Source: Economic Intelligence Unit of The Economist Magazine |
With half the population below 20 years and 60 per cent below 30 years, Pakistan is well-positioned to reap what is often described as "demographic dividend", with its workforce growing at a faster rate than total population. This trend is estimated to accelerate over several decades. Contrary to the oft-repeated talk of doom and gloom, average Pakistanis are now taking education more seriously than ever. Youth literacy is about 70% and growing, and young people are spending more time in schools and colleges to graduate at higher rates than their Indian counterparts in 15+ age group, according to a report on educational achievement by Harvard University researchers Robert Barro and Jong-Wha Lee. Vocational training is also getting increased focus since 2006 under National Vocational Training Commission (NAVTEC) with help from Germany, Japan, South Korea and the Netherlands.
Pakistan's work force is over 60 million strong, according to the Federal Bureau of Statistics. With increasing female participation, the country's labor pool is rising at a rate of 3.5% a year, according to International Labor Organization.
With rising urban middle class, there is substantial and growing demand in Pakistan from students, parents and employers for private quality higher education along with a willingness and capacity to pay relatively high tuition and fees, according to the findings of Austrade, an Australian govt agency promoting trade. Private institutions are seeking affiliations with universities abroad to ensure they offer information and training that is of international standards.
Trans-national education (TNE) is a growing market in Pakistan and recent data shows evidence of over 40 such programs running successfully in affiliation with British universities at undergraduate and graduate level, according to The British Council. Overall, the UK takes about 65 per cent of the TNE market in Pakistan.
It is extremely important for Pakistan's public policy makers and the nation's private sector to fully appreciate the expected demographic dividend as a great opportunity. The best way for them to demonstrate it is to push a pro-youth agenda of education, skills development, health and fitness to take full advantage of this tremendous opportunity. Failure to do so would be a missed opportunity that could be extremely costly for Pakistan and the rest of the world.
Working Age Population Growth in Pakistan. Source: UNFPA |
Related Links:
Haq's Musings
Pakistanis Study Abroad
Pakistan's Youth Bulge
Pakistani Diaspora World's 7th Largest
Pakistani Graduation Rate Higher Than India's
India and Pakistan Contrasted in 2011
Educational Attainment Dataset By Robert Barro and Jong-Wha Lee
Quality of Higher Education in India and Pakistan
Developing Pakistan's Intellectual Capital
Intellectual Wealth of Nations
Pakistan's Story After 64 Years of Independence
148 comments:
No doubt Pakistan is in a strong position to take advantage of the young population, but to be able to fulfill the requirements of other countries we will have have to impart vocational training in different trades.
Hope our future Government can plan something, the present Govt is good for nothing and are not interested in long term planning for the benefit of the country, there only aim is to amass as much wealth as they can while they are in control.
Tahir: "Hope our future Government can plan something, the present Govt is good for nothing.."
Through most of the years since 1947, Pakistani govts have been part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Pakistanis have accomplished much in spite of their cotrrupt and incompetent government. They can continue to do so in the future through a more organized private sector.
What a great article again, Riaz Saheb! Gives one hope:
"Zara num ho yo ye maTTi bahut zarKhaiz hai saaqee"
(With a bit of nurturing, this soil can bring forth miracles!)
The two major polical parties have ruined the country by indulging in "plunder and loot by turn". I hope the forces of change would unite before the next elections and create a corruption-free Pakistan, with absolute meritocracy as the sole criterion for selection and continuation.
Anon: "my point push for improvement. If you say Pakistan is the best country in the world, no improvement then."
Misleading articles like the one you refer to do not "push for improvement".
Enough of this self-flagellation!
The author Niaz Murtaza is factually incorrect on a number of data points. For example, India lags behind its neighbors, Pakistan and Bangladesh, on basic human development indices like life expectancy at birth and mean or average years of schooling and gender parity, according to the last United Nations Development Program (UNDP) report.
On gender parity, Pakistan ranks 112, ten places ahead of India at 122.
Titled “Real Wealth of Nations: Pathways to Human Development”, the report said life expectancy at birth in India is 64.4 years, while in Pakistan it is 67.2 years. In Bangladesh, life expectancy is 66.9 years.
Similarly, mean years of schooling in India is 4.4 years while in Pakistan and Bangladesh it is 4.9 and 4.8 years respectively.
And India lags behind Pakistan on such basics as nutrition (Indian Planning Commission’s Syeda Hameed) and public hygiene (UNICEF).
And in the last decade, Pakistan has graduated more people from schools and colleges (Barro & Lee of Harvard U) and created more jobs (World Bank Jobs report) as percent of its population than India has.
S. Akbar Zaidi from DAWN
-------------------------
"That Pakistan’s economy has been performing at a level which is far below its assumed potential, or that its neighbours and other countries in the region are doing better, is a fact which has been acknowledged by serious economists for some years now. Even Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have better economic growth rates compared to Pakistan, and more importantly, unlike Pakistan’s roller-coaster economy, countries in the region are locking in to steady states of economic growth."
Occasional and isolated but nonetheless tragic suicide cases like Raja Khan's in Pakistan get a lot of media coverage as they should. Meanwhile, over 200,000 farmer suicides in India have passed with little media attention in India.
Here's a Washington Post report on rising suicides in India:
NEW DELHI — Ram Babu’s last days were typical in India’s growing rash of suicides.
The poor farmer’s crop failed and he defaulted on the $6,000 loan he had taken to buy a tractor. The bank’s collectors hounded him, even hiring drummers to go round the village drawing attention to his shame.
“My father found it unbearable. He was an honorable man and he couldn’t take the humiliation. The next day he hanged himself from a tree on his farm,” his son Ram Gulam said Friday.
Babu’s suicide went unreported in local newspapers, just another statistic in a country where more than 15 people kill themselves every hour, according to a new government report.
The report released late Thursday said nearly 135,000 people killed themselves in the country of 1.2 billion last year, a 5.9 percent jump in the number of suicides over the past year.
The suicide rate increased to 11.4 per 100,000 people in 2010 from 10.9 the year before, according to the statistics from the National Crime Records Bureau.
Financial difficulties and debts led to most of the male suicides while women were driven to take their lives because of domestic pressures, including physical and mental abuse and demands for dowry.
A 2008 World Health Organization report ranked India 41st for its suicide rate, but because of its huge population it accounted for 20 percent of global suicides.
The largest numbers of suicides were reported from the southern Indian states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, where tens of thousands of impoverished farmers have killed themselves after suffering under insurmountable debts.
The loans — from banks and loan sharks — were often used to buy seeds and farm equipment, or to pay large dowries to get their daughters married. But a bad harvest could plunge the farmer over the edge.
Sociologists say the rapid rise in incomes in India’s booming economy has resulted in a surge in aspirations as well among the lower and middle classes, and the failure to attain material success can trigger young people to suicide.
“The support that traditionally large Indian families and village communities offered no longer exists in urban situations. Young men and women move to the cities and find they have no one to turn to for succor in times of distress,” said Abhilasha Kumari, a sociology professor in New Delhi.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia-pacific/government-report-says-15-people-commit-suicide-every-hour-in-india/2011/10/28/gIQAVFGWOM_story.html
I link to you fairly regularly at Brown Pundits since you are probably the only internet resource that is able to give a "correct" (neither optimistic or pessimistic) analysis of South Asia and its constituent economies.
In a way I think the unduly "negative" attitude of Pakistan, particularly vis a vis all its South Asian neighbours, is perhaps a good thing because that means we relentless focus on the failures of our nation.
Paradoxically I have great hope for Pakistan and Pakistanis because we indulge in so much "self-flagellation" when as you show that so much of it is unjustified. Pakistan will motor on and will redeem the Pakistani people.
MJ Akbar said the idea of India is stronger than the Indian but that the Pakistani is stronger than the idea of Pakistan. I disagree with this entirely I think the idea of Pakistan is our saving grace (if properly understood as a progressive, intellectual & secular concept and free from its jingoistic nationalistic elements that it is often hijacked too.)
"India lags behind its neighbors, Pakistan and Bangladesh, on basic human development indices"
How then do you explian the superior ranking of India as compared to Pak. Let me guess - propaganda?!
"the report said life expectancy at birth in India is 64.4 years, while in Pakistan it is 67.2 years...And India lags behind Pakistan on such basics as nutrition"
Let's not miss the fine print here Mr Haq. Life expectancy might be higher but so is the under 5 mortality rate (india - 69, pak - 89). Moreover, your talk of wide spread undernoursishment in India betrays the numbers. 22 percent of india qualifies as undernourished, as compared to 23% for pak. And need i mention, a greater allocation of the indian budget to health when compared to pak (1.1% vs 0.8)
"mean years of schooling in India is 4.4 years while in Pakistan and Bangladesh it is 4.9 and 4.8 years respectively."
Again, let us not mask the details to suit your hypothesis. Pak does only marginally better in mean years of schooling for adults. However, on most other indices such as adult literacy rate, combined gross enrolment ratio, expenditure on edu and expected years of schooling for children - India stands head and shoulders above its neighbour. So much for your wild fantasies of demographic dividend. BTW - the unemloyment remains to be continually high in pak. Quite apprently, the fragile pak economy just cannot absorb the young (un educated) workforce.
"And in the last decade, Pakistan has graduated more people from schools and colleges (Barro & Lee of Harvard U) and created more jobs (World Bank Jobs report)"
Created more jobs?! Is that not supposed to arrest the unemployment rate? India might not have created as many jobs on a per million basis, but it's india that has lower unemployment.
And lets not forget the composite HDI index. While india has consistently outperformed the average for south asia, pak on the other hand has struggled to keep pace, underperforming the south asian average. India is also closer to the world average, when compared to pak.
Your wholesale dismisal of india is clearly not backed by data. India is not a perfect country. Far from it, there are deep seated misconceptions that the priviliged indian middle class needs to challenge. But, let's not kid ourselves into believing fairy tales about Pak.
PS - data sourced from following links.
1. http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/IND.html
2. http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/PAK.html
Cheers.
Zachary: "Pakistan will motor on and will redeem the Pakistani people."
I share your optimism.
While many of the critics I berate see Pakistan's glass completely empty, I prefer to see it half full. And I believe Pakistanis' focus should be on how to fill it up to the rim.
It's better to light a candle than to curse darkness.
http://www.riazhaq.com/2008/09/light-candle-dont-curse-darkness-in.html
Ashmit: "How then do you explian the superior ranking of India as compared to Pak"
It just shows the inadequacy of HDI index in accurately assessing human development when it puts India ahead of Pakistan, in spite of India's shorter life expectancy (UNDP), greater multidimensional poverty (Oxford), greater hunger (IFPRI), worse hygiene (UNICEF), better gender parity (UNDP) higher disease burdens(WHO) and shorter time in school and lower graduation rates (Harvard's Barro & Lee).
Typical of you, Mr Haq - misdirection. Firstly, why shoot the messenger (HDI). Secondly, there is little to sugggest that you have anything to contest my claims of pathetic performnace by pak on several indicators than i enlisted in my last comment. Moving ahead.
"better gender parity (UNDP)"
Do have a careful look at the statistics put forth by UNICEF, especially in the segment tiled "women".
(http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/southasia.html)
It's amusing of you to boast of "better gender parity" when on every unicef indicator (for "women") pakistan fares poorly when compared to its much larger neighbour. The indicators such as life expectancy of females, literacy rates and different enrolment ratios, use of contraceptives, antenatal care, delivery care, maternal mortality rates do manage to puncture you flailing attempts of putting forth shameless rhetoric as fact.
