Facing up to Facts

The News, July 6, 2006
Facing up to facts
Kamila Hyat

The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor

The fiasco over the figures announced by the government for levels of poverty in the country comes as the latest blow to its crumbling credibility. The public questioning by both the World Bank and the UNDP of the official claim that poverty had shrunk, miraculously, to 23.9 percent, and the different figures put forward by both agencies -- 25.7 percent by the UNDP and 28.3 percent by the World Bank-- must surely have come as a source of some embarrassment to the country's financial managers. The more acute embarrassment that may have been expected is perhaps not evident, given that the blatant fudging of figures is an exercise that has been engaged in for several decades, with little reservation and little shame.

The results of this often-clumsy juggling with statistics are alarming. They in fact mean it is virtually impossible to gain any real picture of the situation in any sector within the country. Different officially-released documents carry divergent statistics regarding the rate of literacy. There must be some doubt as to whether any of these are accurate, or indeed, whether anyone within the education department or elsewhere is even aware, amid the labyrinth of deception created over the years, as to what the truth actually is.

The same state of affairs holds true for many other key sectors -- including health, nutrition and even the rate of poverty growth. And of course, in the absence of accurate data and projections for the future based on the facts as they exist, rather than on mere illusions created in offices, planning for the needs of people becomes an impossibility.

But, while this fudging of figures has reduced much of the data released officially to nothing more than columns of nonsense, there is a still more disturbing dimension to the issue. This revolves around the central notion that rather than demonstrating any kind of willingness to face up to the realities as they exist, the country's rulers are interested only in fooling audiences -- both within and outside the country -- and in the process perhaps also drawing a comforting veil of deception over their own eyes, somehow persuading themselves that things are not quite as bad as they seem. When the true picture regarding levels of educational attainment are denied; when blatantly untrue and propagandist news reports are aired over the government-controlled PTV network each day insisting that rapid development is taking place; when vast provincial and regional discrepancies in terms of poverty levels and development are not discussed; when yardsticks are deliberately but deceptively moved to show improvements that do not exist and when figures that are quite obviously untrue are put forward, this also means the drastic policy alterations needed to address issues and alter priorities cannot be put in place.

Central to the dishonest practices adopted by government is, of course, a basic lack of real concern for the plight of the people. Amidst all the manipulation of figures, the plight of the people who actually subsist – or starve -- below the poverty line, now put at an absurd Rs878 income per month per capita, is of little interest. Had it been a matter of central attention, the main focus of policy would have been centered around ways to lift these people out of the quagmire of despair within which they live, rather than attempting to hide their actual numbers, and as such downplaying a massive national problem.

Indeed, it seems evident that if any problem is to be solved, it must first be accepted that a need to find solutions exists. In the national context, this would mean an acceptance of consistent failures over many decades to alter the condition in which people live, and an appraisal of where the most fundamental mistakes have been made. Only from this basic acknowledgement of all that is wrong can any attempt begin to devise means to escape the failures that have held back development in the past.

Those who run the affairs of government must also realise that a willingness to show courage and face up to the truth would not be perceived as a sign of weakness, but one of fortitude. After all, almost no one is deceived by the litany of lies regularly churned up by ministries and departments. They have only added to the poor esteem in which people hold governments. Most citizens would appreciate a well-meaning attempt to bring this futile cycle to a close, and at least establish the accurate, baseline situations in various sectors that would make future planning and improvements possible. It is also true that, except perhaps for those who live in the realm of dreams that hovers above Islamabad, most citizens are indeed well aware of the truth as it exists. They are familiar with the dismal state of schooling, with the socio-economic desperation of people, with the families that fall in and out of the poverty line – a single crisis plunging them into the abyss, and, as such, an official acceptance that these realities exist would bring not shock but respect.

The real need of course is to devote less attention to producing figures that amount quite often to little more than absurdity – and instead find ways to address the real problems the people of the country face. This is no easy task - and certainly one that presents more challenges than the fumbling attempts to hide the facts. It would require first of all a study of how, and through what means, success in terms of meeting the developmental needs of citizens has come in other parts of the globe. This would need also to be coupled with an honest appraisal of why Pakistan has slumped, in terms of the many statistics that appear on international indexes measuring human development, to among the worst-performing nations in the world in its ability to meet basic needs such as education, healthcare and other welfare needs. Significantly, many of the countries that have outstripped Pakistan and steadily climbed higher up the development ranks have lower GDPs than that of the country.

Undertaking such tasks can of course never be a particularly pleasant or easy task. Far simpler is conjuring up comforting statistics that aim at hiding the ugly facts. But this of course can only mean a still further delay in any effort to solve problems and improve the situation of citizens -- and as such would inflict only more years of suffering on citizens who have received extremely unfair deals from successive governments interested only in projecting themselves in a favourable light, rather than making the kind of changes that could also bring genuine appreciation from the people of the country.

Email: kamilahyat@hotmail.com