In any functioning democracy, poverty should be treated as an economic and human challenge, not a political asset. Yet, in Pakistan, the persistence of poverty has increasingly been converted into a form of soft power, a mechanism for electoral manipulation and legitimacy engineering.
Programmes such as the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) and its later evolution under the Ehsaas Programme were conceived as instruments of social justice and welfare. But over time, their noble intent has been diluted by partisan agendas, administrative inefficiencies and an obsession with optics rather than outcomes. The result is a nation where poverty alleviation is less about empowerment and more about dependence, a recurring cycle of patronage dressed as policy.
When BISP was launched in 2008, it represented a progressive response to spiralling food prices and economic shocks. It provided cash transfers to women from the poorest households, ostensibly as a bridge toward financial inclusion and social protection. However, even in its early years, the programme bore the imprint of political symbolism, its name ensuring that beneficiaries would associate relief with loyalty rather than the state.
This personalisation of policy embedded the programme within the country’s political DNA. With each subsequent government, the temptation to rebrand, rename or repurpose the programme only reinforced its political utility. The cycle of continuity disguised as reform ensured that while the nameplates changed, the structural dependency remained intact.
The Ehsaas Programme, introduced in 2019, was intended as Pakistan’s most ambitious attempt to modernise social protection through digitalisation and transparency. Under its umbrella, hundreds of initiatives, from scholarships and nutrition programmes to income support, were brought together under a unified governance framework. Yet, despite its technological sophistication, the programme too fell prey to the same political economy of poverty. Governments used it to project compassion and reformist zeal, often showcasing beneficiary numbers in political campaigns rather than long-term outcomes in national development. The brand became synonymous not with systemic change, but with political ownership, its data leveraged in narratives of moral superiority and populist governance.
The deeper critique lies not in the existence of such programmes, which are essential in a low-income, high-vulnerability context like Pakistan, but in their intent and execution. Social safety nets should be transitional: enabling citizens to move from welfare to work, from dependence to dignity. Yet in Pakistan’s case, they have largely functioned as permanent lifelines that sustain political loyalty. The state has effectively institutionalised poverty as a form of political control, ensuring that millions remain too economically vulnerable to resist or question authority. Instead of investing in education, job creation and industrial policy, the true antidotes to poverty, successive governments have opted for the immediacy of cash transfers that translate easily into votes.
We cannot discuss poverty in Pakistan without confronting the raw numbers and what they imply about the stewardship of social safety nets. According to the World Bank’s most recent estimates, Pakistan’s poverty rate, defined as the proportion of the population living below the lower-middle income threshold ($4.20/day, 2021 PPP), now stands at approximately 44.7 per cent, meaning over 107 million people are living below the poverty line. In parallel, the share of the population in extreme poverty (using a stricter threshold) is estimated at about 16.5 per cent. While the different measures reflect methodological variation, the trend is unmistakable: worsening poverty and deeper vulnerability.
The recent frictions between Pakistan’s major parties over BISP also expose how welfare has become entwined in politics rather than governance. A political war of words erupted between Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari of the PPP and Maryam Nawaz Sharif of the PML-N. On the one side, Bilawal asserted that BISP was the “sole method” of providing relief to flood-hit populations and argued for immediate international appeals. On the other, Maryam rebuked this stance, accusing the PPP of politicising the flood relief effort in Punjab and declaring that distributing aid via BISP, which gives only “Rs10,000” per beneficiary in her critique, was a “very simplistic solution” to a complex calamity of lost homes, livestock and crops.
This spat reveals how social protection programmes are leveraged as electoral tools. Maryam’s critique hinges on the argument that BISP in its current form is too limited to address real crises and that provinces should rely on their own relief systems. Bilawal, meanwhile, frames BISP as the national safety-net mechanism that must be centralised and wholly owned by the state. The contradiction exposes a strategic choice: whether to build welfare institutions that empower citizens sustainably, or to keep them pliable for political advantage.
The implications of this feud go deeper than party rivalry. The lack of robust impact assessments and independent oversight has allowed inefficiencies and leakages to persist. Despite claims of digital transparency, the distribution networks still operate within political patronage systems at the local level. Beneficiaries are often identified through politicised channels, while deserving citizens without the right connections remain excluded.
Even more worrying is the absence of integration between social protection and development policy. Cash transfers may alleviate temporary distress, but without complementary investments in health, education and livelihoods, they become little more than short-term anaesthesia for deep structural ailments.
The politicisation of poverty also corrodes the very idea of citizenship. When people perceive welfare as a favour rather than a right, their relationship with the state becomes transactional. Loyalty is purchased, not earned; dependence replaces participation. This dynamic erodes democratic accountability and perpetuates feudal political behaviour under the guise of modern governance. The poor, instead of being empowered as stakeholders in development, become data points in political manifestos and rhetorical pledges.
Pakistan needs a paradigm shift, from cash handouts to capacity-building, from politicised relief to institutionalised empowerment. This requires depoliticising social protection through independent oversight bodies, integrating welfare databases with employment and education systems, and ensuring that programmes are owned by the state, not tied to the ruling party’s brand.
The success of a welfare system should be measured not by how many people it supports, but by how many it enables to exit poverty permanently. Countries like Brazil and Mexico have demonstrated that conditional cash transfers linked to school attendance and health checkups can break inter-generational poverty cycles. Pakistan can adapt such models, but only if it reclaims its welfare policies from the clutches of political opportunism.
Ultimately, the weaponisation of poverty undermines the very moral foundation of governance. A state that feeds on its citizens’ vulnerability forfeits the legitimacy to claim progress. The challenge before Pakistan is not merely to expand social safety nets, but to redefine their purpose, from a means of electoral engineering to a catalyst for inclusive growth. Until that shift occurs, poverty will remain not just an economic problem, but a political strategy, one that keeps millions trapped between hope and helplessness.
In the end, poverty’s greatest tragedy in Pakistan is not that it persists, but that it is perpetuated, intentionally, strategically and repeatedly, in the name of politics. The time has come to dismantle that architecture of dependence and replace it with a genuine social contract of dignity, productivity, and equal opportunity. Only then can Pakistan move from managing poverty to eliminating it.
The writer is a public policy expert and leads the Country Partner Institute of the World Economic Forum in Pakistan. He tweets/posts amirjahangir and can be reached at: ajmishal.com.pk