"higher disease burdens(WHO)"
(http://apps.who.int/ghodata/?vid=10400&theme=country)
Meanwhile, here are some more statistics to add a different perspective. "Higher disease burden" in India? Data clearly shows that pak has higher infant moratlity rate, higher under 5 mortality rate, higher incidence, prevalence and deaths due to TB, higher maternal mortality rates, lower public expenditure on a per capita basis and as %age of GDP, higher years of life lost due to communicable diseases, lower number of hospital beds per 10,000 people. How in your right mind do you see pak as being the better of the two?
"India's shorter life expectancy"
Really?! You would want that, but WHO thinks differently. WHO stats reveal that life expectancy at birth for India is 65 years, while for Pak is stands at 63 years.
"greater hunger (IFPRI)"
Yet, the notoriously high undernourishment levels in Pak appear to be appaling when taken in context with your almost self congratulatory tone. Undernourishment in Pak stands at 23% of population, which is higher than "hungry" india.
And outside of these social indicators, lets also not forget that as opposed to the pak economy, limping forward on crutches of high inflation, high interest, high unemplyment, low investment, fiscal indiscipline - India is the 2nd fastest growing country amongst the large economies.
Moreover, if analysts at E&Y are to be believed, the Indian eco will begin outperforming China as soon as 2013.
(http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-10-25/india/30319483_1_gdp-growth-eurozone-indian-growth)
Both countries are a long way from achieving the MDGs. Therefore, to claim unquestionable superiority with unabashed arrogance doesn't seem either objective or mature.
Cheers.
Ashmit: "Yet, the notoriously high undernourishment levels in Pak appear to be appaling when taken in context with your almost self congratulatory tone."
Pakistan has not done well relative to many other nations. Hunger is rising in Pakistan.
World hunger data collected from 2006 to 2009 shows that Pakistan's hunger index score has worsened this year to 20.7 (based on 2009 data and reported in 2011) after three prior consecutive years of improvement. International Food Research Institute's GHI (Global Hunger Index) score for Pakistan improved from 21.7 in 2008 to 21.0 in 2009 to 19.1 in 2010, and its world ranking has dropped to 59 in 2011 from 52 in 2010. It was ranked 61 in 2008 and 58 in 2009 on a list of 81+ nations.
Among other South Asian nations, India's GHI score improved to 23.7 in 2011 to where it was in three years earlier in 2008 after worsening from 23.7 (2008) to 23.9 (2009) to 24.1 (2010). India's ranking remained at 67 in 2011, the same as it was in 2010 but worse than 66 in 2008 and 65 in 2009.
http://www.riazhaq.com/2011/10/world-food-day-pakistan-hunger-rising.html
Now let me draw your attention to what Syeda Hameed of Indian Planning Commission has to say on this subject:
'India worse than Pakistan, Bangladesh on nourishment'
'I should not compare. But countries like Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are better,' she said. The conference was organised Monday by the Confederation of Indian Industry and the Ministry of Development of Northeastern Region.
According to India's National Family Health Survey, almost 46 percent of children under the age of three are undernourished - an improvement of just one percent in the last seven years. This is only a shade better than Sub-Saharan Africa where about 35 percent of children are malnourished.
Hameed said the government's Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) programme, which is a flagship programme to improve the health of women and children, had not shown results despite a lot of money being spent on it in the past few years.
'We have not been successful in improving the status of health of our women and children,' she added.
http://newshopper.sulekha.com/india-worse-than-pakistan-bangladesh-on-nourishment_news_927008.htm
"Now let me draw your attention to what Syeda Hameed of Indian Planning Commission has to say on this subject"
"Has to say"?! She HAD said this over three years back. Might be a litttle outdated in the current context, as databases of UNDP, UNICEF, WHO and FAO all clearly point towards higher undernourishment levels in pak.
Ashmit: ""Has to say"?! She HAD said this over three years back. Might be a litttle outdated in the current context, as databases of UNDP, UNICEF, WHO and FAO all clearly point towards higher undernourishment levels in pak. "
Read what IFPRI said....India's GHI score improved to 23.7 in 2011 to where it was three years earlier in 2008 after worsening from 23.7 (2008) to 23.9 (2009) to 24.1 (2010). India's ranking remained at 67 in 2011, the same as it was in 2010 but worse than 66 in 2008 and 65 in 2009.
Unlike the UN agencies you quote, IFPRI is more reliable because it specializes in the area of food and hunger, and publishes its scores and rankings every year.
"IFPRI is more reliable because it specializes in the area of food and hunger"
Absolutely. But wouldn't you also agree that that WHO and FAO would know a thing or two about undernourishment.
And speaking of which, I think its important to appreciate that hunger and undernourishment, though associated, are not quite the same.
Hunger, as IFPRI indicates, is acute in India. However, there is also no denying that a greater percentage of people in pak suffer from undernourishment.
Therefore, despite pak, technically, qualfying as "less hungry" - given that undernourishment levels are high (and higher than India), there is little room for perverse jingoism in celebrating the IFPRI data as pak scoring one over india.
Ashmit: "given that undernourishment levels are high (and higher than India), there is little room for perverse jingoism in celebrating the IFPRI data as pak scoring one over india."
I see little to celebrate about 22% vs 23% under nutrition.
Karachi's HDI is about 0.799, much higher than Pakistan's national human development index and comparable to European nations of Portugal and Poland, and higher than Malaysia's.
Here's a brief UNDP description of human dev in Pakistan:
According the Human Development Report 2010, Pakistan’s HDI value increased from 0.311 to 0.490 during 1980 to 2010, an increase of 58% or average annual increase of about 1.5% which ranked it 10 in terms of HDI improvement in comparison to the average progress of other countries. Pakistan’s life expectancy at birth increased by more than 9 years, mean years of schooling increased by about 3 years and expected years of schooling increased by almost 4 years. Pakistan’s GNI per capita increased by 92 per cent during the same period.
Pakistan’s 2010 HDI of 0.490 is below the average of 0.516 for countries in South Asia. It is also below the average of 0.592 for medium human development countries. From South Asia, Pakistan’s 2010 “HDI neighbours”, i.e. countries which are close in HDI rank and population size, are India and Bangladesh, which had HDIs ranked 119 and 129 respectively. Pakistan is also compared to the Islamic Republic of Iran, a high human development country.
http://undp.org.pk/about-pakistan.html
Here's a description of Pakistan as an outsourcing destination by sourcingline.com:
Pakistan is rapidly emerging as a leading sourcing nation, and currently ranks eighth among top outsourcing countries in 2010. It is becoming a key destination for software development and information technology services, such as medical transcription and call centers.
Pakistan’s strengths lie in its English speaking workforce; complete repatriation of foreign companies' profit; equity ownership; and tax exemption on software until the year 2016. The most popular BPO sub-sectors in Pakistan are call centers, particularly in the areas of accountancy, medical transcription, animation development, and data entry.
Companies that have invested within the borders include Google, GE, Citi Group, and Bank of America. High-end IT services are also growing, with IBM, Microsoft, and Cisco expanding their operations in the country as well.
In the past, the government has spent nearly USD $70 million in order to promote Pakistan's software industry. To do this, PSEB (Pakistan Software Export Board) has constructed IT parks and leases 750,000 square feet to IT companies. The government hopes to increase the IT sector to USD $11 billion by the end of 2011, achieving more is less than a decade than what other countries in the technology scene have achieved in 15-20 years. Pakistan has also started developing start-ups for domain expertise, idea content and intellectual property for graduates who plan to start companies in IT. Another trend is the industry's shift from the "volume driven low-margin voice-based business” into higher values, such as functional BPO.
http://www.sourcingline.com/outsourcing-location/pakistan
"I see little to celebrate about 22% vs 23% under nutrition."
A few points here. Firstly, according to FAO the gap is much wider. FAO stats record undernourishment in india at 21% as opposed to 26% in pak. Secondly, celebrating?! far from it, I am only driving home the point that the shambolic performance of pak on several indicies that I have listed, really does not warrant your unfounded confidence in dismissing India and celebrating pak as outperformer in south asia. Despite your tall talk, stats clearly reveal that pak is ailing, on both economoic an social indicators.
"Karachi's HDI is about 0.799, much higher than Pakistan's national human development index and comparable to European nations of Portugal and Poland, and higher than Malaysia's"
Now you boast of Karachi as per the HDI. However, if you recall - you had claimed earlier - "It just shows the inadequacy of HDI index in accurately assessing human development". Contradictions galore, Mr. Haq.
Secondly, to add to your criticism of HDI as a barometer of human development - the inability of the index to accomodate the social, psychological and the physical impact of crime does render the index useless especially in the context of a city such as karachi. Would you still be able to claim superiority over portugal, poland and malaysia if the gun slinging in Karachi was accounted for?
Thirdly, India too has its own pockets of smart development. Chandigarh has an HDI score of 0.860 - much higher than the trio of portugal, poland and malaysia, but also higher than Greece, Italy, UK, Luxembourg, UAE, Singapore and Hungary.
Ashmit: "FAO stats record undernourishment in india at 21% as opposed to 26% in pak."
FAO data is not only inconsistent with IFRPI and India's own planning commission, it's also internally inconsistent with FAO's other reports which show per capita consumption of almost all food groups, particularly milk and dairy, is much higher in Pakistan than India, and inequality in Pakistan is much less than in India.
According to the FAO, the average dairy consumption of the developing countries is still very low (45 kg of all dairy products in liquid milk equivalent), compared with the average of 220 kg in the industrial countries. Few developing countries have per capita consumption exceeding 150 kg (Argentina, Uruguay and some pastoral countries in the Sudano-Sahelian zone of Africa). Among the most populous countries, only Pakistan, at 153 kg per capita, has such a level. In South Asia, where milk and dairy products are preferred foods, India has only 64 kg and Bangladesh 14 kg. East Asia has only 10 kg.
Milk and milk products is what nations like Bangladesh resort to reduce malnutrition.
Ashmit: "Chandigarh has an HDI score of 0.860"
Chandigarh has a population of only a million, 1/18th of Karachi's population. Karachi is very big and very diverse with people of all ethnic groups migrating from all nooks and corners of Pakistan. Karachi is mini-Pakistan, a much more representative sample of Pakistan than Chadiharh is of India.
Riaz,
The link sourcingline.com says:
Pakistan’s economic competitiveness, according to the World Economic Forum, scores low with a GCI index of 3.5, especially when compared to the US (5.4), China (4.8), and Egypt (4.0). Similarly, Pakistan's macroeconomic stability is also low. Its GCI score is 3.2 percent compared to China (4.8), Chile (4.7), and Thailand (4.9). According to the World Bank, Pakistan’s primary problem is maintaining its macroeconomic stability, which has always been difficult. The Bank is working with Pakistan’s government to improve its administration and service delivery, particularly in the areas of civil service reform and financial management recovery."
Furthermore, the same source gives India a better rating:
"Business & economic environment index: 4.2 Rank: 32". Although, India has a long way to go. As I have said Pakistan is not the yardstick and never should be.
Here's a Dawn report on Pakistan's progress in human development since 1980:
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has been ranked 10th among the countries in term of human development improvement by the United Nations Development Programme’s 20th Human Development Report 2010.
Those among the 135 countries that improved most in Human Development Index (HDI) terms over the past 30 years were led by Oman, which invested energy earnings over the decades in education and public health.
The other nine “Top Movers” are China, Nepal, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Laos, Tunisia, South Korea, Algeria and Morocco. Remarkably, China was the only country that made the “Top 10” list due solely to income performance; the main drivers of HDI achievement were in health and education.
The UNDP report said that in Pakistan, between 1980 and 2010, the HDI value increased by 58 per cent (average annual increase of about 1.5 per cent).
“With such an increase Pakistan is ranked 10 in terms of HDI improvement, which measures progress in comparison to the average progress of countries with a similar initial HDI level”, it added.
Pakistan’s life expectancy at birth increased by more than nine years, mean years of schooling increased by about nine years and expected years of schooling increased by almost 4 years.
