One of the failures of the post-welfare state system is its inability to bridge the gap between the rich and the poor through legislative, economic and social policy instruments entrusted to the state by its citizens.
The post-welfare Western states are suffering an unprecedented setback with the rise of fascist and far-right political forces in the Europe and the US. Welfare regimes during the cold-war period were able to maintain social cohesion, economic equity and political reconciliation between the rich and poor classes through the provision of public-centric social services.
The unipolar world of neoliberalism has been a failure not only in terms of its inability to address the rising issues of unemployment, widening gap between the haves and the have-nots and dwindling social cohesion but also in failing to develop perfect markets – the raison d’être of the laissez faire ideology.
In the global context of rising income inequalities, socio-political conservatism and economic liberalism, access to quality education and health services – the only common denominator to function as an equaliser across the world – is restricted to the rich. In the post-welfare and neoliberal West, education and health have become one of the most expensive services and eat up much of the earnings of the lower middle classes who struggle to sustain a decent quality of life. Integrated in a global system that creates and perpetuates inequalities, developing countries like Pakistan need to work meticulously on policy options not only to adapt to the global system but also to navigate smoothly through the mounting challenges of internationalism.
Pakistan is a nascent democracy with mounting challenges to a smooth transition into a stable democratic dispensation. Institutions, political structures, economic mode of production and the social order are not fully shaped and evolved to sustain a citizen-centric democratic system to support the consolidation of a free democratic basic order for peace and development.
After years of undemocratic political rule, Pakistan has not been able to create a vibrant civil society to institutionalise the voices of citizens for good governance, meaningful political participation and accountability. On the one hand, the constitution of Pakistan guarantees freedom of expression for its citizens, while on the other hand – in the absence of strong democratic institutions in the country – this constitutionally guaranteed freedom of expression has never been upheld by the civilian governments.
For a strong democratic order to prevail, what is needed is an informed citizenry with an understanding of political rights and duties to uphold and promote the ethical basis of political participation as a democratic community. The genesis of a democratic community lies in a strong tradition of political education of citizens through formal and informal mediums of learning, sharing and promoting citizen engagement in democracy, rule of law and a social market economy in line with the local development context.
Political education, therefore, becomes a key instrument to promote democratic values and peace, harmony and prosperity in Pakistan. In the Pakistani context, political education is not only about the awareness among citizens as rights-holders and duty-bearers but is also about educating policymakers, parliamentarians, civil society activists and government functionaries to create an enabling political environment to promote democracy and equity. The most promising prospects to begin with will be to engage with the youth through targeted programmes of political education in schools, colleges and universities.
There are ample reasons to believe why Pakistan is being rated as one of the worst performing countries in the world, ranging from the Human Development Index to the delivery of basic social services including education and health. On the HDI, Pakistan is ranked on the 146th position – out of 160 countries.
The Global Education Monitoring Report 2016 released by the UN says that Pakistan lags behind by 50 years in its primary and by 60 years in its secondary education targets which were set forth in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In Pakistan 38 percent of children – 5.6 million – are out of school, making it one of the worst places in the world for primary education. A further 5.5 million children are out of secondary school (48 percent of lower secondary school age children). Pakistan also has a staggering 10.4 million adolescents out of upper secondary school. A survey of 32 mostly middle-income countries found that on average in 2015, 44 percent of households used the internet at least occasionally (or had a smartphone) but in Pakistan it stood at eight percent.
According to the ASER 2014 survey, which partly informs the UN reports on education, in rural Pakistan, the proportion of students in grade 6 who could read a grade 2 level story in local languages including Urdu, Sindhi or Pashto was 65 percent while among all children aged 10 the share was much lower – at 31 percent.
Forty-four percent of newborn children suffer from stunted growth and those lucky ones who grow are either malnourished or suffer from biological deficiencies that affect their productivity and cognitive ability of conceptual learning. In the absence of reliable social services, 70 percent of patients in Pakistan resort to private health facilities which are not adequately equipped to provide quality services. The education sector suffers from chronic under-spending and lack of governance and accountability. In rural areas, most of the public schools are either run by untrained and politically recruited teachers or are under the control of the local elite who use school buildings for purposes other than education.
In each of the four provinces of Pakistan, there is a well elaborate education sector development plan which outlines the key challenges to education and also proposes remedies to address the educational malaise in Pakistan. These plans seem to have been drafted for Martians. Our tragedy continues with no foreseeable planning to address the key factor of the poor quality of basic services. Our secondary and tertiary education and health facilities are even worse than primary education and healthcare, both in terms of access and quality.
In the absence of an efficient formal public education and health service delivery system, the private sector has flourished as an unaccountable profit-making opportunity where investors see the supply and demand gaps as a money-making proposition. Barring some elite schools and hospitals in Pakistan, which charge an obscene amount of money for providing quality services, private sector providers in general offer very low quality services as a substitute to the unreliable public sector service provision. The poorest lot go to quacks for treatment because they at least give them some solace; private medical practitioners lack the creativity, efficacy and empathy so critical in the context of local healing.
For education, the poorest lot opt for religious seminaries which offer not only free education but also provide food, shelter and job security for students. This burgeoning ignorant, superstitious, ailing and conservative youth from the lower socioeconomic strata also holds the street power, the potential and the willingness to reshape Pakistan. The middle classes, with better education and relatively better physical and mental health, are confined to a politics of non-violence in a violently radicalising Pakistan. They either flee the country or relinquish their space of expression to the uneducated and conservative classes.
The middle class liberal intelligentsia has failed to provide an alternate narrative amidst the staggering bigotry, backwardness and violence. All they do is indulge in fancy debates on remotely placed TV shows or at clichéd seminars on peace, prosperity, democracy, pluralism and tolerance – you name it.
Policymaking in education must, therefore, address the fundamental flaws of the system of learning pedagogy and educational processes that shape social reality. This requires a great deal of unlearning of the traditional approaches of educational programmes that spend more on the non-productive infrastructure of education than on improving learning processes and capability enhancement.
The writer is a freelance
columnist based in Islamabad.
Email: ahnihalyahoo.com