Recently, there is a debate going on about the poverty estimates and poverty reduction in various daily newspapers. The surprising information is that Pakistan poverty is reduced from 22.3 percent to 17.2 percent during 2000-2008. There are many reasons for my surprise.
For a moment, if I agree with the figures (which I do not) would these so-called "poverty experts" would mind to get out of their air-conditioned office rooms and have a visit to see the real Pakistan (rural areas of Pakistan, especially the interior of Sindh, Balochistan and tribal areas) and real poverty.
Tribal areas are paying the cost of war on terror. The life in Fata becomes miserable since the inception of war on terror in early 2000s. A large number of people from various parts of the tribal region and from some parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have migrated to safe places while leaving behind "everything".
In Balochistan, majority of the people still lacking the basic needs. Interior of Sindh has the similar story. Question arises, if poverty is reduced so much, why I as a layman fail to see it? The common observation is that things are getting worse, even people are not able to meet their basic daily needs, and we are told that poverty is reduced by almost 5 percentage points. What a magic of "data manipulation".
Most probably, the "poverty of these high-paid poverty experts" is reduced with doing such exercises. The interesting thing is that these experts are insisting that UNDP and the World Bank have endorsed their findings. If our own experts cannot get out of their air-conditioned rooms how can I expect a "gora" going and seeing the "real Pakistan".
The poverty estimates are based on Pakistan Social and Living Standard Measurement Survey (PSLM) survey of Statistics Division, which do not include Fata for whatsoever reason. It is a simple approach in India that they reduce the poverty line and hence improved the poverty figures to get the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In Pakistan, we excluded the most-poor parts of the country from PSLM and hence, we improve our poverty figure to claim that our policies were best. A suggestion for so-called "poverty experts", exclude "Balochistan" from the next PSLM survey as due to law and order situation, it is not possible to survey it and poverty will improve for another 7-8 percentage points.