on the exploitation of science and technology (physics, chemistry, civil, mechanical, electrical and chemical engineering) generated over the last hundred and fifty years. While industrialising, these societies educate all their citizens, banish illiteracy, provide schooling to all their children and youth (up to 18 years) and generally promote education and research. The modern knowledge system, with its public schools, colleges, universities and research institutions is the product of such societies. They generate new knowledge at an exponential rate, thus doubling it every 15 years. This knowledge is generated by scientists whose number also grows exponentially. The Lahore Journal of Economics, Vol.2, No.2 88 For example the number of PhDs per million of population reaches hundred and more in these countries. The number of scientists and engineers per thousand of population reaches 100 or more. The expenditure on scientific research and development (R&D) reaches 1-3 percent or more of gross national product1. The productivity and efficiency of the worker increases continuously. Even agriculture gets totally mechanised and science based. It uses massive inputs of chemical fertilisers, pesticides, high yielding varieties of seeds, agricultural machinery, tube wells, sprinklers, canals, head works, bridges and dams. Developed state of science is reflected in production of large number of books, journals and research papers. In 1993, for example UK, China, ROK and India produced 14003, IS559, 6913 and 1396 new titles respectively dealing with science and technology related subjects. USA produced over fifty thousand. In comparison Pakistan in 1993 produced just 94 new titles2 on science and technological subject. Most of the three hundred new titles which appear every year in Pakistan relate to either religion or literature, a situation reminiscent of 14th century Europe. All this seems in total contradiction to our claims of achieving world standards in uranium enrichment, rocketry, lasers etc. Unfortunately, the real situation is far from satisfactory. Of the over half a million scientific research papers published annually all over the world, the Pakistani share is only 0.08 percent. India's share in comparison is nearly 30 times bigger3.
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This article will attempt to answer the question why the redistribution of land ownership (i.e. land reform) is important and even necessary for our society's progress and development. Why there remains a crying need to concretely study the question of agrarian land ownership and all it implies in terms of political and economic power distribution and its social fallout in the rural milieu. Let us begin with an examination of how the present land ownership patterns originated and evolved. A discussion of the pattern of agrarian land ownership must necessarily take as its main focus the areas where agriculture is the mainstay. That inevitably means the provinces of Punjab and Sindh. The other two provinces, NWFP and Balochistan, with the exception of some relatively limited areas where canal fed or barani cultivation exists, have economies that are mixed pastoral/agricultural, an economic base reflective of their surviving tribal structures. Punjab and Sindh, being the inheritors of ancient riverine civilisations, did not always have the dominant character of perennially irrigated agricultural areas. The traditional system of drawing the waters of the rivers for irrigation relied on relatively primitive canals or seasonal flood inundation of areas lying along the course of the rivers (sailaba lands). In addition, wells drawing on the aquifer were widespread, especially in Punjab where the ground water level was easier reached. This ancient system, which had not changed radically in its essentials for thousands of years, was uprooted and shaken up on the advent of British colonialism.
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Child labour exists throughout the third world including Pakistan. For some unknown reason, the Western Press has chosen to single out Pakistan to decry the system. The May 1997 issue of the Readers’ Digest carried a particularly vicious article entitled `No Life for a Child’ giving harrowing tales of beatings and other forms of coercion to make little children in Pakistan to work in factories. Advantage is taken of the fact that there has been no census in the country for two decades to bloat the figures of child labour. One estimate going the rounds is 15 million. But the more popular figure is 8 million which both UNICEF and SAARC have adopted. ILO produced a figure of 6.3 million till, in 1996 it sponsored a survey which turned up the figure of 3.3 million. In a country with a population of 132 million, every man, woman and child of which is under a debt burden of about Rs 13,021 per annum the figure of 3.3 million labouring children should not take anyone by surprise. Not that this is any justification for child labour. What is generally stated and believed to be an incentive for child labour is one particular industry, i.e. carpet weaving in which the nimble fingers of children tie better knots in handmade carpets. A prestigious social sector NGO, namely Friedrick Ebert Stiftung has blown this myth in its April- September 1996 issue of its journal, which, to quote says `Quite often productivity and in particular the quality of carpets are linked with the use of child labour. This is certainly more a myth than a reality and the nimble finger argument has no real base. Factually, the quality of carpets is associated with the expertise a weaver acquires over the years of weaving’. The article goes on to outline the programme of eradication of child labour from the carpet industry in Pakistan in which the government, the manufacturers and the buyers are collaborating with great success. But this aspect of the problem has been conveniently ignored by the author of the article in the Readers’ Digest referred to earlier. On the contrary, this article and other media have deliberately tried to foster the impression that authorities and society in Pakistan are entirely apathetic to the problem of child labour.
