The literacy imperative

It’s not an injection of billions of dollars that will change Pakistan's fortunes, but an overall increase in...

A little over a year ago, there was a big hullabaloo about a foreign group investing billions in Pakistan and dizzying talk about erecting the world’s tallest tower in Karachi which was supposed to promise employment opportunity for 2.5 million people. Then the group backed out and was replaced by a Miami-based developer wanting to inject another few billions into elite island communities off the coast of Karachi. That it all petered out even before the ink was dry on the MoUs is not the point. The question to be asked is that had these mega projects been built, could they have been maintained by an illiterate and primarily untrained work force?

Our prime minister is into constructing things: highways, tunnels, transportation systems, what have you, but the question remains: has any of this actually led to a better life for the common people of this country? The answer is a miserable, ‘no’ and the recent suicide bombing at Wagah and the horrific incident in which a Christian couple were burnt alive reflect the true state of affairs. These and countless other morbid events are the result of a toxic brew of poverty, ignorance and illiteracy born out of the lack of access to education.

One look at the data makes it clear that we are at the bottom of any respectable ranking, whether it is the Unesco Global Monitoring Report that labels us one of the most illiterate societies on the planet or our slotting in at 129 on the World Economic Forum’s competitive list, or Pakistan’s 146th and 166th positions on the UN Human Development Index and the World Governance Index respectively. The writing is clearly on the wall as to where this country, despite being replete with natural and human resource, is headed.

Sadly, the government’s response to all the above and to the problems of terrorism, lawlessness, unemployment, inflation, the energy crises, etc is to blame. The usual culprits being previous administrations, our enemies, history, conspiracies et al. Case in point — it has been implied that had the visit of President Xi Jinping not been cancelled because of the dharnas, the proposed Chinese investment of billions of dollars would have turned Pakistan into a land of milk and honey.

When will the rulers get it? It’s not an injection of billions of dollars that will change the fortunes of Pakistan, but an overall increase in literacy, which is only possible through a complete reform of the public education system where more than 70 per cent of the children are enrolled. Private education is expensive and simply cannot provide the solutions that we so desperately need. Only educated people can analyse, can improvise, and can change their own destinies and the destiny of their land.

Throughout the ages, nations have progressed via the pursuit of knowledge. The remarkable advances that countries like China, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam and even our own neighbour Iran have made are solely due to the emphasis that the leaders of those societies laid on education. Any country that has taken off in economic terms, was seen to first build an equitable public education system. It has never happened the other way around!

The notion that the building of highways and housing complexes is progress and will lead to development is backed neither by research nor reality, and the example of the Asian Tigers clearly shows us that only development which is led by literacy is real as well as sustainable.

That Pakistan is going to miss by a wide margin all the Millennium Development Goals, particularly those pertaining to education, was always a foregone conclusion. And why would one have expected otherwise given the paltry two per cent that is allocated to this critically important area in stark contrast to Unesco’s recommendation that governments commit at least six per cent of their Gross National Product and 20 per cent of their budgets to the vital sector of education?

As external threats multiply and the internal situation implodes, the window of opportunity to pull back from the brink for Pakistan is getting narrower by the day, and the unending fudging of figures of economic growth and literacy and unemployment will not work much longer. According to World Bank indicators, more than half the population has fallen below the poverty line and the ranks of the poor are increasing at such an alarming rate that the government is now too embarrassed to even release figures about it.

The root cause of all the problems that Pakistan faces is the poverty that has been engendered by the failure of each and every government to raise literacy. As the public education system crumbles and the population explodes, the rising mass of illiterates will nullify any development and progress that takes place and will ensure permanent social unrest. The raising of literacy on a war footing alone can put the country on track. The clock is ticking against us.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 22^nd, 2014.

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