How hungry is Pakistan?

[VetDoctor]

How hungry is Pakistan?

By Niaz Murtaza | 1/27/2013

SEVERAL recent surveys report Africa like poverty and hunger in Pakistan.

One must review these studies closely since approaches and quality vary significantly.

So, an American scholar`s article, having an alarmist tone and a provocative title (`Running out of everything`), claims that a 2008 UN assessment found half of Pakistan food insecure. However, the UN report itself states that since its sampling was non representative, these findings cannot be extrapolated nationally. Thus, analysts must utilise rigorous measures.

Broader poverty measures cover multiple dimensions, eg, food, income, assets, health etc. However, since people lacking even adequate food obviously suffer deeper poverty than those lagging in other dimensions, absolute poverty measures generally consider food intake alone.

Pakistani government surveys periodically measure national absolute poverty.

The 2007 survey, the last published one, estimated absolute poverty at 17.2 per cent of Pakistan`s population.

While international institutions validated this estimate, unlike earlier Musharraf-era ones, several Pakistani experts deemed poverty being closer to around 25 per cent.

Even this figure is less than half that in the poorest African countries.

My observations in rural Pakistan three to four times annually, from Fata to Thatta, and across almost 30 African countries reveal similar differences between Pakistan and Africa. While many Pakistani villagers 1 meet report some hunger since 2009 due to disasters and stagflation, few report hunger as an issue earlier.

Despite government neglect and land inequities, most Pakistanis have escaped absolute poverty. The 2011 National Nutritional Survey shows that almost 85 per cent families live in bricked houses while almost 90 per cent use relatively safe water. That Pakistanis have achieved these improvements widely shows that they normally earn above-subsistence incomes.

In contrast in Africa,I find straw/mud huts predominate. African Sahelian pastoralists tell me they travel six hours for water. Forest pygmies in war-ravaged Congo showed me how they extract sewage-colour water from banana leaves. In Ethiopia, farmers toil on 1.2 acre farms with archaic technology.

Millions depend regularly on food aid. Such miseries are rare even in today`s stressed out Pakistan.

So, while experts lament underestimation, I worry about overestimation of poverty earlier. But neither do I believe in Musharraf`s `economic miracle`. Poverty has reduced since 1973 due to migration and not government efforts. Wherever migration is low (eg rural Sindh) poverty is higher.

However, many other Pakistani indicators rival African ones. Malnutrition figures in the 2001 and 2011 nutritional surveys match those in poor African countries even though poverty is about half in Pakistan.

This paradox is because of two reasons in my opinion.

The first is the status of Pakistani women (the keepers of family health) in education, income and decision-making which I feel is among the lowest across the almost 100 countries that I have visited.

National nutritional surveys reveal that most Pakistani women lack nutritional education. So even if families can afford nutritious diets, children may not get it since parents lack nutritional knowledge.

The second reason is poor government education and health facilities. Thus,Pakistan`s globally low social rankings are due to women`s dis empowerment and government neglect, and not absolute poverty.

What about the future? While futuristic discussions must certainly consider population growth, this can be done from two perspectives.

The first perspective strongly supports population control since evidence clearly shows that large family size undermines maternal and child health. It views failures of government population services as the main reason for population issues.

The second perspective, largely rhetorical, considers poor, illiterate people`s irrationality as the main cause of population growth, and the latter as an unmitigated disaster and the main cause of all evil, including corruption, terrorism and poverty.

Such Malthusian theories have consistently failed since at least 1750 as technology-led growth has far outstripped population growth. The main causes for global scarcity, terrorism and poverty today are political, not demographic.

Between 1970 and now, Pakistan`s population tripled from about 60 million to 180 plus million while absolute poverty halved from almost 50 per cent to between 17-25 per cent, thus debunking alarmist demographic perspectives.

Moreover, this halving, despite tripling of population, occurred under a modest five per cent average growth.

Pakistan ranks around 60 on both population growth rate and population density globally. From being three per cent-plus in the 1980s, its population growth has slowed to around two per cent though recent evidence suggests an increase again. Even with these lower rates, which regionally remain the highest, Pakistan`s population could reach 265-300 million by 2030.

These figures justify strong population measures, but not demographic alarmism.

Successfully tackling this challenge will require sound economic management. It requires moderately improving upon inflation, economic growth, external balances and tax-GDP ratio levels that successive Pakistani governments have earlier successfully maintained.

Additionally, if Pakistan also institutes land reforms and adequate health, education and disaster management expenditures it could reduce poverty further.

Natural constraints like land and water scarcity could affect performance. Pakistan barely achieves food supply demand balance during good crop years currently.

However, studies show that Pakistan could double food production without increasing arable land by using improved technology. Water scarcity is a threat, but Pakistan currently wastes half its riverine flows in canals and on-farm. Better irrigation management should help improve water security.

Thus, success in improving social indicators despite population growth can come from even moderate performance while failure only from poor performance. Viewed so, Pakistan`s prospects are not bad, though, as with its cricket team, even moderate performance often eludes this mercurial country.

So, if present performance continues and Pakistan fails to achieve even these moderate economic targets, then the demographic challenge could become a demographic disaster.
The writer is a political economist at the University of California, Berkeley.

murtazaniaz@yahoo.com