Put a number on the poor!

The cliché, "if you don know where you e going, any road will take you there," is as apt for the current economic regime as it was for the clueless Alice in Wonderland. One glaring aspect of the directionless regime is evident in its continuing indifference towards poverty statistics. For over three years now, Pakistan doesn have any official poverty estimates. The importance of reliable poverty estimates cannot be denied, as any progress on population welfare (or lack thereof) can only be substantiated if it is benchmarked and compared against prior poverty estimates. These estimates are also crucial in designing the poverty alleviation programs and evaluating their social cost-effectiveness and budgetary implications. The policymaking bodies of the country are in a state of complete disarray over the release of latest poverty estimates. Updated poverty numbers have been missing from official documents, like the economic, household and living standard surveys, for the past 3 years. The finance ministry has remained on the fence, as the responsibility see-sawed between Planning Commission and FBS (even BISP sometimes). Moreover, CPRSPD - a joint initiative of the UNDP and Planning Commission, formed in 2002 for poverty measurement, pro-poor policy analysis and social policy development - gradually lost its steam and eventually got defanged due to lack of government buy-in, institutional neglect, and capacity constraints. To understand governments reluctance on releasing poverty numbers, a little background is in order. There are fears in official quarters that a large portion of vulnerable population might have slipped below the poverty line, owing to rising food & fuel prices and lowly economic growth, since 2008. Adding to the ado, the regime seems to have inherited a relatively lower poverty rate of 17.2 percent, something corroborated by the World Bank. Using FBS studies, the WB concluded in its country partnership report in July 2010 that, "Pakistan saw an impressive decline in poverty during 2001/02 - 2007/08: the share of the population living in poverty halved, down from 34.5 percent in 2001/02 to 17.2 percent in 2007/08". In this backdrop, the governments hesitation to release poverty numbers appears to stem from the potential political damage of a high poverty incidence. After all, poverty weighs heavy on the political scorecard in Pakistan! It is unfortunate that poverty estimation, a serious issue, has come to spotlight for a wrong reason. Recently, the deputy chairman of Planning Commission invited criticism and parliamentary attention for strongly expressing his scepticism over the poverty figures of 2007-08. Now that the issue has garnered attention, there is a need for this event to give way to a result-oriented debate over poverty statistics. It would be better if the parliamentary body refrained from ad hominem discourse, and rather focused on the core issue. It needs to enquire and examine the reasons behind governments dithery behaviour over release of poverty estimates. This would hopefully pry the lid off the authenticity of the 2007-08 poverty figures too. While they e at it, the effectiveness of existing poverty indicator, the headcount index, also needs to be discussed. The index is limited to measuring only the proportion of population whose income is less than the poverty line. A meaningful poverty analysis would require taking into account the poverty gap (how far off the poor are from the poverty line) and the inequality among the poor. Pakistans prevailing socioeconomic conditions necessitate that poverty statistics be released at the earliest. One hopes that these estimates, if and when they are released, pass the statistical tests of reliability and accuracy. If they do, they would be telling as to the portion of vulnerable population that might have moved in or out of poverty since 2007-08. What is more, these estimates would also be a verdict on governments flagship pro-poor programmes like BISP, something which many political observers have their eyes on!