At a standstill

Pakistan has failed to make any progress compared to last year in terms of human development, according to the UN Human Development Index of 2016. We rank as a ‘medium human development’ country and stand at 147th place on the list of 188 countries. This is the same position the country had been placed at last year on the basis of its ability to deliver basic needs to its people and ensure equality between different groups. While there has been a marginal improvement in Pakistan’s ranking since 2010, the rate of growth is far too slow and the country remains one of those with the least satisfactory HDI indicators in the world with a life expectancy at birth of 66.4 years. The degree of gender disparity is indicated by the fact that a girl between her 1st and 5th birthday has a 30 to 50 percent greater chance of dying than a boy. Sadly, this is also true for neighbouring India. Only 46 percent of people stated they had any trust in national government and 59 percent said they had confidence in the judicial system. This does not indicate a high degree of faith in the state. The report noted that a highly patriarchal setup in Pakistan meant that there were health disparities at every stage in female life ranging from abortions based on gender to a lower nutrition intake for girls and women. Acid attacks and honour killings were also high worldwide, notably in countries where there was a lack of gender equity.

Women continue to remain vulnerable and the report has rightly called for global action as well as strategies within countries to shift reality and close disparity gaps based on gender, socio-economic status and ethnicity. Among the action needed is greater protection to women from domestic violence. While we struggle with what our media and our analysts term major national issues, the fact is that these have only a limited impact on the real lives of people. It is true their status and lack of access to basic needs is tied in to good governance. Corruption damages people at all tiers of society as economic experts have pointed out. But it is quite clear we need to remove ourselves from the pedestal and look at the situation of people who form the large bottom tier of the pyramid where a vast number of our 190 million citizens live. This is what we need to do if we want to ensure any real change in their lives and improve the conditions under which they are born, live and die.