Headline June 22, 2017/ ''' THE ALMS RACE '''

''' THE ALMS RACE '''

*PROUD PAKISTAN*.......   \WALLOWS SUPREME/.....   in the Cricketing, Champion's Trophy. Some scintillating victory. 

And... *The World Students Society*    gives the team and the nation of Pakistan, a standing ovation. 

While the whole nation rejoices, I and all the great students of Pakistan, find this a moment of one  great inspiration:

*And appeal to the entire nation, to give back to their country in both  kind and cash  to help retire its Debt*

The  *Debt Trap*  will  hold hostage your entire being, and your future generations and generations to come : 

Begum Sahiba [BS], BS Sadat Perveen, BS Naseem Akhter,  BS Shamim Akhter, BS Sajida Akber, BS Nargis Zaid, BS Farzana Jawaid Khan, BS Sajida Abbasi, BS Alina Amin, BS Imran Basit's mother, BS Safia Nadeem.

BS Khaliq Sheikh, BS  Sabiha Shaihd Shakoor, BS Shahbano Imran Basit, BS Alamgir Khan, BS Wajid Shah- BS Munawwer, BS Saleem Khan Kasuria.

BS Suriya Nawaz Malik, BS Mahmooda Asif, BS Khadija Javed Khan, BS Akhter Bari Khan, BS Afaq Anwar,  BS Shazia Rohail, BS Irum Hammad, BS Ishrat Masood Reza, BS Haider Naqvi's mother.   .

BS Roomi Shumyal's mother,  BS Shabana Roomi, BS Uzma Naqvi, BS Nusrat Hussain Mangi, BS Dr Pitaffi, BS Noreen Iqbal, BS Amina Fahim, BS Shazia Naveed, BS Lawyer Zainab Khan, BS Saima Faisal Rasool  

The  *Financial Buoyancy*   will lift Pakistan  and enable it to   tackle its myriad and growing  problems, help modernize its infrastructure, and race towards the ever elusive objective of being a Net Exporter.

Remember The Population Bomb? Well it is ticking and growing and compounding. And the weighted  *cost of capital' is growing.   

JUST OVER TWO YEARS AGO  - ''The largest gathering ever of world leaders'' ;  *a step change* in aid; a  '''massive step forward for humanity'''-

The U.N. meeting held on September 25th, 2015, has had politicians, donors and aid workers reaching for superlatives  [as well as jargon].

Prime Ministers, Presidents and the Pope  gathered in New York to unveil the ''Sustainable Development Goals''  [SDGS]  that were supposed to agape aid and development for the next  15 years. Was the hoopla justified?

Most of the  SDGS'  predecessors, the  Millennium Development Goals [MDGS]  had been met, largely because of progress in China and India. But there were just eight of them,  focused on cutting extreme poverty and improving health care and  education, all so clearly defined.

By contrast there are  17 SDGS  and a whopping 169 ''associated targets'', covering  world peace, the environment, gender equality and much, much more. Many are impossible to measure.

They are  ''higleddy-piggledy'' , agrees Lord Mark Malloch-Brown, who helped write their predecessors. A tighter focus and more precise definitions  might have been wise. 

Even so, the SDGS are part of an important shift in thinking about development that is making it both more ambitious and more realistic. 

ACROSS AFRICA and just about the whole of the  Third World, development has just not kept pace with horribly soaring populations.

In tiny Lesotho, a landlocked kingdom in southern Africa, about one-third of its estimated  two million people spent much of the past two years in danger of starving because of the lingering effects of a drought.

That is just the latest woe afflicting this cursed nation,  and just one example of how fragile future seems for Africa, large parts of which face the prospect of a new famine and, in consequence, further catastrophic displacement within and among their growing populations.

More than 40 years ago, I made Lesotho the centerpiece of a book ''The Alms Race,'' that exposed why so many development projects kept failing. I chose it, writes researcher Eugene Linden, because in 1974 it received more development aid per capita than any other nation.

It could also have been voted most likely to vindicate  Thomas Malthus's warning in 1798  that human numbers would inevitably outrun the resources on which our lives depend.

Today, Lesotho's experience since the  1970s is an even stronger case study of what happens when development plans ignore the reality that such efforts can be a recipe for exploding human numbers.

The tiny Kingdom's  sad history also offers an urgent, cautionary tale of how rapid population growth can nullify development efforts that might otherwise let an emerging nation endure periods of abnormal weather.

Now, as Lesotho's story is being retold in many of the 17  other African nations suffering drought, the  Trump in administration in particular should pay heed to what Lesotho can teach us.

Instead, it has announced that the  United States will cut its annual contribution to the  United Nation's Population Fund, which promotes family planning.

That reckless move  -followed by the even more reckless withdrawal  of the United States from the Paris climate agreement   -could only increase the growing numbers of  desperate migrants  who for decades have been fleeing famine and wars in too many corners of the globe.

Even with only  1.2 million inhabitants in 1974, Lesotho's leaders saw the country was overpopulated.

A 1966  British Colonial Office study estimated that the land could support 400,000  people at best  -a number Lesotho had reached by 1911.        

The country had few resources, and erosion was carrying away vast amounts of topsoil while an annual population increase of about 2 percent created more mouths to feed.

Lesotho desperately needed access to contraception, but aid to organizations avoided getting involved because many Africans then saw birth control as a conspiracy of the rich to keep their numbers in check.

What's happened since? On the surface, Lesotho could seem to be a demographic success story. True, its population has doubled, but its growth rate has fallen to flat.

But this is not the typical  ''demographic transition''  traceable to improved incomes.

It is traceable to  AIDS. The average life span is about 50 years, the second lowest anywhere, is roughly the same as it was 45 years ago. The rate of  H.I.V infection remains among the world's highest-

With nearly  23 percent of the  of adults on  antiretroviral  medicines in 2014.  

*The World Students*  are requested to share this continuing  ''operational research''  with everybody on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and  use all other available tools.

With respectful dedication to the Leaders, Students, Professors and Teachers of the World. See Ya all on !WOW!  -the World Students Society and Twitter-!E-WOW!  -the Ecosystem 2011:

'''Economic Math '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless