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Social Welfare, Health and Pakistan
Noshi Arif and Farakh A. Khan
Published:Jan - June 1998
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.
Published:Jan - June 1998
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.
Note: Economic Systems and the Environment
Shamyla Chaudhry
Published:Jan - June 1998
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.
Published:Jan - June 1998
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.
Published:Jan - June 1998
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.
Published:Jan - June 1998
Rafi Raza, (Ed.), Pakistan in Perspective, 1947-1997, Oxford University
Press, 1997. pp. 320.
This is undoubtedly a most useful, updated collection of articles on
various aspects of the Pakistani canvas. It is a valuable contribution given the
relative paucity of material and literature on such topics. Aside from the
somewhat tedious chapter on foreign policy, tiresome by virtue mainly of its
bulk (stretching over a total of about a hundred pages in its entirety), the
articles make for interesting and refreshing reading for not merely the
specialist but the layperson as well.
If length is any indication of importance, then surely it is a case of
misplaced priorities to have given so much space to a subject such as foreign
policy and, in comparison, the pieces on such vitally crucial issues as
population planning and human rights are allocated, for whatever reason, a
considerably less quantum of space in the book.
KEYWORDS:
Book review, Pakistan, economic development, human rights.
JEL: N/A.
Technical & Vocational Training in Pakistan
Shahid Kardar
Published:July - Dec 1997
Pakistan’s economic reforms that were set in motion in 1991 rest on
the tripod of privatisation, domestic deregulation and trade liberalisation. A
critical component for strengthening the reforms and improving their
effectiveness will be the availability and quality of human resources for
accelerating industrial growth.
This paper, therefore, attempts to:
a) Review the success of Pakistan's vocational and technical education
institutions in satisfying the market demand for various skills.
b) Based on these assessments, identify the key constraints to the
availability of technical skills and make recommendations on how the
government can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of training
arrangements.
KEYWORDS:
Technical training, vocational training, labour demand, workforce, manpower, public sector, public sector training.
JEL: N/A.
Published:July - Dec 1997
This is a conceptual paper on the analytics of the phenomena of
economic corruption. And it is very much a working paper, begging
comments. The paper concentrates on what appears on first reflection a
redundant question -what is the impact of corruption? The almost knee jerk
answer is loss of income. However, when modelling economic corruption we
run into the problems of determining the questions of: loss of income for
whom - the principal, the agent, the state, the consumer, the economy? -
how? and by how much?
KEYWORDS:
Corruption, macroeconomy, macroeconomics, comprehensive model, analysis.
JEL: N/A.
Published:July - Dec 1997
The governance of an institution is normally partly ensured by other
institutions, which depend on yet other institutions for their governance.
But who ultimately guards the guardians? For the liberal electoral
democracies of Europe and America the answer that evolved from the
political thought of the eighteenth century and the limited liability joint
stock company of the nineteenth was, crudely put, checks and balances and
voters, who could be the electorate or shareholders. Its limitation is that it
presupposes a state and the right of the voters to vote in their own interest.
How, then, can good governance be ensured for international organisations,
especially the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, in which
the representatives of the developed countries hold the majority of the votes
on the Boards and are expected to cast them, not in their own immediate
interests, but in the long term interest of the developing countries that
borrow from these institutions?
KEYWORDS:
World Bank, governance, institutional governance, reorganisation, reform, internal organisation.
JEL: N/A.
Child Workers in Hazardous Industries in Pakistan
Akmal Hussain
Published:July - Dec 1997
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.
KEYWORDS:
Child labour, child worker, education, hazard, Pakistan, working conditions.
JEL: N/A.
Published:July - Dec 1997
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.
KEYWORDS:
Capital markets, domestic market capitalisation, investment, mutual fund investment, Pakistan.
JEL: N/A.
Published:July - Dec 1997
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.
KEYWORDS:
South Korea, ROK, GDP, OECD, research and development, R & D, investment.
JEL: N/A.
Published:July - Dec 1997
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.
KEYWORDS:
Land Reform, land ownership, agrarian reforms, Pakistan, economic distribution.
JEL: N/A.
Published:July - Dec 1997
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.
KEYWORDS:
Child Labour, welfare, enforcement, ILO, UNICEF, social welfare, education.
JEL: N/A.
Published:July - Dec 1997
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.
KEYWORDS:
Policy formulation, policy implementation, political leadership, administrative leadership.
JEL: N/A.
Note: How Does Environmental Economics Function?
Shamyla Chaudry
Published:July - Dec 1997
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?”
KEYWORDS:
Environmental resources, environmental economics, environmental impacts, Pakistan.
JEL: N/A.
Structural Adjustment, Labour and the Poor in Pakistan
Shahrukh Rafi Khan and Safiya Aftab
Published:Jan - June 1997
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.
KEYWORDS:
Structural adjustment, Pakistan, IMF, International Monetary Fund, structural adjustment agreements.
JEL: N/A.
Published:Jan - June 1997
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.
KEYWORDS:
Global economy, analytics, growth, technology, total factor productivity, TFP.
JEL: N/A.
Institution-Building – Lessons from History
Nadeem ul Haque
Published:Jan - June 1997
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.
KEYWORDS:
Growth, Development, institutions, institution-building, donors.
JEL: N/A.
Pakistan’s Experience in Employment Generation at the Micro and Macro Levels, and Future Directions
Shahid Amjad Chaudhry & Masooma Habib
Published:Jan - June 1997
The Pakistan economy is currently going through a period of much
needed structural adjustment focusing on: (i) Reducing fiscal deficits from
about 6 to 4 per cent of GDP, which should reduce public sector
borrowing and bring down interest rates and inflation; (ii) Reducing tariffs
from an average of about 80 per cent in 1993 to about 60 per cent
currently and about 45 per cent next year – which while requiring painful
adjustments particularly in the industrial sectors, should make Pakistan
more competitive in the long term and also benefit consumers; (iii)
Reducing the size of the public sector in the economy by privatizing
nationalized banks, nationalized and public sector industry and public
utilities including power, gas and telecommunications, which should
increase the efficiency of these sectors. All these measures have
implications for employment generation. In the short term they are
slowing down the economy and therefore employment creation is not
taking place at the earlier higher rates. In the long term they should help
stabilize the economy and add significantly to economic growth.
KEYWORDS:
Pakistan economy, employment generation, employment, government policy, GDP, formal employment.
JEL: N/A.