Pakistan’s Gross National Income (GNI) per capita increased by 92 per cent during the same period. The relative to other countries in the region, in 1980, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh had close HDI values for countries in South Asia.
However, during the period between 1980 and 2010 the three countries experienced different degrees of progress toward increasing their HDIs states the Report.
The Report introduces the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), which identifies multiple deprivations in the same households in education, health and standard of living.
The average percentage of deprivation experienced by people in multidimensional poverty is 54 per cent.
The MPI, which is the share of the population that is multi-dimensionally poor, adjusted by the intensity of the deprivations, is 0.275.Pakistan’s “HDI neighbors”, India and Bangladesh, have MPIs of 0.296 and 0.291, respectively.
http://www.dawn.com/2011/02/27/pakistan-among-top-10-nations-in-human-development-improvement.html
Here's a Times of India story on "Aalu Anday", a satirical music video gone viral on Youtube:
NEW DELHI: When the music video of "Aalu Anday", an unsparing song that lampoons Pakistan's top politicians and generals from Ashfaq Kayani to Zia-ul-Haq, from Nawaz Sharif to Imran Khan, was released last month, it immediately became an internet sensation.
But the bitingly satirical number was merely the latest in a long chain of similar popular anti-establishment tracks by other well-known Pakistan singers and groups such as Shehzad Roy, Junoon and Laal who have laughed at and lambasted the high and mighty across the border.
"We are the silent majority of Pakistan who are speaking up now. We are not trying to give solutions, but only trying to create an environment where things can be discussed openly," says 27-year-old Ali Aftab Saeed, a band member of Beygairat Brigade, the Lahore-based 'political rock' band who created Aalu Anday. Incidentally, the three band members (Daniyal Malik and 15-year-old guitarist Hamza Malik being the other two) are self-confessedly 'hardcore' RD Burman fans and Anurag Kashyap admirers.
A little courage in the heart and a guitar in hand go a long way in expressing notes of dissent across the border. The Beygairat Brigade's act is the latest in a tradition where singers and satirists have routinely ridiculed and castigated politicians in their music and lyrics. In 2008, singer Shehzad Roy courted controversy with Laga Reh, a hard-hitting track attacking the establishment.
Earlier Sufi-rock band Junoon faced censorship for songs like Ehtesaab, which hit out at political corruption and was banned by the Pakistani state TV. Now, bands such as Laal have joined the party providing music to the fiery protest poetry of Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Habib Jalib, known for producing art out of defiance. TV channels refused to play their song, Jhooth ka uncha sar, said to be "too anti-army" in sentiment.
"In the beginning Pakistani bands used music to express dissent because other avenues of communication were closed to them. When you are in a repressive environment you naturally find other ways to communicate and music became that outlet. Nowadays things are much more open, but I think the association between music and free speech remains," says satirist and stand-up comic Saad Haroon.
In a country racked by terrorist violence and extreme disillusionment with the state, humour not only works as a form of subversion but also as relief and release.
The identity of Beygairat Brigade is constructed as an antithesis to what they call the "ghairat brigade" (honor brigade): political analysts and TV show hosts who have taken it upon themselves to uphold the honor of the Pakistani state as they understand it.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/In-Pakistan-protest-music-is-a-tradition/articleshow/10562389.cms
Prof Riaz ul Haq sb,
I have some good news for you. India has been ranked 134 on UNDP HDI index- Medium Development Country. Pakistan has been ranked 145 Low Development Country.
Regars
Majumdar (yr old frnd from chowk)
Majumdar: "I have some good news for you. India has been ranked 134 on UNDP HDI index- Medium Development Country. Pakistan has been ranked 145 Low Development Country."
Majumdar sahib, nice to hear from you. Hope you are well.
I agree that Pakistan is doing poorly on human development measures by UNDP, and Pakistanis have lot of work to do. But looking at the sub-indices, it doesn't seem quite as bad as it appears from the composite ranking. Here is what Hindustan Times is reporting:
India has been ranked lower than its neighbour Pakistan in the United Nation’s multi-dimensional poverty index (MDI) and gender equality index even though it has been able to maintain its 134 rank in overall Human Development Index (HDI). The MDI evaluates deprivations in education,
health and standard of living and the households with score of more than one-third of the weighted indicators are listed as multi-dimensionally poor.
The UN Development Programme’s HDI report says that 53.7% of Indians suffer from multi-dimensional poverty as compared to 49.4 % in Pakistan and 57.8% in Bangladesh.
Even in absolute poverty terms, measured for those earning less than $1.25 a day, Pakistan fares better than India. Around 41.6% of Indians in 2005 were earning less than $1.25 a day as compared to 22.6% Pakistanis.
When it comes to gender equality, India has been ranked lower than most of its neighbouring countries including Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. It is primarily on account of India’s adolescent fertility rate, lesser number of women in Parliament and poor participation of women in workforce.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/NewDelhi/India-ranked-lower-than-Pakistan-for-poverty-and-gender-inequality/Article1-764089.aspx
In addition, Pakistan is doing a bit better in terms of mean years of schooling with 4.9 yrs for Pakistan vs India's 4.4 years.
http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/HDR_2011_EN_Complete.pdf
Prof Riaz ul Haq sb,
I am doing quite fine, sir. And as I can see now, you are going great guns too. Why dont you join us on Desibukbuk where most chowkies have migrated to.
But looking at the sub-indices, it doesn't seem quite as bad as it appears from the composite ranking.
No, no, not at all. I was only pointing out that Pakistan isnt outsripping India as fast as readers on your blog wud think.
53.7% of Indians suffer from multi-dimensional poverty as compared to 49.4 %
I suggest you inspect this info more closely. Pakistan's data is more recent based on 2007 numbers, while India's is a tad older 2005 based. India has been growing reasonably well since 2005 (about 7-8% generally) while Pak has stagnated since 2007 (presumably due to the unfortunate incursion of democracy in 2008). So as on date, I am not sure diff in MPI wud be very different. Hopefully, of course Pak's rightful rulers- the Fauj will be back in saddle and restore the normal superiority that Pakistan has had over India.
Regards
@MAzumdar
What is there to be proud off Pakistan being lower than us is to be expected with a certain zardari in charge,a full scale civil war,floods,pitiably low tax collections etc.
My question is why the f*** are we so low given that we are fully solvent with a proper industrial base!Truly pathetic!! we are the unofficial sick man of the G-20!!
Mazumdar Sahib,
Here's more on India-Pak HDI comp from London's Telegraph:
The report also finds more 'gender equality' in conservative Pakistan than in 'tolerant' India.
Its findings amount to a wake-up call for a nation which has taken great pride in its rapid economic growth and the increasing clout of its billionaire business leaders but has failed to share the spoils with its poor. Britain's Department for Internmational Development has pointed to this chequered progress to justify its continuing aid to India.
The Human Development Report reveals that while India ranks slightly above Pakistan in its level of 'human development' – based on life expectancy, schooling and per capita income – its wider poverty level is worse than Pakistan's.
In absolute terms, 41.6 per cent of India's 1.1 billion people earned less than 78 pence per day compared with 22.6 per cent of Pakistan's 173 million.
The report quotes its 'multi-dimensional poverty index' which includes measures of schooling, child mortality, nutrition, access to electricity, toilets, drinking water, and hygienic living conditions, and reveals India is poorer.
It found 53.7 per cent of Indians suffering from this broader kind of poverty, compared with 49 per cent of Pakistanis.
More surprisingly, India is ranked below Pakistan and Bangladesh on gender equality which reflects maternal death rates, teenage pregnancies, access to education, and the number of women parliamentarians and in the workplace.
India's rural development minister Jairam Ramesh said the report highlighted the prevalence of poverty in the midst of economic growth and the possibility that "actually economic development may lead to retrogression of social indices." Priya Subramanian of Save the Children said India's poor ranking reflected a lack of political will to tackle poverty.
"It is things like healthcare and education which have India lagging behind Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. These countries are well on track and India, with its fast growing economy, has still not got its act together," she said.
"While we have a new band of millionaires, on the other side people continue to suffer endlessly. Millions still live below the poverty line and go to sleep hungry. The [economic] growth has not flowed towards them," she added.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/8867353/Indian-poverty-levels-higher-than-Pakistans-says-UN-report.html
whatever riaz the chickens will come home to roost in 2015 the millenium development goals are measured...you really still believe PAkistan will be ahead of India in 2015 based on current trends and the fact that US is not leaving Afghanistan till 2014....
Riaz, you have misquoted or misrepresented the HDI data.
The mean years of schooling is for adults 25 and over who are literate. That equates to post high school education. The numbers to follow is the Education Index and the Expected Years of Schooling of children under 7 years;
India 0.45 EI and 10.3 years
Pakistan 0.386 and 7
Loss due to Overall Inequality in Pakistan is greater;
0.504 to 0.346 = 0.158 loss Pakistan
0.547 to 0.392 = 0.155
India
Maternal mortality came down from 450 to 230 for India whereas Pakistan came down from 300 to 260!
Since 1980 Pakistan, which was 20% ahead (bangladesh partition dividend) of India in HDI terms, is today approximately 8% behind India!!
Mehul: "Riaz, you have misquoted or misrepresented the HDI data.The mean years of schooling is for adults 25 and over who are literate."
I think you are mistaken.
Read page 129 of the full human dev report 2011. It says nothing about a particular age group. It simply states mean years of schooling in Pakistan is 4.9 vs 4.4 in India for the population.
http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/HDR_2011_EN_Complete.pdf
http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/PAK.html.
Riaz, the above link clearly indicates " adults age 25 and over". You may need to click the heading to get that detail.
Cheers
You are wrong Mr Haq. I looked at definitions below page 129 as you indicated and it clearly states the age 25.
Suraj: "I looked at definitions below page 129 as you indicated and it clearly states the age 25."
Yes, it does. But it also cites Barro & Lee as source, and Barro & Lee both have concluded in their 2010 paper that Pakistan's graduation rates at all levels (Prim, Sec & Ter) are higher than India's:
Education Level.......India........Pakistan
Primary (Total)........20.9..........21.8
Primary (Completed)....18.9..........19.3
Secondary(Total)....40.7.....34.6
Secondary(Completed)...0.9.....22.5
College(Total).........5.8......5.5
College(Completed).....3.1.....3.9
http://www.riazhaq.com/2011/08/pakistan-ahead-of-india-in-graduation.html
http://www.barrolee.com/
Riaz,
Once again you have looked at the data superficially on the Barro-Lee article. I am hoping that was not by choice.
Data are presented in desegregated form and the numbers DO NOT indicate graduation rates as you have indicated. For example, you do not have a graduation rate at the primary or secondary level. One way to analyze the data would be to think of it in percentages. Of the entire population considered functionally literate 21.8%[Pak] and 20.9%[Ind] total have primary schooling. The completion data is exclusive from the total data. Look at the data for India at the secondary completion and total % 0.9 & 40.7 respectively. This indicates that most Indians in this category go on further to high school or college and only 0.9% just complete secondary school.
This methodology is statistical; however, Education Index and the years of schooling is a tool that UN uses to gauge progress in education.
Riaz,
"..it also cites Barro & Lee as source, and Barro & Lee both have concluded in their 2010 paper that Pakistan's graduation rates at all levels (Prim, Sec & Ter) are higher than India's"
That is your conclusion NOT Barro-Lee's and is also faulty and misconstrued.
The data breakdown is within the country and not across the country:
Education Attainment for Total Population
India Pakistan
------------------------
No school(total) 32.7 38.0
Primary (total) 20.9 21.8
Secondary (total) 40.7 34.6
Tertiary (total) 5.8 5.5
----------------------
Total~ Total~ =100 =100
You have analyzed the data incorrectly. You have made a gross error by looking at the data horizontally! The data are to be analyzed vertically and within the specific country.
