On PTI’s reaction

As I was in a rush to leave for Washington last week, I wrote my column on human development in a hurry, commenting on the main points of a UNDP report. Little did I realise that the mainstream media will pick up the theme and awaken the self-indulgent youthias to its existence. I have been subjected to a barrage of invectives and expletives by the ‘tabdeeli band’ for reproducing the conclusion that K-P trailed behind other provinces in human development. Discounting these supplements to verbal emphasis, I have been able to gather the following points of contention.

The most important is that the report relates to 2015. There is no conspiracy involved here. For the information of PTI’s experts, there is no data available after 2015. Perhaps the delayed release of the report resulted from waiting for the release of updated data. Now human development is billed as the main plank of the PTI platform. Not surprisingly, the report hit where it hurt most. The apology offered is that two years is too short a period to make a difference. It is only enough for preparation and learning for a new government. The fact of being a new political kid on the block had its own problems. This is true as far as it goes. Two years is a long time for a party that has just announced that it will do in 100 days what was not possible in the past 70 years. Going to the extent of making the preposterous allegation of pre-poll rigging shows that the party’s rig-mania knows no bounds. It now extends to the UN system, the neutrality of whose observers might be challenged during the July elections.

When the shoe is on the other foot, none of the above holds. In the first week of April, Imran Khan tweeted: “Economist Hafeez Pasha acknowledges success of PTI government in K-P (& first time PTI formed govt) by saying despite excessive load shedding (more than the rest of Pakistan) & suffering most from terrorism, K-P economy grew faster than rest of Pakistan.” Human development, the party’s main concern, was completely forgotten here. Even the choice of the period was not questioned. Hafeez Pasha could not have been accused of pre-poll rigging. In fact in his interviews on different TV channels on the high growth achievement, Imran Khan credited him with telling the truth, despite being the husband of rival Punjab’s finance minister. Only the PTI is capable of redefining credibility in negative terms. While the favourable but less reliable growth number was picked up, the less favourable but more reliable numbers given by Hafeez Pasha were conveniently ignored. In the per capita income rankings, Punjab ranked first and K-P ranked third. Incorporation of the latest population figures results in a GDP growth per capita of 2.5 per cent in Punjab and 2.1 per cent in K-P.

As an index, human development is better than economic development defined as GDP growth per capita and economic development is better than economic growth defined as GDP growth. The PTI stands for human development but its achievement lies in economic growth. It celebrates what it does not stand for and looks askance at a report that informs it about its weaknesses and suggests a way forward. As Mahbubul Haq, the founding father of human development, put it: “The real wealth of a nation is its people. And the purpose of development is to create an enabling environment for people to enjoy long, healthy, and creative lives. This simple but powerful truth is too often forgotten in the pursuit of material and financial wealth.”

Published in The Express Tribune, May 25^th, 2018.

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