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Policy formulation and implementation are the chief, though not the only, business of a modern government, implying exercise of its power. In a democracy the people themselves grant permission to the government to exercise power in their name. Thus through the democratic process power is transformed into legitimate authority. However, there is a feeling that a policy, formulated through due procedures at the highest echelons of the government, is sometimes not implemented in the same spirit or in the same way as was originally intended by the policy makers. Thus there If need to locate and identify the points where such lapses take place. A policy implies a systemised attack on a certain specific problem or a methodical way of dealing with a certain sector. Usually all government action is taken, or is supposed to be taken, under the directions of a certain overall policy. Thus there are policies relating to sectors e.g. agriculture, industry, trade, social sectors etc., implying a framework of continuous government action. But sometimes it is felt that in a certain area, routine measures have failed and government departments in their ordinary day-today functioning arc unable to cope with the entire magnitude of a particular problem. Such cases relate to crisis management or making a frontal attack on a long festering problem e.g. disaster management, law and order breakdown, urgent need for export promotion, attracting foreign investment, shortages of essential goods, etc. Here a number of departments are involved in meeting a certain situation and coordination is needed between them so that the role of each department is defined and functions clearly spelt out. A policy is needed in such situations as an extraordinary way to meet that situation. A policy contains the following steps: (i) identification of a problem or a problem area; (ii) objectives to be achieved within a certain time frame, (iii) specific measures to achieve the objectives; (iv) suitable adjustments in other policies to make the new measures more effective and to remove anomalies and contradictions; (v) defining responsibility for implementation, (vi) designating staff and materials; (vii) publicity campaign to convince government personnel and the general public about justification for such policy action.
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In economics we study how and why “people” whether they are consumers, firms, non-profit organisations or government agencies make decisions about the use of valuable limited resources. When studying the environment from an economics perspective we are in fact primarily focusing on how and why “people” make decisions that have environmental consequences. Secondly, we focus on how we can manage institutions to bring these environmental impacts more into balance with changing human demands and the demands of the ecosystem itself. If we follow this economic approach several answers emerge to the basic question asked in environmental economics, that is “Why do people behave in ways that cause environmental degradation?” Some believe that environmental degradation is a result of human behaviour that is unethical or immoral. Therefore, people pollute the environment because they lack the moral and ethical strength to refrain from behaviour that leads to environmental destruction. But this approach is too general as it is not moral underdevelopment that leads to environmental destruction, rather, it is the way economic systems within which people earn a living are ordered. This is simply saying that people pollute for it is the "cheapest" way to solve a practical problem.
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In this paper we cite evidence regarding the likely impact of IMF/World Bank policies on labour and the poor in Pakistan. Our findings show that since the 1987 bout of structural adjustment, public sector employment has decreased while wages have been frozen. Also, overall unemployment in occupations with a high incidence of the poor has dramatically increased and real wages of skilled and unskilled labour sharply declined. In addition, subsidies that were critical to the consumption pattern of the poor have been cut while the burden of indirect taxes on the poorest income group has increased. Not surprisingly, there has been an increase in poverty and inequality, particularly in the rural areas.
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The diverse growth experience of economies across the globe is perhaps the most intriguing question that the economics profession faces. The economies of East Asia have grown rapidly over the past three decades, while the economic performance of the South Asian and Latin American countries has been relatively mediocre, although better than that of the African countries, where the per capita incomes have been generally declining. Among the developed countries also, there has been considerable diversity of economic performance. There is no dearth of research on the question, but there is little agreement among economists on what explains the diversity of economic growth experience. One reason for the absence of consensus is that economic growth is a relatively recent phenomenon and we, as economists or social scientists, still do not understand well what factors bring it about. Sustained economic expansion and rise in living standards can be traced back only to the late eighteenth century, i.e., the time when the Industrial Revolution started in Great Britain. This is not to suggest that there had been little social or economic change prior to that epoch. Quite the contrary. Agricultural practices had been improved over time, and there is a rich record of the mastery and ingenuity of artisans all over the world. But such improvements in products and processes as occurred over the period prior to the Industrial Revolution somehow did not become an economic force, leading to a general improvement in the living standards.1
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In the post war world, numerous attempts at all levels – multinational, bilateral and domestic – have been made to foster growth and development in the low income world so that these countries can catch up with their richer brethren from the industrial countries. Why has growth not been faster? What can be done to make these countries achieve more balanced and sustainable growth? These are important questions of the day that are preoccupying all serious positive social science and development policymaking. To a large extent, many of the answers that are being derived relate to the failure of these countries to develop key institutions. Most practitioners and thinkers are now in agreement on this issue but remain perplexed at what is required to develop these institutions. The public sector’s attempts at developing the institutions within its fold have not succeeded. The fostering of non-governmental institutions also remains fairly uneven in its results. Donor funding for institutional support too has had very limited results despite the extensive history of sectoral and institutional reform that has been supported by substantial financial and technical assistance and resources. One area that the practitioners and thinkers in the sphere of institution-building seem to be paying little attention to is the origins and development of more successful institutions in the world. Most of the institutions that command international respect are in the western industrial countries. These include the major universities such as Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and Chicago, think tanks such as Brookings, Carnegie, Rand, court systems, stock exchanges and central banks etc. How were these established and how did they develop to the extent of gaining the respect of the society around them? What was their contribution to the society in which they were situated? These are important questions that may allow us to understand the difficulties with institution building in the low income countries. We examine the history of two major universities in the US to derive certain important implications for institution-building.
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