Poonam & Suraj:
Data from Harvard scholars Barro & Lee speaks clearly with no need for arguments or ambiguity unless you are in denial.
It reports percentages of population for each country in 15+ age group at various levels of education in terms of total (enrolled) and completed (graduated).
As to educational attainment in South Asia, it shows that the percentage of population enrolled in sec and ter level is a bit larger in India, but the percentage of population that completed (graduated) each level is higher in Pakistan.
In other words, slightly fewer Pakistanis enroll in secondary and tertiary schools, but more of them graduate than their counterparts in India as percentage of each age group's populations in each country.
Bottom Line: Pakistanis stay in schools longer and graduate more often than Indians of the same age group.
A big donor is giving $50 million to Stanford to help promote innovation and entrepreneurship for alleviating poverty in the developing world. Here are some excerpts from a Mercury News story:
A Silicon Valley venture capitalist has donated $100 million to Stanford University's Graduate School of Business to establish a new institute to promote entrepreneurship in developing countries and eventually alleviate poverty.
Robert King, along with his wife, Dorothy, also gave a second gift to the entire university, $50 million in matching funds to encourage more donations to Stanford. The couple's gift is the second-largest publicly disclosed single donation to the school, behind a $400 million donation in 2001 by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
---------------
"The institute will be about sponsoring and creating entrepreneurial activity in developing economies," said Robert King, 76, who founded Peninsula Capital in Menlo Park. "Stanford is in an absolutely leading position to do that."
The Stanford Institute for Innovation in Developing Economies will be devoted to research, education and on-the-ground support to help entrepreneurs innovate and grow their businesses. Students and faculty will travel abroad to help businesses overcome obstacles to growth. The institute also will provide formal courses for entrepreneurs and nonprofit employees overseas.
----------------
The Kings say the inspiration for their philanthropy grew from hosting foreign students while they attended Stanford, a more than four-decade experience that underscored the importance of the link between education and entrepreneurship. It also led to a successful investment by Robert King, who provided seed money for China's giant search engine, Baidu, after he met the company's co-founders, Eric Xu and Robin Li, through one of the couple's home-stay students more than a decade ago.
"If anyone knows the value of encouraging entrepreneurship in the developing world, it's Bob King," Li said in an email statement. "Bob took a big chance on Baidu in our earliest days, investing in a Chinese search engine at a time when China's Internet was still in its infancy. I'm sure that this generous endowment will help create some great business leaders in the developing world."
The institute will build on work Stanford students and faculty already are engaged in through a collaboration of the business school and the university's Hasso Plattner Institute of Design in which products and business models are created for the developing world.
One venture to emerge from this work is d.light, a company creating products for people without access to reliable electricity. The institute will dispatch students and faculty members to work with overseas businesses and NGOs, or nongovernment organizations, identified as having great promise by other organizations.
---------------
"If their research is focused on Guatemala, we will send them there," Lee said.
The university is beginning the process to hire three tenure-track professors to fill research positions in the institute. They will join four current Stanford professors, Saloner said.
The Kings, who are active philanthropists, also founded the Thrive Foundation for Youth, which supports research on youth development and organizations that work with young people.
....................
http://www.mercurynews.com/top-stories/ci_19262908
Riaz said:
"Bottom Line: Pakistanis stay in schools longer and graduate more often than Indians of the same age group."
"Data from Harvard scholars Barro & Lee speaks clearly with no need for arguments or ambiguity unless you are in denial."
Those are YOUR conclusions. I have digested the same statistics and I definitely do not draw those conclusions. Completion rates are percentages of the total population meaning how many have completed primary ed only or percentage of population that have completed secondary ed only and so on within the country that is if such data are collected.
Please look up the definitions. Check out other countries as well
Poonam: "Please look up the definitions. Check out other countries as well"
I have downloaded and read the Barro & Lee paper and complete dataset. And I stand by my comments and conclusions that I have shared here.
Riaz
I am following the discussion taking place on your blog.
You are trying to sell everyone a house of cards here. You claim to have read the entire Barro-Lee dataset yet you denied the existence of 25 year and above definition even after being told so. How could you have drawn dramatic conclusions without knowing the dataset definition.
Second, it appears that you're in denial because you are emotionally and patriotically vested here. It is your blog and you seem to filter out info that you disagree with.
Third, look at completion data of other countries as well. It tends to be all over the place based on the given country's school system and data collection.
Fourth, let us assume that I am still in denial as you have said. Explain to me if only 0.9% complete secondary school then why are 5% of the literate completing tertiary schooling!?
Care to respond or are you the one who is in denial?
Poonam: "Explain to me if only 0.9% complete secondary school then why are 5% of the literate completing tertiary schooling!?"
The 0.9% represents a narrower age group of high schoolers while 5% represents a much wider age group beyond high-school age who could be in tertiary education...college, vocational, etc.
The rest of your comment does not deserve a response.
Pakistan has 3.6 times better secondary graduation rate than UK and 7.5 times better primary graduation rate than USA!
(Pakistan primary completion 14.3 & secondary completion 19.0, UK secondary 5.2, USA primary 1.9)
Using Riaz's analysis of the Barro-Lee paper, Pakistan has topped at least two advanced economies and there could be more.
Riaz, am I right?
Mehul: "Riaz, am I right?"
No, you are not.
With half the population below 20 years and 60 per cent below 30 years, Pakistan has a much younger population than the advanced economies you refer to. It has a lot bigger percentage of its population in the high-school age group than Britain or the United States. So it makes sense that it should have more of its population enrolled and graduating from high schools.
Riaz:
"With half the population below 20 years and 60 per cent below 30 years, Pakistan has a much younger population than the advanced economies you refer to. It has a lot bigger percentage of its population in the high-school age group than Britain or the United States. So it makes sense that it should have more of its population enrolled and graduating from high schools."
Well, then let's look at the other numbers. UK has primary "graduation" rate of 21.0 and Pakistan has 14.3. According to your analysis of Barro-Lee paper UK is better than Pakistan or UK has a much larger younger population; however, according to you Pakistan has a much higher younger population. Can you explain that?
Moreover, the primary completion rate for USA is 1.9 because USA has a smaller younger population, yet USA and UK are similar demographically! Can you explain that as well?
Riaz, the Barro-Lee paper in this case is about level of education attained or completed of the total population not "graduation" rates.
In my small city in India, I still remember the census (1991) worker asking me "highest level attained" questions for my family.
My mother was 7th pass and my father was matric (matriculation) pass. I don't remember or know of "secondary" pass question ever.
Maybe you need to go back to your analysis.
Riaz,
I'm also involved in a NGO called "Pratham" which delivers at the grassroots level to increase literacy in India. We take UN data very seriously; however, I was perplexed by your interpretations regarding the Barro-Lee paper which Pratham uses as well.
The secondary attainment or completion rate is never used in India. In fact post independence, the rate has and still is below 1%. We regard it as a fudge number when a person doesn't fit any of the two categories.
Mehul: "According to your analysis of Barro-Lee paper UK is better than Pakistan or UK has a much larger younger population; however, according to you Pakistan has a much higher younger population. Can you explain that? "
Pakistan has a much larger younger population than UK but more than a third of it is not in school. If it were in school, the percentage for Pakistan would be much higher than UK.
Riaz says:
"With half the population below 20 years and 60 per cent below 30 years, Pakistan has a much younger population than the advanced economies you refer to. It has a lot bigger percentage of its population in the high-school age group than Britain or the United States"
But Riaz also says:
"Pakistan has a much larger younger population than UK but more than a third of it is not in school. If it were in school, the percentage for Pakistan would be much higher than UK"
Yet Pakistan has 3.6 times better SECONDARY "graduation" rate than UK and 7.5 times better PRIMARY "graduation" rate than USA!
(Pakistan PRIMARY "graduation" 14.3 & SECONDARY "graduation" 18.7, UK SECONDARY = 5.2, USA PRIMARY = 1.9)
Also, according to your analysis Pakistan has a larger younger population % so secondary "graduation" is 3.6 times that of UK (19.0 & 5.2). However, if Pakistan has a larger younger population % why is secondary "graduation" rate only 0.5 times USA (19.0 & 36.2)?
Mehul:
I don't understand why it is such a surprise to you that Pakistan with its much younger population than aging western societies should have higher percentage of it attending and completing prim and sec schools.
To me, the only consternation is why is not not even higher than that reported by Barro & Lee...and the answer is Pakistan has lower enrollment rates because of the failure of its public education system to provide access to more of its young people who should be in school.
Why is Yemen's secondary "graduation" rate of 6.7 and Afghanistan secondary "graduation" rate of 6.4 only marginally higher than UK (5.2) even though both poor nations have near the world's highest young population yet Pakistan's secondary "graduation" rate is 2.8 times higher than Yemen and 3.0 times higher than Afghanistan?
Now here is the opposite question.
Kenya has 80% literacy rate and a demographically much higher % young population than UK. Why does UK (5.2) have a secondary "graduation" rate 8.7 times higher than that of Kenya (0.6)?
Norway has a primary "graduation" rate of 0.5. According to your analysis then, only one Norwegian "graduates" primary school out of 200! In other words primary "graduation" rates of Pakistan (14.3) is 28.6 times that of Norway (0.5)!
Something is inherently amiss in your Barro-Lee paper interpretations and conclusions which, you have blogged numerous times as I have found out.
Riaz said:
"... and Barro & Lee both have concluded in their 2010 paper that Pakistan's graduation rates at all levels (Prim, Sec & Ter) are higher than India's"
Barro-Lee have NEVER offered that conclusion. No other source, publication or newspaper online or print have made that conclusion beside Mr. Riaz Haq of course.
The "completed" numbers that you call "graduation rates" is wrong.
The completed numbers reflect the percentage of literate population (25 years and above) who has "attained" at least that level of
education.
In my 1991 survey in India:
Father completed "matric pass"
Mother completed "7th pass"
Wife completed "BCom"
Myself completed "PhD"
Corresponding percentage of highest levels attained in my family (no secondary exists):
primary 25%
secondary 0%
tertiary 75%
That is the essence of the Barro-Lee dataset.
(secondary still't exist
Mehul: "The completed numbers reflect the percentage of literate population (25 years and above) who has "attained" at least that level of
education."
I disagree. All of the data and tables in Barro-Lee clearly state it is based on 15+ years population in each country.
http://www.riazhaq.com/2011/08/pakistan-ahead-of-india-in-graduation.html
Mehul: "According to your analysis then, only one Norwegian "graduates" primary school out of 200! "
No, 0.1% represents a percent of the Norwegian population that completes prim education, not percentage of those who enter prim school. With a rapidly aging population, Norway has one of the smallest populations of children in the country.
Riaz said:
".. 0.1% represents a percent of the Norwegian population that completes prim education, not percentage of those who enter prim school."
So, the 0.9% secondary completion for India versus 22.5 for Pakistan represents 0.9% of the population complete secondary school in India and 22.5% of the population complete in Pakistan!
Or for the UK (21.0), which is somewhat demographically similar to Norway (0.5), an astoundingly 21.0 % of the population complete primary education. I was not aware UK had 21 % of its population that young!!!
Riaz said:
"0.1% represents a percent of the Norwegian population that completes prim education, not percentage of those who enter prim school."
Then, why do you call it "graduation rate" in your India-Pakistan blogs?
Mehul: "Then, why do you call it "graduation rate" in your India-Pakistan blogs?"
You can call it completion rate.
Riaz said:
"You can call it completion rate."
Okay agreed. Let us apply the RIAZ analysis.
Norway has primary "completion rate" of 0.1% of the total population?
(Norway has a very small young population)
or
UK has a primary "completion rate" of 21.0% of the population which is 210 times higher than Norway?
