Resource information
This report is part of an ongoing
project to understand poverty, growth, and human development
in Pakistan. It argues that if the country does not close
its social gap, its long-term ability to grow economically,
alleviate poverty, and sustain its debt will be
fundamentally compromised. Spanning social, economic, and
fiscal difficulties, the country's current predicament
is not rooted in a discrete set of policies amenable to
rapid rectification, but in structural factors linked very
often to issues of governance. It is within this context of
a broader failure of policy and implementation that one
should understand Pakistan's inability to take
sufficient advantage of the growth that it has enjoyed in
the past, to attract investment, build enough
infrastructure, or to promote adequate advances in social
indicators. Over the past decade, stagnating policy and a
persistent, even widening, social gap are direct legacies of
these failures. As this report suggests, issues of
governance, for instance, in the form of the lack of
accountability, are at the heart of many of the dificulties
encountered in mitigating poverty and broadening access to
social services in Pakistan. Neither debt reform nor the
mere availability of donor funds is likely to dispel these
problems. The strategies and tactics outlined in this report
take this into account, emphasizing the need to consider and
implement concomitant policies in a comprehensive, mututally
reinforcing manner.
