The writer is a former caretaker finance minister and served as vice-president at the World Bank
In the May 2013 elections, the youth voted in three different ways. In Lahore and Punjab’s other large cities, they split their vote between the PML-N and Imran Khan’s PTI. In Karachi, they went for the MQM and also, to a lesser extent, for the PTI. The PPP lost the attention of the urban youth.
In addition to good governance, what the young are looking for most from the government is the opportunity to be productively employed, in particular in the private sector and within that sector, in modern services. But for that to happen, they must receive education and training that equips them to work in these areas. How could the government help? One answer to this question can be found in the Indian experience.
In the early 1960s, Washington, then working under President John Kennedy, wanted to play a role in South Asia. The US government sent a team first to Islamabad and then to New Delhi, to ask the two governments what kind of help they needed in order to promote economic development in their countries. Ayub Khan asked for assistance to improve the process of economic planning in the country. That led to the deployment of a dozen or so economists to work in the Planning Commission and the Planning and Development Departments of East and West Pakistan. This group of advisers was provided by Harvard University’s Development Advisory Service.
India’s Jawaharlal Nehru requested for help to set up institutions modelled after MIT. That laid the foundation of the famed Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), the IITs that were to revolutionise parts of the Indian economy.
The lesson Pakistan can draw from the Indian experience is to invest heavily in the development of institutional capacity to train young people for modern sectors of the economy. Some of this is being done by institutions such as NUST, FAST and UED. While they are making an impressive contribution, their scale is much too small to cater to the large number of young people who have aspirations. It would help if the government spent some time and effort to draw up a plan to establish such institutions in all major cities in the country. This could be done by drawing both the private sector as well as members of the Pakistani diaspora to partner in this enterprise. Once again, there is an example from India that is worth looking at. The famed Hyderabad Institute for Administration was paid for by the Indian diaspora. The community of well-to-do members of the Indian community in the United States raised hundreds of million dollars to finance the creation of such an institution and persuaded some of the well-known American institutions to lend their support. Very quickly, Hyderabad had a functioning world class institution in place.
Were the government in Islamabad and the provincial capitals to come up with a well thought-out plan aimed at creating institutional capacity around the country, the result could be equally satisfying. The idea should be to partner with the private sector and establish institutions not only in information technology but to cater to the needs of a number of other modern services. Not only would such an effort meet the youth’s aspirations, it could also set the stage for moving forward the Pakistani economy.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 9th, 2013.
Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.
COMMENTS (6)
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ
1714129906-0/Clint-Eastwood-(1)1714129906-0-270x192.webp)
I'm not too learned about economics or this particular subject, but from what I know about IT, I would personally not take it as an assumption that the existence of the IITs was the most major factor behind the Indian IT boom. This is because most of the IT outsourcing work that is done in India is not of a highly sophisticated or scientific nature, which is basically the kind of education that the IITs (and other quality research-intensive institutes, such as Pakistan's NUST, FAST etc. which the author mentions) would impart. IT outsourcing work is of a more low-value, low-skilled kind which can easily be done by the graduates of more average universities, such as Karachi University, Punjab University, etc. The kind of high-skilled work which would require graduates of a more quality institute is the kind which is done by the research centers established in India by Microsoft, Google, etc. But this represents a minor contribution compared to the revenues generated by the IT outsourcing (i.e., lower skilled work) industry in India. In fact, much if not most of even those revenues are actually generated from call centers, which doesn't require any IT skills at all. I am aware that one thing which triggered the IT boom in India was the Y2K bug; this prompted many American and foreign companies to start outsourcing the reparation of this bug (which is a relatively low-skilled IT job, certainly nothing research-intensive which would require IITs). India I'm aware gained success here due mainly to the low cost of labour and the pervasiveness of English there (compared to say, China). Why other poor English-using countries, like Pakistan, didn't gain as much success, I'm not sure, but India's size might have something to do with it. What I do know, was that there was plenty of Y2K bug outsourcing to Pakistan as well, and this computer outsourcing business seemed to start "spilling over" into Pakistan from India, where it had picked up a lot of pace. However, 9/11 completely destroyed the momentum then in Pakistan. I don't think that any number of high-tech research-intensive educational institutions will basically be able to solve this problem.
We have to think in terms of using facilities available in India for Pakistani students ,as such facility is provided to students from Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Africa.
Probably the author is referring to the Indian School of Business (ISB) in Hyderabad. There is no reputed institute called "Hyderabad Institute for Administration". ISB was not started by the diaspora, but several India-based corporations contributed to its establishment.
This is yet again one of those wishy washy articles equating meeting the "youths" needs by developing elite serving universities. First you establish that they are 10s of millions of youth who require appropriate training and then you go on to listing higher educational institutions as a solution. Exactly, how many universities will we need to absorb all these people? To that one may add that while basic, primary and secondary education remain weak, with learners receiving a poor groundwork in modern education, throwing money at higher education is a waste.
This article is typical of the urban, educated, affluent elite who in the name of the nations "youth" lobby for resources that serve their own interests and that of their peers.
Another problem faced by Pakistan is that of brain drain. Bright men, like the author, spend the most productive parts of their lives in the service of others outside the country. The foreign exchange remittances to the country are made by the working class. Gifted men love to lecture from afar and hesitate to return and improve the standards of the existing education system. The IITs that Nehru set up are all staffed by Indians.
SJB you should seriously consider returning to Pakistan. These weekly sermons from the US do not add real value. LUMS or the Lahore School of Economics is a perfect place for you to walk your talk.