Daily Times

Knowledge workers (educated and skilled manpower) create ideas and produce innovative products. A knowledge worker is recognised as a key driver of economic growth in the world. This point is yet to gain currency in Pakistan. The traditional economic resource base of Pakistan is agriculture, which in turn relies on the monsoon season and the Himalayan glaciers for the supply of water. Industry (both medium and large) is mostly agro-based. The services sector, the third one, has become conspicuous by its performance in the post-2001 era when the economy was managed by Shaukat Aziz as finance minister and prime minister.

Pakistan has not yet realised that the definition of raw material has undergone a dramatic change over the past 20 years. The definition of raw material now also includes the ‘brain’, which can produce intellectual goods such as ideas, thoughts and innovations. The brain, as a natural resource, has secured its place right in the middle of the economic triangle made by agriculture, industry and the services sectors. The brain caters for the needs of all three sectors as per demand. The products of the brain can be sold to earn money. That is how a knowledge-driven economy is born and burgeons.

Peter Ferdinand Drucker, father of modern management, introduced the term ‘knowledge worker’ in his book The Effective Executive published in 1967. Drucker also coined the term ‘knowledge economy’ mentioned in his book The Age of Discontinuity published in 1969. In that way, Drucker foretold the world the importance of knowledge workers and the consequent knowledge economy. The west, especially Europe, has translated the concept of ‘knowledge’ into a reality. Resultantly, despite its fast dwindling natural resources such as oil, coal and gas, Europe is making its economic survival possible. In the west, a wilful effort is made to produce knowledge workers while in the developing countries including Pakistan the national priority is set not to spend on the education sector but on non-development sectors. Moreover, in Pakistan, there seems no yearning for the knowledge economy to thrive and append its yield to the national economy.

In September 2009, the government announced the National Education Policy (NEC), which set an ambitious goal of education spending at seven percent of GDP and enhancing literacy level from the then (about) 49 percent to 86 percent by 2015. The main thrust of the policy was to achieve the objectives of the Millennium Development Goals and the Dakar Framework for Action for Education for All, which included free and compulsory primary education to all children by 2015 and up to class 10 by 2025. Further, the government planned to increase enrolment in higher education from five percent in 2009 to 10 percent by 2015, besides enhancing the proportion of the budget available to the higher education sector to 20 percent of the education budget. Unfortunately, for the fiscal year 2012-13, the allocation for the education sector is less than three percent of GDP (even if both public and private sector spending on education is taken together). In the light of the NEC, the allocation for the current fiscal year should be more than five percent of GDP.

Article 25-A, which was incorporated into the constitution through the 18th Constitutional Amendment, made it obligatory on the state to provide free and compulsory education to all children of ages five to 16 years. In November 2012, parliament passed the ‘Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2012’ and thereby reinforced Article 25-A. The question is this: how will it be possible to implement the law given the percentage of the GDP allocated to the education sector?

There are two problems with the national priorities of Pakistan. First, as apparent, Pakistan’s conventional priority is to engender a labour force that could be dispatched to the Gulf States to do labour, earn money and send remittances to Pakistan to swell Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves. That may be a plausible strategy to run Pakistan’s financial affairs but an over-reliance on this strategy has rendered Pakistan’s economy a labour economy, and not a knowledge economy. Secondly, as per UNESCO’s Education for All Global Monitoring Report (EAGMR) released in March 2011 on the situation of education in Pakistan, the country was spending seven times more on the military than on primary education. As per UNESCO’s EAGMR released in October 2012, about five million children in Pakistan aged five to nine are out of school. Of them, 63 percent are girls. The report further says, “If the age bracket is increased to include adolescents, then about 25 million are not enrolled in school, out of a total school-going population of about 45 million.” It means that the country is making a high quatity of skill deficit manpower, which will have a negative bearing on the economy and society.

The obverse side of knowledge workers is ignorant people. The spectre of ignorance is already haunting the country. Add the menace of unemployment to it, and the true reason for one’s being religiously and ethnically fanatical will be there. Moreover, the presence of more ignorant people also means more problems for the educated lot (at the societal interaction level) to reside in the country and contribute to its progress and development. Pakistan has started witnessing the corollary of this direct relationship. Under immigrant policies announced by various developed countries of the world the educated and skilled — the knowledge workers — of Pakistan are presenting themselves to be creamed off. With that, the possibilities for the configuration of a knowledge economy are being diminished.

No matter how much money is spent yearly on maintaining the law and order situation in the country, next year that spending needs to be increased manifold, as each year more illiterate members join society and swell the ranks of the unemployed and criminals. The national preference should be how to produce law-abiding citizens, the prerequisite of which is to disseminate education to all, instead of devising ways to erect security cordons to thwart crime.

It is yet to be known for how long Pakistan can exploit the option of seeking loans to run its affairs and evade default. Unless innovations are created to be sold to the world to earn money, the default threat will keep on lurking round the corner. Secondly, unless the self-employment trend takes root, the menace of joblessness will remain frightening. Pakistan has to reorder its priorities and produce knowledge workers.

The writer is a freelance columnist and can be reached at qaisarrashid@yahoo.com