Another five-year plan
Consider Pakistan in 2015. The economy is increasing by seven per cent, agricultural output by 4.8 per cent, manufacturing by 8.5 per cent and services by 6.4 per cent. Trade is booming, the financial sector is thriving, all the children of primary school age are attending school, 65 out of every 100 adults are literate, the infant mortality rate is down to 40 per 100,000 live births and the maternal mortality rate to 140 per 100,000 deliveries. The incidence of poverty has declined to just 13 per cent, unemployment is at its minimum, social and economic disparities amongst the people have narrowed and those living in the rural and remoter areas of the country have access to basic public services like drinking water, sanitation, healthcare and education. Meanwhile, inter-provincial relations have significantly improved. Sounds impressive? Yes, but unrealistic too.
That, however, is what the draft 10th five-year plan envisages for Pakistan five years from now. The details inform us how cut off those sitting in the Planning Commission are from reality. Why do we need five-year plans when we cannot even properly implement our annual plans? Barring the first one, none of the previous five-year plans achieved its targets. Even that first plan owed its success to a generous infusion of funds from the US as the so-called free world used Pakistan as a frontline bulwark against the Soviet Union. The other five-year plans fell prey to chronic political instability, domestic and regional conflicts, inadequate funding, and a lack of capacity to implement them. The factors responsible for past failures still exist. Besides, now we also have full-blown insurgencies going on in at least two provinces — Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. The law and order situation in the remaining two is far from satisfactory.
More importantly, as conceded by the authors of the draft plan themselves, the financial crunch, security concerns, energy shortages and global conditions are stalling fresh investments in the economy and preventing an economic recovery. The draft doesn’t say how it proposes to overcome these problems, and whether the government has the means and tools for ensuring the execution of its plan over the next five years. Needless to say there’s a need for fresh thinking on the entire planning process to link it to ground realities. Instead of coming out with a hurriedly drafted document, the planners must initiate a public debate on the proposals. Fed on the same old remedies for problems that have aggravated with time, we need to be careful in our choice of solutions. Only a debate can generate the fresh ideas that we so desperately need at this moment.
Children at risk
Our legislators need constant reminding that with child labour, child abuse and child trafficking endemic in society, Pakistan can hardly be seen as a country that is investing in its future.
The latest indictment comes in the form of a report issued by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. The committee has pointed out that Pakistan’s child protection system lacks comprehensiveness and is highly inefficient. The committee evaluates the progress of states that are a party to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Pakistan became a signatory in 1990. Its five-yearly report is an instrument for measuring a government’s success in implementing the world body’s recommendations. This year’s report, cited at a conference in Islamabad, noted that concerns raised over children’s rights and protection in the committee’s previous observations had been insufficiently addressed. As evidence of the government’s failure to protect children, the participants referred to incidents ranging from corporal punishment to child labour as well as to the recent acid attacks on girls in Balochistan.
Unfortunately, due to factors as varied as militancy, poverty and a patriarchal set-up, our children find themselves in dire need of protection. While effective laws are necessary what is more important is their implementation. The fact is that the laws that do exist have not been enforced the way they should. An example is the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance which was formulated in 2000 but whose stipulated codes of conduct have not been properly implemented. Similarly, despite the Employment of Children Act 1991, child labour has increased because of rising poverty in the country.
The proposed National Commission on the Rights of Children has not been constituted although the relevant bill has been in the process of being drafted since 2001. This is an unacceptable situation. The budgetary allocation for children’s health and education must be increased, and related issues such as development and poverty addressed. Given how heavily the country’s population is skewed towards the young, Pakistan simply cannot afford to allow the next generation to grow up in an environment of deprivation and victimisation.