If Pakistan’s social and economic problems were to be given the face of a relatable movie character, it would probably be zombies: those immortal dead. Every time you think you kill them, they remerge like a scary sequel of a zombie thriller. Fiscal gaps, external gaps, savings-investment gap, power gap and what not.
Fundamental to all these is the lack of human capital. At the end of the day, it is labour - white collar or blue - that produces exportable surplus, increases the size of economy, has the acumen to save, and come together to work on new ideas for solving problems faced by private sector or public.
This shortage of talent is also partially the reason why to this date PTI’s dream team is still incomplete, even though it’s a party brought to power by the urban educated lot. Even if they are able to complete the team any time soon, the market of talent lacks depth. As was noted earlier in this space, “if a new bank, a software house, a footwear manufacturer or even a restaurant opens up and wants to attract good talented people in big markets such as Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, wage rates would shoot up overnight like as if the share price of a small-floated stock.” (See ‘PhD scholars’ and a ‘talented’ nation, Sep 11, 2018).
The lack of human capital and adequate depth of talent pool is also evident by the fact that, for example, the country is seriously short of demographers, and also economists. (See Time to talk about population, April 2, 2019). Thankfully, the country still has its old guard of economists – the white-haired lot. But who will be the country’s next generation of economic managers for a serious shortage of economic experts looms large and few even know about it. This is quite visible from the fact that it takes unbearably long to fill posts like Planning Commission’s chief economist, or the VC of Pakistan Institute of Development Economists. (For details read Dearth of economists, February 23, 2016).
In comes some fresh datasets that the central bank recently highlighted in its second quarter State of Economy report for FY19. The report shows that the country’s talent pool is far too shallow than most optimistic people imagine.
The report says that four people out of every ten people in total civilian labour force are downright “illiterate”, whereas three out of four literate civilian workers are only educated up to matriculation or ten years of education. And here is more: citing the World Bank, the SBP flagged that Pakistan’s ranking in the Human Capital Index stood at 134 in 2018 out of 157 countries. The country’s ranking in harmonised test scores is 145 out of 157 and in fact lowest in this region.
“The finding that exacerbates the problem, however, is that the level of “learning-adjusted education” - the number of years that the attained education is actually worth in terms of quality (this is done so using standardized test scores across countries) - is estimated to be around 4.8 years for the children enrolled in Pakistan, the lowest when compared to regional averages. These results the central bank wrote.
Translation: If people are the real wealth of nation, then Pakistan is clearly ultra-poor, and this entire young bulge that everyone is going gaga about is actually an incompetent, unskilled, liability than anything to be proud or hopeful about.
Can any single government or a political party ever be a zombie slayer? Think again, in most zombie movies it’s the society, whatever is left of it, that comes together and finds a unique solution through tons of luck, and bold, selfless, wildly improvised moves that befit a thriller. Too bad unlike a movie, this one has to be lived through. Bonne thrills!
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