( but UK has a very small young population as well)
or
India has a secondary "completion rate" of 0.9% of the population which is 21 times less than Pakistan?
(but India and Pakistan both have a large young population)
but..
UK has a secondary "completion rate" of 5.2% of the population which is 6 times that of India?
(but India has a larger young population)
Doesn't rate usually implies a ratio of in/out or similar.
Your analysis STILL baffles me.
Mehul: "UK has a primary "completion rate" of 21.0% of the population which is 210 times higher than Norway?
( but UK has a very small young population as well)"
UK has a significant immigrant population with high birth rates.
Mehul: "India has a secondary "completion rate" of 0.9% of the population which is 21 times less than Pakistan?
(but India and Pakistan both have a large young population)"
India's secondary enrollment rate of 40.7% is higher than Pakistan's secondary enrollment rate of 34.6%. It just shows India has a huge drop out problem....also reflected in fewer mean years of schooling in India.
SIDEBAR
*****************************************************************************
Riaz said:
"UK has a significant immigrant population with high birth rates (compared to Norway)."
REALLY!
According to UN data 2005-2010 per 1000
Norway = 12.0
UK = 12.0
According to CIA fact book, 2009
Norway = 10.99
UK = 10.65
UK may actually have a similar if not smaller birth rate!
Total population of UK is 58 million of which 5.3 million is immigrant
or 9.1%
Total population of Norway is 5 million of which 550k is immigrant or 11%.
**************************************************************************
Riaz your knee jerk response above was without merit.
Again let us try to apply the RIAZ analysis then.
Norway has primary "completion rate" of 0.1% of the total population?
(Norway has a very small young population)
or
UK has a primary "completion rate" of 21.0% of the population which is 210 times higher than Norway?
( but UK has a very small young population as well)
Riaz?
MANY PEOPLE IN BANGLA THINK THAT BANGLA AND PAK ARE NOW SAME DUE TO UNHDI REPORT.
Here is the brief Methodology of Barre-Lee paper.
Please pay attention to the word 'attainment' and how that information is collected - survey of people and note you will not find "graduation rate"
-->
We fill in most of missing observations by forward and backward extrapolation of the census/survey observations on attainment. The estimation procedure extrapolates the census/survey observations on attainment by 5-year age groups at five-year intervals fill in missing observations with an appropriate time lag.
We assume that an individual's educational attainment remains unchanged from age 25 to 64 and that mortality is uniform across all individuals, regardless of educational attainment. Hence, for age groups between 25 and 64, we fill the missing attainment data using the attainment of the younger age group from the previous period (forward) as benchmark or the attainment of the older age group from the succeeding period (backward).
Since direct backward or forward extrapolation is not applicable for the two youngest age groups (age 15-19 and 20-24), we use attainment and enrollment data to estimate missing attainment data. We assume that the change in enrollment leads to a proportional change in attainment over time with time lag. Hence, for these age groups, we use estimates for the same age group from the previous (or in the next) period as benchmark and adjust this benchmark figure by the change in enrollment over time or the enrollment adjustment factor.
<--
Mehul: "Norway has primary "completion rate" of 0.1% of the total population?"
You are misquoting Barro-Lee data. In 2010, the data shows Norway had a total 2.7% and completed 2.7% at primary level...100% grad rate.
Mehul: "UK has a primary "completion rate" of 21.0% of the population which is 210 times higher than Norway?
( but UK has a very small young population as well)"
UK had total 24.1% and completion 18.8% in 2010...78% grad rate, and UK's birthrate is higher than Norway's.
Norway and UK are very different in terms of immigrant demographics....Norway immigrants are mostly from other low birth rate European nations while UK's immigrants are from higher birthrate countries, its former colonies....and it's quite probable that the prim students in UK are older than in Norway, and take longer to finish.
"Literacy, as defined in Census operations, is the ability to read and write with understanding in any language. A person who can merely read but cannot write is not classified as literate. Any formal education or minimum educational standard is not necessary to be considered literate. Adopting these definitions, the literacy level of the country as a whole was only 29.45 per cent with male literacy at 39.45 per cent and female literacy at 18.69 per cent. "
http://lawmin.nic.in/ncrwc/finalreport/v2b1-5.htm
"China has absorbed an additional 40 crore in its cities since 1980 compared to India's 20 crore. Over the next three decades it is now India's turn to gainfully employ 40 crore people that will flock to its cities. But given the state of Indian cities, such pressure is likely to cause them to implode.
The situation is grim, is there a solution? Well, send the migrant from Jhumri Talayya straight to Tokyo!"
http://daily.bhaskar.com/article/BIZ-FEA-opportunities-for-young-india-in-aeging-japan-1827806.html
http://tribune.com.pk/story/293787/curbing-unemployment-new-push-to-find-overseas-jobs-for-pakistans-jobless/
Curbing unemployment: New push to find overseas jobs for Pakistan’s jobless
ISLAMABAD:
In a bid to curb unemployment in the country, the government has decided to give fillip to efforts for export of human resources to Arab states and European countries.
While the administration is busy evolving a policy on human resources, foreign missions are being engaged in the process, whereas the ministry of foreign affairs has been asked to submit its response regarding the issue, an official told The Express Tribune.
Unemployment isn’t just claiming innocent lives, but it is also forcing people to resort to desperate measures (often petty crime) to feed their families.
While the government remains concerned about the growing rate of unemployment in the country, overseas employment agents complain that Pakistani embassies abroad are very “non-cooperative” in the matter.
The human resource development (HRD) ministry will approach countries such as Australia and Canada, the official said, adding that delegations from the ministry have already visited Turkey, Kuwait and China to broaden the employment base.
KARACHI: The German parliament has ratified the Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) signed by Germany and Pakistan in the year 2009 and has sent it to the European Commission for its final approval, Pakistan’s Ambassador to Germany Shahid Kamal told PPI.
Under the Bilateral Investment Treaty, investors of both the countries will be given protection and there will be more German investment in Pakistan in next 3 to 5 years, Kamal added.
Pakistan’s exports to Germany during 2011 calendar years will be around $1.5 billion, with the balance of trade in favour of Pakistan, as against $700 million in the last year.
Quoting official German statistics, Kamal said the trade between the two countries from January to July 2011, was $800 million, 45 percent more than in 2010.
Germany - the largest economy in Europe - was the fifth largest investor in Pakistan in the years 2009 and 2010.
“We are trying to set up German Pakistan Chambers of Commerce, which will enhance connectivity between the private sectors of both the countries,” Kamal stated.
He spoke of immense prospects to export rice, fruits, and vegetables to Germany, where prices of these items were rising. He said Germany was supporting Pakistan for greater market access to EU member states.
He said under an agreement signed recently, German government will provide economic assistance of $58 million for training in electronics, mechanics to Pakistanis over five years.
Shahid Kamal said another $85 million worth of German economic cooperation was underway in renewable wind and solar energy, which will help overcome load shedding in the country. He also said that 340 PhD Pakistanis were working in German universities. German Consul General in Karachi Dr Tilo Klinner, who was also present during the discussion, said that under German economic cooperation program, people in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh provinces will get Pakistanis will get vocational training under the Public Private Partnership. Dr Klinner said German government will co-host an International Conference on Afghanistan in Bonn on December 5, 2011.
http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=77558&Cat=3
British Council Pakistan is organising the Education UK virtual exhibition in Pakistan from 21 November to 30 November 2011.
Pakistan remains an important and rewarding market for the UK but it is equally a challenging environment in which to operate. Virtual exhibitions, as an appropriate remote method of recruitment, have a role in developing a flexible, sustainable approach to service provision that is appropriate to the unique operating context in Pakistan.
With a rapid increase in the number of Internet users and Internet Service Providers, and a large English-speaking population, Pakistani society has seen an unparalleled revolution in communications. Internet access has been available in Pakistan since the mid-1990s. Pakistan is reported as the most connected country in South Asia, with the highest teledensity. Today there are over 20 million frequent internet users in Pakistan.
The core objectives of developing our virtual exhibitions’ offering are to:
To provide an opportunity to showcase UK education to the public and key influencers via an interactive on-line platform
Provide a cost-effective means of outreach in the current economic climate
Offer an alternative to the traditional exhibition format in a market where delivery of a standard exhibition is not viable
Online News: Half of Pakistan’s population may live in cities by 2030
ISLAMABAD: More than half of Pakistan’s population is estimated to be living in cities by the year 2030. Both natural increase and net migration are major contributory factors to urban growth.
These views were expressed by participants of a seminar on “Business and the Middle Class in Pakistan organized by the Planning Commission of Pakistan which was held here on Wednesday.
The seminar included speakers and discussants from some of the largest companies and businesses in Pakistan, coming together to discuss the importance of the evolving middle class in Pakistan.
The participants said that current urban growth rate was approximately 3.5 per cent as compare to 2 per cent nationally. More rural people are migrating to urban centers for higher-paying jobs. Upward social mobility creating and expanding the middle class.
Given the low median age, Pakistan’s middle class is unusually young as compared to developed economies, meaning that younger population will have the most disposable incomes.The expanding middle class consumers will aim for first world aspirations and greater focus will be on branded retail products. The middle class has been growing in number as well as in importance all over the world, which is why businesses strategize targeting this specific class.
The participants said that the middle class is conceptually defined as the class between the rich and the poor; however its boundaries are usually made arbitrarily. It is also important to note the multi-dimensionality of an adequate definition; a person belonging to the middle class needs to be evaluated not only on a monetary basis, other aspects of quality of life and available opportunities need to be encapsulated to arrive at a well rounded definition.
They said that studies show a positive relationship between the higher share of income for the middle class and economic growth as well as political aspects like democracy. Other studies indicate the emergence of entrepreneurs from the middle class. It is the middle class that was the driver of success in India and China.
They said that the biggest opportunity of the rising middle class, at present and future will be for companies selling mass-consumer goods and services. As incomes rise spending patterns will incorporate discretionary and small luxury items while proportionate expenditure on food, clothing and other necessities tend to shrink.
While the basics may decline as a share of consumption, in absolute terms they will continue to grow. Housing, healthcare and educational expenses are expected to register a greater share of the wallet – this spending will be driven by the strong link between education and higher salaries, as well as growing number of options for both higher and vocational education.
http://www.onlinenews.com.pk/details.php?id=186520
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2068680/The-United-States-Aging-1-8-Americans-senior-growth-rate-old-skyrockets.html
The United States of Aging: 1 in 8 Americans now ‘senior’ as growth rate of the old skyrockets
Here's an Express Tribune story of a Pakistani young man of humble origins helping terror victims after studying Emergency Medicine at Yale:
.Today, Razzak is a renowned emergency medicine expert and the executive director of the Aman Foundation. He started his schooling at a humble primary school in Lyari, completing his secondary education from Nasira School in Depot Lines. Not one to be held back, the hard-working student subsequently attended Adamjee Science College where his impressive grades and unbounded enthusiasm won him a scholarship at the prestigious Aga Khan University Hospital (AKUH), the top private medical institution in the country.
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In collaboration with the Edhi Ambulance Service, an arm of the philanthropic Edhi organisation and the largest volunteer ambulance network in the world, he researched and analysed road traffic injuries and emergency cases. Edhi had a mountain of documentation for every call and every case it had handled in the last two decades. The downside? None of it was digitised, so he spent days sifting through it manually.
The experience stayed with him, and the data revealed a disturbing pattern. Gruesome injuries, often suffered by the poorest members of society, were often improperly handled by well-meaning doctors, simply because of a lack of know-how. These mistakes frequently, and literally, led to the loss of life and limb.
Yet, Razzak soon realised that he needed more professional training and specialisation courses before he could progress further. He sat for the US Medical Licensing Exams (MLE) and had observations at the Beth Israel Medical Centre, New York, and the Yale-New Haven Hospital, Connecticut. In 1996, his residency and training programme at Yale University’s School of Medicine started and in 1999, he was given the ‘Best Trainee’ award by the State of Connecticut.
