Rethinking human development

In 2010, the UNDP celebrated twenty years of the Human Development Index (HDI) report. That year, the UNDP said that human development is – inter alia - the expansion of people’s freedoms “to engage actively in shaping development”. That idea resonates in the recently launched National Human Development Report (NHDR) 2017 by the UNDP Pakistan, albeit there is a need to expand and develop the idea furthermore.

The NHDR “advocates that providing meaningful socio-economic and political engagement opportunities to youth is a necessary condition for enhancing human development”. It states that “human development can only be achieved through actively engaged citizens”. Yet in the same breath it says, “actively engaged citizens are an outcome of human development.”

Without giving a firm opinion over which one is the chicken, and which the egg, the report concludes: human development and engagement are intimately connected. And drawing on this assertion, the report focuses on the voice of Pakistan’s youth, their identity, socio-political participation, societal inclusion, and social attitudes and other indicators.

For the purpose of measuring citizen engagement, the UNDP uses two indicators. Youth social participation rate that measures youth’s involvement in any kind of social activity, and youth political participation rate measured as the percentage of youth who voted in the past or wish to vote in the future.

This information basis to measure citizen engagement, however, needs to be expanded in future exercises. It can be achieved by means of a survey, as did the UNDP in this case by conducting National Youth Perception Survey (NYPS) 2015. Or by nudging the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics to expand the information basis of its World Bank funded periodic Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement (PSLM) Survey.

District-wise voting ratio as a percentage of registered voters; registered voters as a percentage of potential voters needs to be considered. So should other questions to take a pulse reading of civic and political engagement such as: did you approach your (local or relevant) public offices for a problem in the last six weeks; are you a part of any NGO for other non-profit civil society organisation; are you a member of any political party; did you take part in any neighbourhood patrol, cleaning drive, etcetera; did you report a neighbourhood or district level problem to any media organisation or share on social media.

In fact, the UNDP would do well to expand the information basis of its global HDI ranking along the lines of political and civic engagement measured by the likes the indicators proposed in the preceding paragraph. There is no doubt that the current components of the human development index – health, education indicators for example - are important. But history has shown that political and civic engagement, and ensuing development thereof, does not necessarily require top quality and quantity of education and health standards.

At its heart, economic and political development, and the desire and struggle thereof, springs forth from the human mind. To desire and struggle for this development that mind need not know algebra; it needs civic and political education – not necessarily in terms of formal education but a mental state or social ethos transferred from one generation to another.

High gross school enrolment ratio and mean school years do not necessarily mean that residents of a certain country or a district have high levels of political and civic engagement. If the people tend to wait for a messiah, or if their mind is set on the notion that human suffering is the only pathway to heaven, then no amount of income or education or health levels would lead to high level of political and civic engagement.

Democratic disposition demands that economic, social and political development should reflect the majestic will of the people. If ‘people are the real wealth of a nation’, and that the ultimate purpose of development should be to ‘enlarge people’s choices’, then the expression of those choices by way of civic and political engagement is the egg that gives birth to human development.

The UNDP therefore ought to assess the social values, or the mental makeup of a population analysed from the lens of civic/political engagement for the measurement of the HDI. Accordingly, the HDI should be based on various aspects of political and civic engagement with better indicators than the ones used for the NHDR.