Daily Times

Political upheaval, collapsing educational institutions, rising income inequality, terrorism, lack of good governance, unemployment, rampant institutional corruption, energy crisis and health are some of the leading challenges in Pakistan. Good governance is the mainstay for development of any country as it is accredited with general public welfare, health, education, standard of living, endowment of basic rights, and provision of basic necessities. Unfortunately, the crisis of governance in Pakistan has always remained an issue due to poor management of institutions; moreover, public policies are not prioritised, and there is a lack of accountability and transparency.

Terrorism has become a very destructive phenomenon in Pakistan. The recent Quetta terrorist attack killed 75 innocent people including, lawyers, children and females. Such practices in Pakistan have become mundane since many years. According to the Global Terrorism Index (GTI), most of the terrorism activities are happening in five countries: Iraq, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria. The GTI total score is 10, and Pakistan has achieved 9.056, followed by Syria at 8.108. Iraq is on the top obtaining 10 out of 10. One of the reports says that the yearly death toll from terrorist spells has increased from 164 in 2003 to 3,318 in 2009, with a total of 35,000 Pakistanis killed between September 2001 and May 2011.

Apart from terrorism, education is on the threshold of collapse, particularly in the Sindh and Balochistan provinces. According to the Times Higher Education (THE) 2016, there is no Pakistani university in the top 100 universities in Asia, and that reflects the predicament of education in country. According to the UNSECO report 2015, educational indicators of Pakistan are desperately low. At the present time, approximately one-third primary school children are out of school, and 42 percent of population aged 10-plus is illiterate. In education sector gender discrepancies widely persist. The report further adds that at the national level about two-third females of age over 15 cannot read and write, and 35 percent remain out of school. The Gender Parity Index in case of participation in primary education is 0.82. It is assessed that over 6.7 million children are out of school, and majority of them, 62 percent, are girls.

Energy crisis is rampant in Pakistan. The reasons for that are: poor management of the energy infrastructure, dishonesty, lack of transparency and poor or bad governance. The crisis originated during the Musharraf era and gradually increased; now it has become difficult for government to end it. Pakistan needs around 22,000-megawatt electricity per day; however, currently, it is able to produce about 15,886 megawatt per day, and hence there is a shortfall of over 6,000 megawatt per day. Due to shortage of electricity, the economic growth of the country has badly been hampered.

Health is also a great issue in Pakistan. About 80 percent of all major diseases such as diarrhea, cholera, typhoid, hepatitis and malaria are due to unsafe drinking water, inadequate sanitation, and poor hygiene. According to the State of the World’s Mother Report 2015 by Save The Children, mother mortality ratio in Pakistan had moved from 147th in 2014 to 149th. Furthermore, the report describes that Pakistan’s name figures high in mother mortality rate of 276 per 100,000 live births, and the under-five child mortality rate of about 89 deaths per 1,000 live births during the last a decade or so. These figures turn out to be more troublesome when the difference between the rich and the poor in sundry urban areas was compared, for example in Baluchistan where the mother mortality rate was over 700.

Corruption is one of the most widespread and prolonged problems of Pakistan. According to the Corruption Perceptions Index 2014 published by the Transparency International, out of 174 countries Pakistan stands at 126. It has become a great plague for Pakistan, and is rampant in various government institutions.

Finally, the rise of unemployment among youth in Pakistan is a very grave issue. According to the World Bank Statistics 2014, 32 percent of youth is illiterate in Pakistan, whereas 8.2 percent youth is unemployed. There are also those people who have post-graduate degrees and Ph.Ds. but have no jobs. Due to this grave problem, every day in social, print and electronic media we see cases of suicide; moreover, social evils are intensifying among such people. Not only that, because of unemployment, doctors, engineers, IT experts and other professionals are leaving Pakistan causing brain drain.

The above-mentioned factors are some of the reasons behind impediment of socio-economic development in Pakistan. Good governance is the only solution for all these problems. As Kofi Annan says, “Good governance is a precondition for meeting the challenge of reducing poverty, promoting sustainable development and building good governance.”

The writer is a freelance columnist, and can be reached at murtazatalpur@hotmail.com