Daily Times

It is a staggering number by any count. To be 143rd of 144 countries in the World Gender Gap index is a tragic story. A story of mishaps, mismanagement, missed priorities and missed opportunities. The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Gender Gap Report 2016 is an annual benchmarking exercise that measures progress towards parity between men and women in four areas, which include educational attainment, health and survival, economic opportunity and political empowerment. The report found that progress towards parity in the key economic pillar has dramatically slowed with the gap, which stood at 59 percent, larger than at any point since 2008. The only country lower than Pakistan is Yemen, just imagine.

Is economic development of a country not related to women development? Are the claims of the government of achieving macro-economic ability based on some inhuman indicators? Is being the best performing stock market in Asia and the worst performing human development country normal? These are questions that create unease in interpreting the meaning of progress and development in the country.

The response of the government is that Pakistan has come out of one of its worst crises. But are 40 million people in Pakistan remaining hungry and without one decent meal every day not a crisis? Pakistan has been ranked as a country at “serious” hunger level with 22 percent of its population undernourished on the 2016 Global Hunger Index recently released. Ranked 107th in a list of 118 developing countries, Pakistan performed worse than most of its South Asian neighbours in eliminating hunger. The hunger index ranks countries based on undernourishment, child mortality, child wasting (low weight for height) and child stunting (low height for age).

How can a country be developed if its women and children are under-nourished, under-educated and under-developed? Every research in the world has proven that countries with such abject neglect of its main population nucleus can never make it to the ranks of progress in the world. As proven in these very indices that the most developed and rich countries in the world are the ones that are rich in enabling their women with equitable opportunities and nourishing their children with food, education and health opportunities.

They say the most dangerous thing is not that you have a crisis but that you are blind to the crisis. The present government, whether unintentionally or intentionally, is harping on the tune of how numbers are improving on major fronts, and how all this talk of Pakistan going down is hogwash. This very attitude is the most dangerous crisis — of not having the courage to face the truth; of not having the vision to see the consequences of this neglect; of not coming up with the right priorities; and a crisis of not accepting the mistakes and making amends.

But there are none as blind as those who cannot see. Consider this example: the World Competitiveness Report elaborates the fact that Pakistan is the worst performing market in South Asia. Headline news in media show the head of the Asian Development Bank commiserating on Pakistan being left behind by Bangladesh and Nepal in South Asia. However, the finance ministry and government celebrate Ishaq Dar getting the ‘Best Finance Minister of South Asia’ award.

Playing with the numbers and presenting them in a manner that projects fiction rather than reality is a finance-con artistry that has been in vogue for a long time. Many companies and many countries do it. Some puffery is legal and allowed. Some reclassifications of items are also normal. However, a complete jugglery of figures is fudging, and that is a serious crime. For example, the GDP growth figures are officially 4.7 percent, while all eminent economists have challenged them and shown through calculations that they range between 3-3.5 percent at best. This one and a half percentage difference is in billions of rupees, but the government without disproving them insists that these economists have some hidden agenda.

These are no small matters. The Brazilian president, Dilma Rousseff was recently impeached for understating deficit figures. However, in Pakistan, newspaper reports, every day, are showing how misrepresented the facts are, but nothing seems to bother the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics or other institutions that are custodians of numbers but are not showing the real state of the economy. The debt-to-GDP ratio that according to the constitution of Pakistan cannot go beyond 60 percent is now 65 percent, which is a violation of Article 77; however, no legal action is being taken against the government.

The answer lies in another factual report that has recently been published. The World Justice Project has published a report on rule of law in various countries, and Pakistan has been ranked 106th of 113 countries. We are in the company of Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Cameron etc. In South Asia, Nepal ranks 63rd, India 66th, Sri Lanka 68th, and even Bangladesh is above us at 103. The rule of law index measures how governance and justice are being meted out by the government.

Analysts and intelligentsia of Pakistan have raised questions about the contradictions between global reports and government statistics. The answer is that these reports are a conspiracy. For the uneducated masses of Pakistan, it is not easy to understand laws and numbers, but it is easy to comprehend breaking news and glorious advertisements. Thus, whenever the government is being criticised, its response is more advertisement, and that too out of the taxpayer’s money.

A classic example is the Ishaq Dar Best Finance Minister award, which the government claimed was given by a publication backed by the IMF and the World Bank. Breaking news and congratulations poured in. The next day, the IMF denied any link with the publication. Later, it was found out that five national institutions were asked to give advertisement to that publication, and in return, they agreed to give this award to Dar. But a very few in Pakistan would remember this embarrassing manipulation.

With illiteracy comes innumeracy. When you cannot read or write you cannot add and subtract. This is what the government relies on to get away with the criminal negligence of its constitutional obligations. Article 25A makes it mandatory for the government to educate children, and Article 38D makes it mandatory for the government to provide food and security to citizens. Unless we educate our masses and raise our voice for these rights, wrongs will be advertised to make the masses believe the untruth.

The writer is a columnist and analyst and can be reached at andleeb.abbas1@gmail.com