Federal Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz said in a seminar the other day that South Asia had over 550 million people living below the poverty line. Of these, some 50 million can be found in Pakistan alone, if the previous figure of 32.1 percent below the poverty line out of an estimated 150 million population is kept in view.
The government, however, now claims on the basis of a survey of 5,000 households throughout the country that poverty has declined by 2 percent.
Quite apart from reservations about the basis for the truncated questionnaire employed and the sample chosen for the survey (largely urban), this is hardly anything to crow about. The government cannot rest on these laurels at least.
It has to be admitted that the government's stringent financial belt tightening has helped the country achieve relative macroeconomic and fiscal stability.
This year's GDP growth is estimated at around 6 percent, well above the forecast of 5.3 percent. But this growth has not been shared equally as far as distribution of income is concerned.
It is arguable that government surveys like the one mentioned above, as well as the basket of goods the government uses to determine inflation are deficient in realism if not seriously flawed.
The latter leaves out house rent and school fees from the basket, for example, although this constitutes a hefty share of most household budgets.
Despite all the rhetoric about poverty alleviation, on the ground the realities of life at the mass level contradict the findings of the 'elegant' government survey.
Prime Minister Zafarullah Jamali's Task Force on Poverty has just submitted its report. Amongst other recommendations, it has persuaded the Prime Minister to announce that Rs 16 billion will be allocated in this year's budget for poverty alleviation. And how is this 'generous' amount to be used?
It will be disbursed to 12 million deserving people at the rate of Rs 1,000 per month. Zakat Fund disbursements through the Bait-ul-Maal are also to be enhanced. It would be no exaggeration to call this a drop in the ocean of poverty.
On a more tangible level, the government's poverty alleviation strategy seeks to address the problems of the vast majority, the rural poor, as its first priority.
This is as it should be. But the government is basing its strategy on big water reservoirs to overcome shortages of irrigation and drinking water and bring the benefits of improved agriculture and its concomitant increased incomes to farmers.
Such reservoirs however are both controversial and of very long gestation. Even those that can be immediately started require at least five years planning, etc before a single brick can be laid. This thrust therefore offers little in the way of relief in the short term.
The government's resources would be better employed and to greater effect were it to concentrate on lining the canals and watercourses.
This is a project that is feasible from the point of view of capacity, employment generation, cost, and impact on the lives of the rural poor.
Such lining can be carried out incrementally, it will provide jobs in the rural areas (as local governments and the people of the area are involved), it is within the financial resources of governments, and most tellingly, according to one study, can provide as much water saved as three Kalabagh Dams for one-twelfth the cost.
An added benefit is the saving of thousands of acres of agricultural land being lost to water logging and salinity every year because of seepage's from the old and unlined canal network.
If the government does not address the poverty issue quickly, it runs the risk of the social tinder engendered by poverty and unemployment exploding one day, since the poor, and especially the rural poor, have no stake in the growth and prosperity the government is so sanguine about.
Were mass social unrest to break out, it has the potential of sweeping all the good work on the economic front achieved by the country's economic managers along with the bad.
The government must wake up to the urgency of addressing the forlorn state of the people's lives, for whom talk of growth and prosperity is a slap in the face.
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