Originally Posted by engr sarakhan

It is politics not economy that matters

It is commonly said that despite large natural resources, Pakistan is a poor country. This is a bitter fact & there are several causes that are responsible for the poorness of our country. All these causes are stemmed to the policies of the political leaders & the political system of Pakistan. Political system in Pakistan is not a mature one. It is normally perceived that because of the instable political system, inefficient governance of the government, incompetence of our political leaders, flawed policies of the government & the myopic attitude of the political leaders, our economy & development are hampered. The Economic prosperity, in itself, is also dependent on the policies of the political leaders. Economic growth is just one of the aspects of development. In the recent years, the government has claimed that the growth rate achieved is highest in the last six years. Despite such an economic growth, has the government succeeded in alleviating poverty, unemployment & in providing security & timely justice to common man.? Definitely the answer is no. The reason is that only economic growth alone does not matter. The thing that matters is the policies of government to prioritize the public interests and focusing on scaling back poverty, hunger, disease & illiteracy.

Current State of Development of Our Country

The World Bank uses several indicators to evaluate economic development in a country, including distributional aspects of income growth, level of education, healthcare facilities, access to clean water and several other aspects of economic and social lives of the people.
1) Current State of Education
2) Current State healthcare facilities
3) Current State of Unemployment
4) Current State of Poverty

The main causes of the under development are

1) Instable Political System; Frequent military interventions. Fragile democratic system. Insular attitude of political leaders to gain power.
2) Incompietent Political Leaders; Most of the parliamentarians are low qualification which makes it difficult to understand policy related matters & hence leads to mismanagement.
3) Lack of consensus of different political Leaders while devising policies; which results in short term economic policies that harms the interests of developmental interests of the country.
4) Flawed Polices of Political Leaders & Parties; Allocation of more resources to mega projects and neglect of education, health & skill development of common man.
5) Selfish attitude of political leaders, miss use of powers by political leaders;
They care about the interests of their parties & not about public interests. Corruption, favouritism & nepotism by the political figures.

Recommendations:

1) Political system should be stabilized. Democracy should be strengthened.
2) For the political leaders minimum qualification of master degree should be made mandatory.
3) Policies should be devised on consensus of all political parties. So that with the intervention of governments, the policies remains the same.
4) Election Commission should ban those politicians, from contesting in elections, who are caught in cases of corruption, nepotism & favoritism.

Conclusion

Economic growth is just one determinant among many others determinants of development. The other determinants are education, unemployment, hunger, disease & poverty. Pakistan is one of the richest countries of the world in terms of natural resources but we are still under-developed because of the politics our political leader & the current prevailed political system.