Atiqa Batul

The Pakistani elite and intelligentsia love to witter on about stability, FDI, GDP growth and a whole lot of statistical mumbo jumbo, all to meet IMF's diktat. Be patient, say the technocrats: prosperity will trickle down. It has been trickling for decades, and the bottom has barely felt a drop. For tens of millions of Pakistanis, none of this matters diddly squat. They are worried about their next meal and keeping a roof over their heads. That eats up everything they have, leaving nothing to invest in their children's future, and so in the nation's. No country has built a viable economy, or defended itself, on children who can't read and can't grow to their full height. A stunted, undereducated population is no foundation for a state that wants to compete, export and be secure. Yet that is where we stand. Almost 40% of Pakistani children are stunted. A quarter of primary-school-aged children are out of school, and 75 percent of those who do attend cannot read and understand a simple text. Stunting has barely budged in two decades, from 41.6% in 2001-02 to 40.2% in 2018, well above the South Asian average of 31.7%. Poverty tells the same story. It did fall for years, but those gains came mostly from people leaving the farm for low-quality service jobs, and they proved fragile. The World Bank now estimates that nearly half of all Pakistanis live below $4.20 a day, up from about 45 percent in 2018-19. And the vast majority have no real voice in their own destiny. Justice? Forget it. The East Asian economies that took off (Korea, Taiwan, China, and more recently Vietnam) put mass literacy, basic health and nutrition first, before they had much else. A poor country, and Pakistan is one, must get these right before it talks about anything fancier. Until a family can feed and educate its children, the rest is talk.