Poverty perpetuates itself. As victims of poverty cannot escape from its steely grip, therefore, they fail to liberate their children from its vicious trap. The endless journey of life of the poor generations remains jam-packed with miseries and agonies. The inheritance of the poor is poverty, which their successors are bound to inherit . Their ambitions never materialize and perish with their deaths. Marks of woe on the face and crying wails are the treasures of the impoverished. Their poverty-stricken souls fail to melt the fetters of debt. They cast it as garland of poverty and noose of insolvency around the necks of their children to permanently enslave them.

 According to the World Bank report, “PAKISTAN POVERTY ASSESSMENT: Poverty in Pakistan, vulnerabilities, social gaps real and dynamics” and Asian Development Bank report “Poverty in Pakistan issues, causes and institutional responses” published in 2002 deeply studied development in the last three decades. ADB report concedes that poverty was declining in 1970s and 1980s due to borrowing. Both reports stipulated that, “The low level of education must be understood as slowing economic growth. The chronic child malnutrition in rural areas which appears to have not changed in severity in 15 years, impedes the economic prospects of affected adults in their later years.”

Cutthroat competitive examinations are the last ray of hope for the intelligent and the industrious deprived candidates to get a white-collar job. But the policies of these examinations always favor the incapable siblings of bigwigs and further sideline the deserving underprivileged. There are some candidates having excellent past educational carrier record but could not qualify these examinations. There is no fault with these unfortunate candidates. There are loopholes in the examination system. Papers are leaked out for those born in the purple. Some frustrated examiners who themselves could not qualify these examinations mark the papers by measuring the length of the answers by extended-hands and counting the number of captions instead of thorough reading. The examiners are more interested in their paper marking payment than about the future of the candidates. This discriminatory and negligent assessment system is giving birth to frustration and entangling thousands of candidates in poverty trap. These educated unemployed avoid joining a low status job. They become evil genius because they developed a firm believe in favoritism, nepotism, corruption and other illegal means.

Rosy economic picture projected and tall claims propagated by the leaders in Islamabad in the recent “Istehkam Pakistan Rally” will serve no purpose because it is crystal clear that prices of commodities are sky-rocketing, law and order situation is spinning out of control which is gravely affecting foreign investment and tourism industry, corruption is rampant, unemployed youth are moving from pillar to post in search of jobs, even jobs created by the current regime are on contractual basis without any job security, inflation has broken the backs of the teeming millions, unchecked population bomb is haunting Pakistan because of  its limited resources ,true emancipation of women is still a distant dream ,masses are illiterate and  deprived of the basic amenities of life. Therefore, grinding poverty is still a gigantic, formidable and intractable predicament despite official show up of diminution of poverty up to 23.9 percent in statistics. The plight of world’s urban poor is not very different from the rural poor.

Gender inequality is the foremost bottleneck in the way of poverty reduction among women in our country. The modern concept of poverty is not restricted merely to a lack of access to resources and assets, but it also encompasses an individual’s rights to a hale and hearty and booming life for open choices. It is a bald fact that due to gender inequality women neither have access to assets nor can they make independent choices in terms of education, health, and other vital links to life. This appalling situation aggravates their condition and plunge them further into poverty. Therefore, true emancipation of women is indispensable for breaking insolvency ambush.

Status of women paints poor picture that must be improved by considering multiple dimensions of poverty among this discriminated community on the basis of gender. The time is ripe for undertaking much needed land reforms, which will generate an appropriate atmosphere for self-enrichment of countryside women. Begum Sabha Musharraf while delivering a speech at Micro credit summit commenced in New York in November 2002 said, “Inequalities between the richest and the poorest people are widening. Women are worst hit by poverty and with them the family unit gets entangled in a vicious cycle of poverty, ignorance, disease and even more poverty. Clearly action is needed on a number of fronts, as only a multi pronged approach can tackle the problem of poverty.”

Impoverishment gives birth to malnutrition and provides fertile breeding ground for infectious diseases. Social evils take their origin and nourishment from the lap of poverty. Destitution generates frustration, inseminates crimes, contaminates the society with unbridled bribery, hatches cutthroat competition, brings forth moral degradation, rears greed, procreates injustice, creates psychological illnesses, forces the victims to sell their honor to support their children, compels its sufferers to put on the market their flesh to make both ends meet and culminates in coercing the wounded to commit suicide to permanently free his soul from the shackles of poverty which perpetually squeezes him. Thus life is all beer and skittles for the rich, and a prison house for the poor. It is a soft bed of roses for the rich and a hard bed containing pins and needles for the poor.

There is crying need of invigorating civil sector to combat poverty. Anti-poor development schemes must be launched. There is no comprehensive policy to improve industrial sector, which could decipher the problems of unemployment and scarcity of commodities. A strong industrial sector can provide a bounce to national economy and a helping hand to alleviate poverty. There must be increase in income distribution to uplift the economic state of the poor in order to reduce social stratification.

Technical education is essential to provide technical hands to make great strides in economy. Dearth of sufficient number of experts having acquaintance of tricks of the trade is a major stumbling block in the way of industrialization and speaks volumes for our backwardness in this arena. The poor are on the tenterhooks due to lavish spending of the thick-skinned politicians. They should act as a tower of strength for the country instead of self-centered myopic elected officials engrossed in palm greasing, favoratism, nepotism, and embezzlement of public funds to feather their own nests.

The dream of poverty reduction can only come true when the civil sector, army, bureaucracy and politicians work hard with resolute will having unitary approach of national welfare. Everyone should act with a spirit of nationalism instead of drawing a veil over his or her follies. The syrupy dream of rooting out poverty cannot be accomplished by changing statistics. On the whole, it is a vexed question because people are poorer than told by the monetary planners. Strategy of poverty reduction in statistics is a wild goose chase, which cannot keep the wolf from the door.

Dr Tanvir Hussain Bhatti,

Lahore.