Pakistan Shinning III - Population and Literacy

i dont like 2 pick on bad spelling, but in an article on literacy how abt at least running a spell check?

Re: # 15
arjuna
don`t compare situation of muslims in UK to india. in GREAAAAT BRITAIN it is the duty of local government to provide housing, even if it means they put them in 4 star hotels temporarily and that`s one reason why there are no trailer parks here either.

#13 by aslam644 on April 6, 2007 0:22am PT


There have been other surveys which place muslims right at the bottom, of every socio-economic indicator, education, jobs, housing etc


that`s right...Surveys in Britain...

aslam, this is one of the more recent one. as always, take these surveys as some kind of indicators, reality is different and prolly varies from place to place. also, dharavi folks are not really that poor..they are involved in some serious manufacturing and commerce. its just that they live in the slum because non-availabilty of cheap-enough housing. e.g. aircraft maintenance mechanics live there, they make 15000 rs per month, but for that money only slum is a possible option in bombay for a newcomer.

Re: # 12
Jang
There have been other surveys which place muslims right at the bottom, of every socio-economic indicator, education, jobs, housing etc. recently I read about the slums of dharavi in Mumbai 70% of whose population is muslim. I wouldn’t be surprised if the situation isn’t similar in other cities.

New Delhi: Hindus and Muslims in India are closer as far as average household income; expenditure, savings and even ownership of select consumer goods go.


In rural India, the gap between the two communities` narrows appreciably and even reverses in some cases in favor of Muslims. Not surprisingly, the Sikhs are the most prosperous lot in India, with highest household income, expenditure and ownership of cars, two-wheelers, TV sets and refrigerators. Christians and other smaller communities don`t lag too far behind either, reported a national daily.


In the first ever exercise mapping the economic contours of different religious communities in India, ET presents an exclusive peek into the National Council of Applied Economic Research`s (NCAER) data analysis from its National Survey of Household Income and Expenditure (2004-05), which was led by senior fellow Rajesh Shukla.


The survey collected primary data from a sample of approximately 63,000 households out of preliminary listed sample of 4,40,000 households spread over 1,976 villages (250 districts) and 2,255 urban wards (342 towns) covering 64 National Sample Survey (NSS) regions in 24 states/UTs.


Hindus and Muslims, at a national level, run neck-and-neck on average annual household income (AHI) of Rs 61, 423 and Rs 58,420, respectively.

“The most widely held belief is that it was the Punjabi bureaucratic mafia in Islamabad that wished to under-represent true populations of the other three provinces in order to deny them their lawful share in federal revenues.”

This is the most ridiculous thing to say. Apparently, Mr. Said is not even aware of the census politics and why the census was held in 1998 instead of 1991. I am certainly not going to educate him on that.

I agree though that Pakistan’s population could be 170 mil in 2007.

“In its lexicon, literacy is defined as the ability to sign ones name in English or any other vernacular.”

Not true! that is not how it is defined in Pakistan. The criterion is different and Mr. Said again must check that before blowing fumes.

I don’t know why people write article of this nature without providing links to material they have used to quote numbers and other info.

The author must be taken to primary school to teach him a few things.
He quotes federal education allocation:

Education Allocation 76 79 90 121 135 163 in Billion I guess!

He conclude that that is all the Pakistan government is spending on education. Pak federal government spends this money on institutions such as universities and Engineering colleges thru University Grants commission.

Beside this money spent by the federal government, the provinces take care of the primary and secondary education. Let me remind the author that in Pakistan primary and secondary education is free in government schools. The provincial governments pay for the school teachers’ salaries and the maintenance of the buildings and equipment. If you add numbers for all provinces the total money spent on education would be much higher than this silly numbers that Mr. Author has quoted.

Here are some numbers from Sindh province 2001 budget speech which I got after a quick Google search. From the minister’s speech:

“Given the pro-education nature of this budget Rs. 110 million are being earmarked for new development schemes in education. This is in addition to the Rs. 1040 million allocated for on-going schemes and the highest ever increase in the development allocation.

The Foreign Project Assistance is estimated at Rs.1.875 billion. The principal activities include lining of water courses, Girls education project, Teachers training, Middle Schools project, and Technical Education project

To continue with the objective of providing access to education to the maximum number of citizens, free schooling is being extended in the province from the primary level to the secondary level. Tuition fee in government Secondary schools is therefore abolished.
In order to ensure proper maintenance of schools, availability of materials and free books, the non-salary budget of primary schools is being doubled from the Rs.400 million released last year to Rs. 800 million in the budget. This is the highest ever increase for education.

