!STUDENTS DEVELOPMENT HONORS?

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDEX : Sri Lanka greatly leads the region, as 76th on the chart - in 2018, based on the 2017 data.

Pakistan : 150th. India : 130th. Bangladesh: 136th. Nepal : 149th. From a total number of 189 countries.

FOR, say, Pakistan  These are tough times but even when we have had periods of high economic growth our gains on the human development side have always been modest.

High growth did give us rising incomes and significant reductions in poverty during some periods, but it did not translate into significant changes in health and educational outcomes for most people in the country.

Pakistan also do very poorly in terms of the Human Capital Index that has recently been launched by the World Bank .

Pakistan falls in the bottom quartile of countries. India is in the second quartile and Sri Lanka in the third.

The HCI is slightly different from from the HDI. It focuses a bit more on variables that try to capture the human capital aspect. For example, where HDI focuses on expected years of  schooling, the  HCI  also takes into account learning during that period and tries to get to learning adjusted ''years of schooling''.

This gives a better idea of what 'capital' a person would actually have in terms of learning and knowledge at the end of their schooling experience.

The HDI and HCI ranking of Pakistan tell us two stories : One, we have not invested in our people. And this is true despite the fact that we have had many decades of healthy economic growth as well.

Two, even when we have invested in our people, the quality of those investments have been very poor.

If we have invested in  education , we have focused a lot more on access and have not worried a whole lot about quality.

The difference in years of schooling and learning-adjusted years of schooling for Pakistan is quite large.

This conclusion has not come out in recent  human capital index alone; it was there in the last World Development Report as well.

The low achievement on the health and education fronts should be worrying for Pakistan.

If our development is not making the  lives of our  citizens better, what is the argument for  development or growth  for? 

Economic growth is not  an end itself; it is important because it allows people to have better lives. Human development is the goal here.

The honor and serving of this operational research on Human development continues. The World Students Society thanks author and researcher Associate Professor Faisal Bari/LUMS/Lahore.