On the personal front, Yale was also important for the doctor since he met his future wife there. Following graduation, the two stayed in the US for a few years, always looking forward to the time when they would return home. “The plan was always to come back,” says Razzak. “That’s why we never bought a house, never completely settled in.”
Before they could come back, Razzak did his PhD in Public Health at the world-renowned Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, where he focused on the use of ambulance data for monitoring road traffic accidents. Finally, in 2005, the studious boy from Kharadar returned to Pakistan as a successful, qualified expert in emergency medicine.
He joined his alma mater, AKUH as a faculty member and went on to successfully found Pakistan’s first emergency medicine service (EMS) training programme at the university. “There were many doctors who were awarded their degrees without ever administering cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) as it wasn’t a requirement,” he reveals.
This changed when his EMS programme became a mandatory rotation that all students had to serve. Subsequently, Razzak went on to build and head a new emergency department. Yet, the battle was just half won. Students in the new department faced a dilemma, similar to the one Razzak had as a student. They were required to go to the United Kingdom to sit for their exam, otherwise they would not be considered qualified.
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Determined to remove, for others, the hurdles that he himself had crossed only after many toils, Razzak collaborated with the College of Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan (CPSP) to organise a curriculum for the specialised field. The first batch for this course was enrolled last year. Now students wanting to specialise in emergency medicine will be able to obtain certification in their chosen field, without having to travel abroad....
http://tribune.com.pk/story/300042/positive-pakistani-call-of-duty/
Here's an Express Tribune story on a new business school in Karachi:
Sitting in the corporate office of the Karachi School for Business and Leadership (KSBL), an upcoming graduate management school being established in the financial capital of Pakistan in collaboration with Judge Business School of the University of Cambridge, Dean Robert Wheeler III spoke at length as to why Karachi needed yet another business school.
“No doubt, IBA and LUMS are outstanding business schools. But the academia isn’t like a corporation, it’s not about winning or losing,” Wheeler told The Express Tribune in an interview. “Pakistan needs more top-level business schools, it needs more leaders.”
Having served at the Pennsylvania State University, University of Texas at Austin and Georgetown University in key positions like assistant dean and director of MBA programmes, Wheeler has been associated with KSBL for the past two years. Spread over three acres, a dedicated campus of KSBL is currently under construction on main Stadium Road in Karachi. The construction phase will be over in July 2012 and the first intake of students will be in September. Initially, KSBL will offer a full-time, 21-month MBA programme in general management only.
“Our emphasis is on ethical leadership. It’s not about being right or wrong. It’s about making difficult choices,” he said, adding that KSBL would make an extra effort to infuse students with social responsibility. “We’ll work with students to help them stay here in Pakistan after they graduate, to make them realise that they owe something to this society.”
The MBA curriculum has been designed in collaboration with Judge Business School. Besides conventional teaching methods involving lectures and case studies, KSBL will use videoconferencing to let its students attend live lectures from American and British universities.
“We’re wiring the entire building for videoconferencing so that CEOs from London, Singapore and the US could show up on videoconferencing,” he said, adding that the campus would benefit from natural light optimisation, as more than 70% of the rooms would have natural lighting.
Wheeler said the core faculty of KSBL would be of Pakistani origin with PhD degrees from foreign universities. “We’ll cut back on the administrative work that faculty is often required to do in Pakistan and encourage them to do applied research that could be used in the industry, government and business.” In many classes, especially those on entrepreneurship, Wheeler said more than one person would co-teach students via videoconferencing to provide them with a combination of academic and professional perspectives.
‘Intrapreneurship’
Referring to corporate entrepreneurship, or intrapreneurship meaning working like an entrepreneur within an organisation, Wheeler said the traditional role of an entrepreneur was changing, as big corporations were now looking for business graduates with entrepreneurial mindset.
As for the admission process at KSBL, he said prospective students would be judged on their GMAT scores, GPAs, essays and interview performance. “We’ll have a holistic approach. We want to produce team players, people who can get along with others. You need to fulfil certain requirements, but high scores only shouldn’t guarantee your admission.”
Rejecting the idea that working with the bureaucracy is particularly difficult in Pakistan, Wheeler said the United States was equally bureaucratic. “We’re right on track. Things are going well. The construction phase will be over in July.”
http://tribune.com.pk/story/315063/pakistan-needs-more-top-level-business-schools/
Here are some excerpts from a piece by Lan Pritchett of Harvard University on India's poor performance on PISA:
Compared to the economic superstars India is almost unfathomably far behind. The TN/HP average 15 year old is over 200 points behind. If a typical grade gain is 40 points a year Indian eighth graders are at the level of Korea third graders in their mathematics mastery. In fact the average TN/HP child is 40 to 50 points behind the worst students in the economic superstars. Equally worrisome is that the best performers in TN/HP - the top 5 percent who India will need in science and technology to complete globally - were almost 100 points behind the average child in Singapore and 83 points behind the average Korean - and a staggering 250 points behind the best in the best.
As the current superpowers are behind the East Asian economic superstars in learning performance the distance to India is not quite as far, but still the average TN/HP child is right at the level of the worst OECD or American students (only 1.5 or 7.5 points ahead). Indians often deride America's schools but the average child placed in an American school would be among the weakest students. Indians might have believed, with President Obama, that American schools were under threat from India but the best TN/HP students are 24 points behind the average American 15 year old.
Even among other "developing" nations that make up the BRICs India lags - from Russia by almost as much as the USA and only for Brazil, which like the rest of Latin America is infamous for lagging education performance does India even come close - and then not even that close.
To put these results in perspective, in the USA there has been huge and continuous concern that has caused seismic shifts in the discourse about education driven, in part, by the fact that the USA is lagging the economic superstars like Korea. But the average US 15 year old is 59 points behind Koreans. TN/HP students are 41.5 points behind Brazil, and twice as far behind Russia (123.5 points) as the US is Korea, and almost four times further behind Singapore (217.5 vs 59) that the US is behind Korea. Yet so far this disastrous performance has yet to occasion a ripple in the education establishment.
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These PISA 2009+ results are the end of the beginning. The debate is over. No one can still deny there is a deep crisis in the ability of the existing education system to produce child learning. India's education system is undermining India's legitimate aspirations to be at the global forefront as a prosperous economy, as a global great power, as an emulated polity, and as a fair and just society. As the beginning ends, the question now is: what is to be done?
http://ajayshahblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/first-pisa-results-for-india-end-of.html
Here's an uplifting story in Express Tribune about a Pakistani with 28 A's in O Level exams:
Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani has presented a cheque of Rs1 million as a token of appreciation to a student from Taxila who had set a world record in the O-level examinations.
Zohaib Asad, a student of Beaconhouse, earned 28 As in the University of Cambridge International O-Level Examinations in 2011. He overtook a record of 23 As, also set by a Pakistani student from Islamabad Ibrahim Shahid.
Gilani invited Asad to the Prime Minister House on Thursday and lauded him for making Pakistan’s youth proud. He said that Asad’s achievement will inspire other young students to excel in life through sheer hard work.
Asad is currently enrolled at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, where he is pursuing an undergraduate degree in economics and international development.
Speaking to the prime minister, he said that he was determined to return to Pakistan after completion of his education to serve the country that has given so much in life at an early age.
Gilani appreciated Asad’s sense of devotion to the country the country and said that young people like him were Pakistan’s hope for a brighter future.
Asad’s family members were also present in the meeting.
http://tribune.com.pk/story/317004/pm-honours-student-who-set-o-level-world-record/
Here's a private-public partnership initiative for education in Sindh, as reported in The Express Tribune:
The Sindh Education Foundation has handed over the management of 1,200 schools across Sindh to entrepreneurs under its private-public partnership programme, Integrated Education Learning Programme (IELP).
The SEF asked entrepreneurs to apply for school adoption by submitting proposals and they received a staggering 9,600 applications. Each proposal was strictly assessed. There should be no other primary school within a one-kilometre radius of the new one or already established school as this would affect enrolment. No other secondary school should exist within a two-kilometre radius. At least 40 children should be enrolled in primary schools and 30 in elementary and secondary classes. The programme requires the student-teacher ratio to be at least 1:4. Teachers should be paid a minimum of Rs5,000 while at least Rs2,500 should be paid to the support staff. Drinking water and clean toilets are other prerequisites for the IELP selection.
Out of the total applications received, 4,500 were initially shortlisted and 1,500 were finally randomly selected, informed Sadaf Junaid Zuberi, the SEF senior manager.
The final contract signing ceremony was held at the SEF headquarters on Monday where the remaining 300 of the 1,500 selected entrepreneurs sealed their school adoption deal in the presence of Senior Minister for Education and Literacy Pir Mazharul Haq.
Prof Anita Ghulam Ali, the SEF managing director, welcomed the guests and school entrepreneurs and called for operators to take up this opportunity with full honesty and commitment. “You can change the future of thousands of children,” she said.
Lauding the efforts of the SEF, the education minister said that it has been promoting lasting public-private partnerships in the education sector. The government plans to open more schools under this agreement and people who adopt them will be strictly monitored.
The programme was launched in 2009 and was designed to give financial and technical support to new and existing private, community and trust-owned schools throughout the province. Three hundred schools were already working successfully. The project directly reaches 450,000 children.
Each entrepreneur will get a 350-rupee subsidy per child from the Sindh government via the SEF. They will be responsible for the school’s management, monitoring, enrolment, building capacity, community and parent mobilisation and student assessment.
As the project is fully funded IELP students do not pay any fees. SEF will provide textbooks and classroom aides and will also work on teacher training.
IELP follows the SEF’s Promoting Private Schooling in Rural Sindh (PPRS) programme. It is different from the PPRS as it involves both primary and secondary schools.
SEF director of programmes, operations and research, Aziz Kabani, said the aim was to “establish public-private partnership to increase access to and improve the quality of educational services to children in marginalised areas of the province”.
http://tribune.com.pk/story/156552/entrepreneurs-adopt-1200-more-schools-in-sindh/
Here's a Toronto Star story of a Pakistani and Chinese Canadian kids space flight using a lego man with a balloon:
Two Canadian teenagers have sent a Lego man into space using a home-stitched parachute and spare parts found on Craigslist.
Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammad, both 17, attached the two-inch astronaut clutching a Canadian flag to a helium weather balloon, which they sent 80,000 feet into the air - three times the height of a commercial jet's cruising altitude.
The pair managed to capture the entire 97 minute journey which began on a football pitch in Toronto using four cameras set to take photos every 20 seconds, reports the Toronto Star.
They were left with astonishing footage from an estimated 24 kilometres above sea level which showed the toy floating above the curvature of our planet before beginning a 32 minute descent back to earth.
The personal project cost the boys $400 and took four months of free Saturdays, reports the Star.
Having attached a GPS receiver to the styrofoam box carrying the cameras and Lego man, the teens were able to recover their Lego man which landed 122km from the launch site.
When the teens got home and uploaded the two videos and 1,500 photos onto a computer, they told the Star that they started screaming with joy.
Their footage shows the Lego man spinning at an altitude three times higher than the peak of Mount Everest, before the balloon bursts and he starts to plummet.
“We never knew it would be this good,” Ho told the Star.
According to the report, the two students met in middle school after Muhammad's family had just emigrated from Pakistan.
Muhammad, who spoke no English, was soon befriended by Ho and they began working on the project at Ho's house last September.
"People would walk into the house and see us building this fantastical thing with a parachute from scratch, and they would be like, 'What are you doing?', We'd be like, 'We're sending cameras to space.' They'd be like, 'Oh, okayyyyy …' Ho told the Star.
