A well of poverty in Sindh

As indicated elsewhere in these columns poverty is multidimensional and can be linked to a lack of access to among other things arterial infrastructure, healthcare and crucially — education. Access to education across its entire spectrum from nursery and kindergarten to higher education or vocational training is essential if poverty is to ever be effectively alleviated. Full-spectrum education needs to be universal and as a new report published in Karachi titled ‘Sindh Education Profile’ beyond a primary level of education most of Sindh has little or nothing to offer. The report is by the provincial education department and it was compiled as an annual education census for 2016-17.

What the report details is an appalling lack of schools that offer anything beyond a primary education, the most basic and the least likely to prepare a boy or girl for anything beyond a menial and low-paid job — if they can get a job at all outside urban areas. The take-away figure is 38,132 or 89 per cent schools provincewide that offer only primary education. A mere 11 per cent of children in Sindh have the opportunity to progress beyond the primary in their education, and if there was ever a major impediment to individual advancement it is the institutionalised lack of education beyond the most basic.

This has not happened by accident. Successive governments have made the decision not to expand educational access in Sindh. There has been a decision, stretched over decades, to keep a large part of the Sindh population in uneducated ignorance. This brings into sharp focus the old adage ‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing’ and the fact that an ignorant peasantry that lives in perpetual poverty are unlikely to challenge the status quo. Sindh may be the most obvious example currently but there are swathes of the country that are educationally deprived which contributes to ‘big picture’ poverty and is a major drag anchor on development generally. There is no quick fix and Sindh is locked into the poverty of educational deprivation.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 23^rd, 2018.

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