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The 2014 UNDP Global Human Development Report is being launched in Islamabad today. And it seems the authors couldn't have chosen a more befitting theme in the context of Pakistans ongoing political state of affairs.
Titled "Sustaining Human Progress: Reducing Vulnerabilities and Building Resilience?" the 2014 UNDP report has two central themes. First, "that sustainably enhancing and protecting individual choices and capabilities and societal competences are essential". And second, that "human development strategies and policies must consciously aim to reduce vulnerability and build resilience".
While the reports first thesis is equally important, it is vulnerability and lack of resilience that is manifesting itself in the form of sit-ins at D-chowk, Islamabad, just a few blocks away from Serena Hotel where the report will be launched today.
The UNDP recommends that one important way to reduce vulnerability and to build resilience is stronger access to social protection and basic social services. Seemingly chiming in with some of the demands of the sit-in walas, the report says that the notion that only wealthy countries can afford social protection or universal basic services is a misconception. In fact, it says there is evidence to the contrary.
The report asserts that an initial spending of even a small percentage relative to the GDP can bring benefits that far outweigh the initial investment.
"Take South Africa's Child Support Grant, which cost 0.7 percent of GDP in 2008-2009 and reduced the child poverty rate from 43 percent to 34 percent. Or Brazil's Bolsa Família programme, which cost 0.3 percent of GDP in 2008-2009 and accounted for 20-25 percent of the reduction in inequality," the report said.
Giving examples of how high national income is not a prerequisite to take the first steps towards broad-based investment for basic social services, the UNDP cites a number of studies that show how investment in public services have preceded growth takeoffs in many countries.
Some countries such as China, Rwanda and Vietnam have achieved universal access to basic social services-education, health care, water supply and sanitation, and public safety-shows that it can be achieved in less than a decade.
"Sweden (in 1891) and Denmark (in 1892) enacted sickness insurance laws at a GDP per capita of $1,724 and $2,598, respectively. Norway enacted a mandatory workers compensation law in 1894 when its GDP per capita was $1,764. The Republic of Korea had already made large gains in education by the early 1960s, when its GDP per capita was less than $1,500. Ghana initiated universal health coverage in 2004 when its income per capita was $1,504. These countries started putting in place measures of social insurance when their GDP per capita was lower than India's and Pakistans' now [in adjusted terms]," the report said.
This column would argue that comparisons like these are over-simplistic, and appear to be based on a-historical and a-political analyses, and, therefore, should not be taken as the last word on whether and how social protection programmes can be rolled out. But, one related message stands out from the report.
The UNDP points out that there is a combination of causes, including elite rent-seeking, exclusionary policies and unaddressed social grievances, that contribute to intrastate conflict, internal strife and a general state of restlessness that makes it difficult to roll out basic services and social protection.
All these pro-conflict characteristics seem to have existed in Pakistan since time immemorial; yet no politician has ever taken the bold steps to set them right. Little wonder then, one month on, in rain and in sunshine, the protestors are in no mood to go away.

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