Astrophysics professor Dr Michael Reid, from the University of Toronto, praised the boys' work, telling the Star: "It shows a tremendous degree of resourcefulness. For two 17-year-olds to accomplish this on their own is pretty impressive."
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2092501/Lego-astronaut-makes-debut-space-help-Mathew-Ho-Asad-Muhammad.html#ixzz1kpIl8PF4
Here's an Express Tribune report on 2012-2013 Fulbright scholar program in Pakistan:
Amid strained ties and mutual mistrust, the United States Educational Foundation in Pakistan has announced the world’s largest Fulbright programme in Pakistan for the 2013.
The US government’s flagship scholarship programme awards deserving Pakistani students full scholarships that cover tuition, textbooks, airfare, a stipend, and health insurance to complete their Master’s or PhD degrees in a field of their choice in universities across the US. Currently, approximately 369 students are studying in the US on Fulbright awards and another 200 will be departing in the fall of 2012.
According to Ambassador Richard Hoagland, deputy chief of mission, Pakistan’s Fulbright programme is also one of the oldest in the world. “Our agreement initiating the programme was signed on September 23, 1950 – and the first Pakistanis and Americans travelled each way in the same year. It was one of the very first agreements of its kind and has since been extended to 155 countries around the world.”
Since then, nearly 4,000 Pakistanis and over 800 Americans have participated in USEFP-administered exchange programmes.
The deadline to apply for the 2013 programme is May 16, 2012, and the application form can be downloaded from the USEFP’s website www.usefpakistan.org.
http://tribune.com.pk/story/334528/fulbright-scholarships-us-launches-worlds-largest-programme-in-pakistan/
Here are excerpts of David Brooks Op Ed in NY Times:
Usually, high religious observance and low income go along with high birthrates. But, according to the United States Census Bureau, Iran now has a similar birth rate to New England — which is the least fertile region in the U.S.
The speed of the change is breathtaking. A woman in Oman today has 5.6 fewer babies than a woman in Oman 30 years ago. Morocco, Syria and Saudi Arabia have seen fertility-rate declines of nearly 60 percent, and in Iran it’s more than 70 percent. These are among the fastest declines in recorded history.
The Iranian regime is aware of how the rapidly aging population and the lack of young people entering the work force could lead to long-term decline. But there’s not much they have been able to do about it. Maybe Iranians are pessimistic about the future. Maybe Iranian parents just want smaller families.
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If you look around the world, you see many other nations facing demographic headwinds. If the 20th century was the century of the population explosion, the 21st century, as Eberstadt notes, is looking like the century of the fertility implosion.
Already, nearly half the world’s population lives in countries with birthrates below the replacement level. According to the Census Bureau, the total increase in global manpower between 2010 and 2030 will be just half the increase we experienced in the two decades that just ended. At the same time, according to work by the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis, the growth in educational attainment around the world is slowing.
This leads to what the writer Philip Longman has called the gray tsunami — a situation in which huge shares of the population are over 60 and small shares are under 30.
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Rapidly aging Japan has one of the worst demographic profiles, and most European profiles are famously grim. In China, long-term economic growth could face serious demographic restraints. The number of Chinese senior citizens is soaring by 3.7 percent year after year. By 2030, as Eberstadt notes, there will be many more older workers (ages 50-64) than younger workers (15-29). In 2010, there were almost twice as many younger ones. In a culture where there is low social trust outside the family, a generation of only children is giving birth to another generation of only children, which is bound to lead to deep social change.
Even the countries with healthier demographics are facing problems. India, for example, will continue to produce plenty of young workers. By 2030, according to the Vienna Institute of Demography, India will have 100 million relatively educated young men, compared with fewer than 75 million in China.
But India faces a regional challenge. Population growth is high in the northern parts of the country, where people tend to be poorer and less educated. Meanwhile, fertility rates in the southern parts of the country, where people are richer and better educated, are already below replacement levels.
The U.S. has long had higher birthrates than Japan and most European nations. The U.S. population is increasing at every age level, thanks in part to immigration. America is aging, but not as fast as other countries.
But even that is looking fragile. The 2010 census suggested that U.S. population growth is decelerating faster than many expected.....
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/opinion/brooks-the-fertility-implosion.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=david%20brooks&st=cse
Here's a report on a conference on technical & vocational training (TVET)as published in The Nation:
For the first time in Pakistan, the British Council on Monday held an International Conference on Employer Engagement and Entrepreneurship for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) sector for South Asia.
Held under the Skills for Employability programme, the conference focused on the benefits of employers’ engagement in the curriculum development and policy-making process in the TVET sector and how it can be encouraged, says a press release issued here.
The participants agreed that the engagement will result in enabling policy makers to develop demand-driven curriculum that will not only produce workforce with industry-need expertise and knowledge but will also pave ways to promote entrepreneurship amongst the young TVET graduates.
TVET experts from Pakistan, United Kingdom, Bangladesh and Nepal participated in the conference besides principals, teachers and students of TVET colleges from across Pakistan.
Riaz Hussain Pirzada, Federal Minister for Professional and Technical Training, was the chief guest at the conference. In his speech, he highlighted the role of TVET education for the development of a country’s economy particularly for a country like Pakistan.
There was an overall consensus in amongst the participants of the conference that there is always a consistent demand of skilled workforce from the developing world to the developed countries as well as within their own countries. But there was also a general agreement on the challenges that countries like Pakistan face to meet those demands. One of the major challenges that were highlighted in the conference was how to equip our manpower with the expertise and skills that are in demand in the global market.
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Adam Thompson, the British High Commissioner in Pakistan was the guest of honour at the event and he talked about how TVET education in the UK is contributing to the economy by producing demand-driven workforce.
The conference also had an impressive exhibition setup by enterprising young students from the TVET colleges across Pakistan. There were separate panel discussions on Employer Engagement and Entrepreneurship, where experts from different countries discussed the importance of these two elements in TVET sector followed by a Q & A session by an enthusiastic audience.
The findings of the two sessions on Employer Engagement and Entrepreurship were shared with the participants in the concluding session of the Conference.
Salman Shehzad, Regional Manager for Skills for Employability programme concluded the Conference with his closing remarks. Salman said, “Having the treasure of approx. 65% youth population in Pakistan; TVET reforms can be instrumental in creating dynamic opportunities for young people which would certainly support the government’s agenda of engaging youth in skill development activities.”
http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/islamabad/27-Mar-2012/-skilled-manpower-in-high-demand-in-global-market
Here's a Daily Times report on a traveling exhibit to promote chemistry learning in Pakistan:
The International Traveling Expo ‘It’s all about Chemistry’ opened at Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU) on Wednesday.
Pakistan Science Foundation (PSF) in collaboration with the embassy of France in Islamabad and Scientific, Technical, Industrial and Cultural Centre (CCSTI), France has arranged the Expo, prepared by Centre Sciences-France, UNESCO and partners, for providing a first-hand picture of the role of chemistry in daily life to students and general public.
The Expo is aimed at increasing the interest of young people in Chemistry and to generate enthusiasm among students for take chemistry as a subject of their studies.
The expo started its journey in Pakistan from Karachi in January and after travelling through Tandojam, Khairpur, DG Khan, Multan, Lahore, Mansehra, Peshawar and Swat has reached Islamabad from where it would travel to Sibbi and conclude in Quetta.
Study of Chemistry is critical in addressing challenges such as global climate change, in providing sustainable sources of clean water, food energy and in well-being of people.
The science of chemistry and its applications produce medicines, fuels, metals and virtually all other manufactured products.
PSF Chairman Prof Dr Manzoor Soomro inaugurated the 3-day Expo while French Attache for Cooperation Gilles Angles, AIOU Faculty of Sciences Dean Prof Dr Noshad Khan and AIOU Chemistry Department’s Chairperson Prof Dr Naghmana Rashid were also present on this occasion.
The displays of the expo include Black and White Chemistry, Molecules in Action, Nature Returns with a bang, Intelligent Textiles-Dress Intelligently, Dress Usefully, Materials that Heal Automatically, Oil-bases or Water-based paint, Pure air at home, What’s Going on in my saucepan, Town Water or field Water, Experts against Fraud, When Art and Science Meet, Molecular Motors, Bio-fuels for Green Driving and Responsible Farming etc.
Dr Manzoor Soomro highlighted the PSF programmes and activities for promotion of science in the country for mental developmental of the nation and socio-economic development of the country.
He said PSF’s subsidiary organisation Pakistan Museum of Natural History is playing an important role in imparting education on natural sciences through informal means.
He appreciated French embassy for its cooperation to PSF in its different programmes as well as providing opportunity of higher education to students of far flung areas of Pakistan through its scholarships programme...
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2012\03\29\story_29-3-2012_pg5_5
Here's TED blog on Peter Diamandis, the author of "Abundance":
Diamandis starts off his talk with some fast-cut clips of “crisis! Death! Disaster!” he’s collected from the last six months. The news media, he says, preferentially presents us with negative stories, because that’s what we pay attention to. And there’s a reason for that: since nothing is more important than survival, the first stop for all this awful information is the amygdala, the human early warning detection system that looks out for things that might harm us. In other words, we’re hard-wired to pay attention to the negative, dark side.
“So it’s no wonder that we’re pessimistic. it’s no wonder that people think the world is getting worse.” But Diamandis didn’t co-found Singularity University on a mere whim. From here, he swings into his more usual, optimistic mode: “We have the potential in the next three decades to create a world of abundance [the theme of Diamandis' recent book.] I’m not saying we don’t have our set of problems; we surely do,” he says. “As humans we’re far better at seeing the problems way in advance. Ultimately, we knock them down.”
Diamandis runs through some stats from the last century to show how things have improved for humankind. And he outlines some of the extraordinary advances made, particularly within the technological realm. After all: ”The rate at which technology is getting faster is itself getting faster.” And based on the likes of Moore’s Law ride some incredibly powerful technologies, not least robotics, 3D printing, artificial intelligence and nanomaterials.
Now, some stories:
Energy
Napoleon III once invited the King of Siam to dinner. Napoleon’s troops ate with silver utensils; Napoleon ate with gold utensils; the King of Siam used aluminum utensils–precisely because at that time, aluminum was the most valuable metal on the planet. It was only with electrolysis that the metal became cheap. Similar moves are happening in energy in our current times; solar energy, for instance, is now 50% of the cost of diesel in India.
Water
We talk about water wars. And yet we fight over 0.5% of the water on the planet. Diamandis talks of Dean Kamen’s Slingshot device, which can generate 100 liters clean water from any source. Coca Cola is apparently going to test this in the field soon–with a view to deploying it globally. Given how much water that company consumes, this is a big deal. Or, as Diamandis puts it, “this is the kind of innovation empowered by this technology that exists today.”
Health
Diamandis talks of the recently-announced Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize, challenging teams to incorporate medical diagnostic tools into a mobile device. “Imagine this device in the middle of the developing world,” he says, starrily. What of the potential of someone swabbing an unrecognized disease, calling it into the CDC and preventing a pandemic? Heady stuff.
Population
“The biggest protection against the population explosion is making the world educated and healthy,” says Diamandis, detailing that 5 billion people will be connected online by 2020. “What will these people want and desire?” And why wouldn’t that cause an economic injection rather than an economic shutdown? Why won’t they be healthier through the use of the Tricorder, better educated because of the likes of Khan Academy or using 3d printing to be more productive than ever before?
http://blog.ted.com/2012/02/28/creating-a-world-of-abundance-peter-diamandis-at-ted2012/
Here's a Business Recorder report on rising population of seniors as life expectancy increases in Pakistan:
World Health Organization (WHO) on Thursday said that in line with the global trends of declining death rates and increasing life spans, Pakistan, is experiencing a steady rise in its elderly population.
