This year's prestigious lecture at the annual conference of Pakistan Society of Development Economists had a timely theme, "The Changing Transition to Adulthood in Comparative Perspective: the Case of Pakistan." Cynthia B. Lloyd, Director of Social Science Research at the Population Council in New York, delivered the lecture, pointing out that one consequence of globalisation has been rising inequality across and within countries.
She also observed that those with adequate preparation and access are able to take advantage of new opportunities and better their lives as also their families', while others are left behind. Further, the challenges for young people growing up in countries such as Pakistan, in which they constitute a relatively large percentage of the overall population, are all the bigger. Hence, investments required to ensure that young people make adequate preparation for adulthood - an adulthood which is likely to be substantially different from that of their parents - will also have to be large in proportional terms.
These assertions amount to iteration of the obvious. What is less obvious though are governmental plans and programmes that are needed to prepare young people to meet the new challenges and benefit from the opportunities that may become available to them in the globalisation process. A sine qua non of progress and development, it hardly needs saying, is education. As the visiting scholar pointed out, the rapidity of global change and changing patterns of employment over the next decade will require governments to give greater attention to the quality of primary schooling in order to build a base for fast expansion in schooling at the secondary level. Sad as it is, this country measures pretty badly on that score. A recent UN report had revealed that it lags far behind on its commitments with regard to the UN's Millennium goals that seek to achieve universal literacy by the year 2015. Also, it spends far too little, about 2 percent of the GDP, as against the UNESCO prescribed 4 percent, on education. No wonder, despite the successive governments' tall promises that the country would soon have hundred percent literacy, the figures remain dismally low, especially for girls.
It is plain that if the government does not take urgent and radical action to improve things in the field of education, not only majority of the young people, who at present are in the process of transition to adulthood, will end up at the lowest wrung of society when they grow up, but the country as a whole will stand to suffer in the face of new global challenges. So far the government's preferred policy to deal with the problem of pervasive poverty, which is intrinsically linked to low literacy rates, is to focus only on the bigger picture. The macro economic indicators, it is argued, that are improving admirably will ultimately lead to a trickle-down effect, lifting vast numbers of the poor from under the poverty line. But things are not working out that way. They hardly ever do. No doubt, the economy is in a better shape, but there is little to show that poverty is declining. Side by side with policies that encourage greater economic activity, therefore, the government needs to put in place development programmes that are specifically aimed at generating more and more employment opportunities.
And of course it should focus on spreading education, which is the bedrock of socio-economic development anywhere. Towards that end, it must enhance budgetary allocations to this sector, and adopt a well thought-out policy which ensures quality, and is gender sensitive as well as need-oriented so that young adults of the future are well equipped to live and work as productive members of this society.
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