To encourage poor and meritorious students an amount of Rs.10 million has been kept for scholarships.”

Now add these numbers.

This was in 2001-02. I know these numbers have since doubled. I hope Mr. Zarar Said would do research on subject before taking up this important subject and show us the results of research from Punjab and other provinces and then arrive at the total money spent on education in Pakistan.

As someone mentioned private schools and colleges are never included in the money spent on education.

I can only laugh at his adult literacy numbers. Let me see some evidence that these numbers are accurate. This article is nothing more than a rant at this point.

Further, 163 billion is a substantial sum for education. (Though you can always spend more on education .)

Mr.Arjun how you missed news of big G. Foreign investors are moving in droves. Price has quadripled and people all over Pakistan are buying land these wise people will be rewarded great way. Just like buying property near coast in 1950s in Karachi. With saltwater to sweet water plant becoming operarional physical constraint for needed water for major port of Asia and transshipment center for Chaina and great oil refining city and center of trade and entertainment center for rich people of middle east. I wonder you are thinking of buying land a peace of gold there. Probably you know Indian refinary boss Mr Ambani is interested in putting mega Refinary for high speed disel and and can be largest refinary in world. But he is disappointed but these rich pesky people he is trying with combination with Arab sheikhs of Gulf. Wait forgood news and coming mega bads news for you. Good luck and good morning

#4 by chaltahai on April 4, 2007 9:35am PT


It`s not about the money...Look at India`s spending/capita on education and defense..now look at pakiland`s numbers...

It`s the attitute...Pakiland has enough money to spend when it`s educating it`s people in jihad for strategic depth, kashmir and all that..

basically Indians are dying to be educated while pakis are being educated to die..

the paki higher education strategy can be summed up as ``Damn..those Indians with their world famous IITs has put a mirchi up our rears...surely we need to spend money out the wazoo to try to emulate in a few years what it`s taken them 50 years to build``...i.e. paki see, paki envy, paki do...

Re: # 5 IS the population boom even across the various socioeconomic classes that rely on public or private education? I would think that poor would have a higher population growth rate..but it is pakistan..so you never know.

There are a few things you have overlooked. Because of the population boom, the number of kids educated in the private sector is much higher than before. All that the Mush govt. has really done is stay out of the way of the private sector to achieve economic growth. Now, if they actually spend money on educational sector, it would be quite something. I believe that there is significant interest in technical education for higher grades. See http://www.hec.gov.pk/new/index.htm.

The point that must be raised is the disparity between education standards between classes of society. Therefore growth is/will be:
a/ Unevenly distributed between the elites and the lower middle classes
b/ Not sustainable because of the significant shortage of entry level talent

It is and will continue to be a source of strife, violence and chaos UNLESS the government creates a workable public education model rather than relying so completely on the private sector which (due to a sense of insecurity) is more and more attracted to Madressah type private shops for primary and secondary education. The reason for that is the perception that the Mush govt. is far too Pro US and/or liberal.

an educated population is needed for a stronger economy in this globalized highly skilled world. or is it? If you look at the amount of revenue intakes (i.e. US Aid/paki citizen killed by the Gov`t or US and the number of citizens handed over for terrorism to Gitmo) I would say that Pakistan shouldn`t spend even 1% on education and see if they can kill or send all the citizens to gitmo and reap the benefits. They wil be the richest country in the world...without people.

thanks for this article.

it bears resemblance to the ground reality. i was once asked to proof-read a translation done by a pakistani professor (of an islamic work from urdu to english). on the first page i found so many mistakes in english grammar and punctuation that i had to literally retranslate the whole page myself. i did not want to translate the whole book so i returned it to the publishers along with a note saying that the english was appalling and unreadable that they should get it retranslated if they wanted to publish it in the UK.

i have met many `educated` pakistanis [``main ne BA kiya huwa hai/main FSc pass hoon`` etc.]
who have not even been able to read (i.e. pronounce) the poetry of allama iqbal in Urdu properly let alone anything else.

The only pakistanis i have met who have been educated to an international standard are those who have gone to the private schools such as Aitchison and KGS.

Unlike the previous two episodes, this is factual. The outlay on education must be about 5% of GDP or more to produce the human resource necessary for sustained growth.