According to WHO, at present, 4.2% of the total population is over 65 years of age with the strong likelihood of doubling this percentage by 2025.
Similarly, the current life expectancy of 65.99 years at birth will reach about 72 years by 2023.
Other emerging social and cultural transformations of declining traditional family values and extended family systems will not only further compromise the status of the older people but also pose significant health and socio-economic implications on the country as a whole, it said.
There are some medical and psychosocial aspects exclusive to the older population; however, the predominant health conditions increasingly suffered by the elderly relate to the higher disease burden including hypertension (36% in elderly), diabetes, musculoskeletal problems, disabilities and cancers; along with significant infectious diseases and their sequelae.
Likewise 60% deaths due to diabetes, 59% due to cardio-vascular diseases and 29% due to cancers occur among old people above 60 years.
WHO said, in Pakistan 54% of men and 20% of women use different forms of tobacco. With limited physical exercise and unhealthy behaviors can lead to serious diseases such as hypertension, cancers etc..
It said that there is an immediate need to recognize and take comprehensive timely action to address population ageing through systematic integrated health care and social services complemented with continued family support, love and respect.
Simple preventive measures and healthy life style changes such as walking, physical activities good balanced diet and refraining from risky habits including smoking and other tobacco substances can save hundreds of lives, prevent disability and improve quality of life of old people.
The theme of the World Health Day signifies that a productive dignified existence is possible in old age provided a healthy life style is adopted through out life; with steps taken to prevent and control chronic health conditions like diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and cancers....
http://www.brecorder.com/pakistan/general-news/52055-elderly-population-steadily-rising-in-pakistan-who-.html
Here's a Daily Times report on UNICEF's Every Child in School campaign:
Around 20 million children in Pakistan, including an estimated 7.3 million of primary school age, are not in school, said a statement issued by United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) on Friday.
“Investing in children and their education is vital due to the positive impacts it has on so many socio-economic dimensions. It is therefore imperative that all children in Pakistan, both boys and girls, have the opportunity to attend and complete their schooling,” the statement said.
About the efforts of the fund for promoting education for children across the country, the statement said, “UNICEF is supporting the nationwide ‘Every Child in School’ campaign, which encourages parents and communities to ensure that all primary school-age children are enrolled for the new school year. A special focus is being placed on enrolling girls, who represent 57 percent of primary school-age children who are not attending school. Girls from poor families in rural areas, for example, receive just over one year of education, on average.”
“The disparities in educational opportunities are influenced by multiple factors, like wealth, gender, ethnicity, geographic location, early learning opportunities, access and quality of learning – and it is therefore critical that all who can positively influence children’s learning opportunities should come forward to ensure that this school-year is more successful than ever,” said UNICEF Pakistan Representative Dan Rohrmann.
“We must ensure that all children are in school. Free and quality education for all children, especially the most vulnerable, is essential to Pakistan’s economic and social development. An investment in children is an investment in Pakistan’s future,” Rohrmann said, adding, “The realisation of Pakistan’s vision for social and economic development depends on success of its education system.”
The right of a child to receive education is enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The 18th Amendment of the Constitution of Pakistan provides an added opportunity to realise this right, as Article 25A requires the state to provide free and compulsory education to all children between the ages of five and 16, as determined by the law.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2012\04\07\story_7-4-2012_pg7_3
http://www.unicef.org/pakistan/media_7589.htm
Here's Daily Times on USAID project on education in Pakistan:
Administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) Dr Rajiv Shah and Sindh Education Minister Pir Mazhar-ul-Haq launched the USAID-funded ‘National Reading Programme’ at Government Girls Primary/Secondary School, Sultanabad.
The programme consists of three projects - two national and one focused on Sindh - that will help train teachers, improve reading skills and numeracy, and mobilise communities to support school management. It will also increase enrollment of students and ensure student retention, especially of girls.
The programme aims at improving literacy and numeracy for nearly seven million children, provide training to over 90,000 teachers in teaching and assessment, and support the development of 3.2 million new readers–including 700,000 children in Sindh. USAID will be supporting the school with a reading programme under the Sindh Basic Education Programme (SBEP). USAID SBEP was started in 2011 and will span until 2016, with a budget of $ 155 million. “This is good because it supplements your education budget, a budget that is woefully under-funded. But more importantly, it establishes the need for accountability in school administration and management. We are both now accountable to citizens who look to us to be stewards of these resources.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2012\04\13\story_13-4-2012_pg7_17
Here's Daily Times on USAID project on education in Pakistan:
Administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) Dr Rajiv Shah and Sindh Education Minister Pir Mazhar-ul-Haq launched the USAID-funded ‘National Reading Programme’ at Government Girls Primary/Secondary School, Sultanabad.
The programme consists of three projects - two national and one focused on Sindh - that will help train teachers, improve reading skills and numeracy, and mobilise communities to support school management. It will also increase enrollment of students and ensure student retention, especially of girls.
The programme aims at improving literacy and numeracy for nearly seven million children, provide training to over 90,000 teachers in teaching and assessment, and support the development of 3.2 million new readers–including 700,000 children in Sindh. USAID will be supporting the school with a reading programme under the Sindh Basic Education Programme (SBEP). USAID SBEP was started in 2011 and will span until 2016, with a budget of $ 155 million. “This is good because it supplements your education budget, a budget that is woefully under-funded. But more importantly, it establishes the need for accountability in school administration and management. We are both now accountable to citizens who look to us to be stewards of these resources.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2012\04\13\story_13-4-2012_pg7_17
Here's an ET story on Pakistani winners of Intel Science Competition:
If you are looking for inspiration, look no further than Pakistan’s finalists at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (Isef) held in Pittsburgh from May 13 to May 18.
“I want to be the greatest scientist in the world,” proclaimed finalist Syed Shahzeb Zarrar.
“When you’re surrounded by so much talent, and thousands of innovations, it’s hard not to believe it could happen for any one of the students at Isef.”
Zarrar, along with two other finalists, arrived in Pittsburgh last week. Five finalists were named in Pakistan, but only three obtained a visa.
Finalists received an all expenses paid trip to the Intel Isef conference. It was Zarrar’s first trip to the US, and he said he enjoyed the city of Pittsburgh because it was peaceful and not very large or crowded.
“Every Pakistani should know about Isef. Everyone has a hidden talent. Because of Isef, I was able to discover mine,” said the finalist.
It took him approximately eight months to complete his project. It is titled ‘Production of Artificial Magnetic Domains in Non-Metals’. He explained that electricity could be produced cheaply if non metals were employed. He added that his project was cost efficient and could easily be used in Pakistan. Zarrar attends Iqra Army Public School and College in Quetta.
“I’ve made friends from India, Japan, and even New Mexico thanks to this conference. It is amazing.”
Asked about entertainment provided for students prior to the judging and ceremonies, he smiled and said, “At one of the events, they were giving us free fast food! When does that ever happen back home?”
Energy square idea
A team of three girls were also named finalists in the competition, but only two made it stateside. Mahnoor Hassan, Shiza Ghulab and Bushra Shahed from the Institute of Computer and Management Sciences in Peshawar had a project titled ‘Energy Square for Cattle’. Hassan and Ghulab were present to describe their experiences. Their goal, Hassan put it, was to provide something for animals when faced with unfavourable conditions or natural disasters.
“People think of themselves in times of disaster before animals,” said Ghulab. She provided the example of recent floods in Pakistan. “This square makes it easier to look out for the well-being of livestock also,” she added.
The girls said that just a few licks of their energy square controlled diseases, increased milk production and increased weight in the cattle they conducted tests on after just 28 days.
They provided signed documents, pictorial evidence, and test results to anyone who wanted more information.
The squares are a dry mix of a variety of ingredients, such as mulberry, urea and calcium, that provide vitamins and protein to your animal...
http://tribune.com.pk/story/381235/intel-isef-3-pakistani-students-make-it-to-finals/
Here's a Japan Today report on Japan's rapidly aging population:
Japanese researchers on Friday unveiled a population clock that showed the nation’s people could theoretically become extinct in 1,000 years because of declining birth rates.
Academics in Sendai said that Japan’s population of children aged up to 14, which now stands at 16.6 million, is shrinking at the rate of one every 100 seconds.
Their extrapolations pointed to a Japan with no children left within a millennium.
“If the rate of decline continues, we will be able to celebrate the Children’s Day public holiday on May 5, 3011 as there will be one child,” said Hiroshi Yoshida, an economics professor at Tohoku University.
“But 100 seconds later there will be no children left,” he said. “The overall trend is towards extinction, which started in 1975 when Japan’s fertility rate fell below two.”
Yoshida said he created the population clock to encourage “urgent” discussion of the issue.
Another study released earlier this year showed Japan’s population is expected to shrink to a third of its current 127.7 million over the next century.
Government projections show the birth rate will hit just 1.35 children per woman within 50 years, well below the replacement rate.
Meanwhile, life expectancy—already one of the highest in the world—is expected to rise from 86.39 years in 2010 to 90.93 years in 2060 for women and from 79.64 years to 84.19 years for men.
More than 20 percent of Japan’s people are aged 65 or over, one of the highest proportions of elderly in the world.
Japan has very little immigration and any suggestion of opening the borders to young workers who could help plug the population gap provokes strong reactions among the public.
The greying population is a headache for policymakers who are faced with trying to ensure an ever-dwindling pool of workers can pay for a growing number of pensioners.
But for some Japanese companies the inverting of the traditional aging pyramid provides commercial opportunities.
Unicharm said Friday that sales of its adult diapers had “slightly surpassed” those for babies in the financial year to March, for the first time since the company moved into the seniors market.
Unicharm started selling diapers for babies in 1981 and those for adults in 1987, said spokesman Kazuya Kondo, who declined to give specific figures on the sales.
http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/japan-faces-extinction-in-1000-years
Here's an ET piece on Pak Youth Parliament's charter of demands:
More than 150 members of the Youth Parliament of Pakistan on Monday shared a 42-point Charter of Demands (CoD) for “mainstreaming human rights education and democratic citizenship” with representatives of the main political parties.
The charter was presented at the National Human Rights Education Forum, organised by the Youth Parliament of Pakistan in collaboration with the Ministry of Human Rights.
The youth declared the lack of education and women and child rights issues as the biggest human rights violations. The charter demanded that minorities and transgenders be given equal rights and protection, karo kari and wani be abolished and that human rights be included as a subject in the curriculum (in schools and madrassas). It also called for setting up human rights cells in all educational institutes and urged stricter checks on parliamentarians if they commit a human rights violation.
The charter, according to the organisers, was formulated after holding over a 100 workshops under the banner of Know Your Rights campaign.
People from 53 districts across the country attended the workshops and gave suggestions.
---------
The parliament’s chairman Abrarul Haq – who is also PTI’s Youth Wing president – said that youth who make up a large fraction of the population should have a say in policy making.
Amjad Zafar, the YPP national programme officer for human rights, said the workshops had been conducted over a year and had targeted the 18 to 35 age group. “We demand that all political parties make the CoD content a part their manifestos’, said Zafar, who also oversees the Punjab chapter.
Andeel Ali, the district programme manager in Sindh said that even if one of their demands were included in a party’s manifesto, they would consider it an achievement.
Adnan Khan from Peshawar said that the youth in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa wanted a bigger say in legislation. He identified the lack of education, child labour and social deprivation of women as the biggest human rights violations in the province.
Sarmad Yasin, the programme’s regional project manager in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, said child rights violations are a problem in his area.
“The youth in Balochistan – who drop out of school – are exploited by political and religious leaders,” said Azmat Baloch, a YPP facilitator in Quetta.
He said that this deprived them of opportunities. The rising number of ‘missing persons’ had also created a sense of deprivation in the youth, he said, and was increasing frustration among them.
http://tribune.com.pk/story/385471/youth-parliament-of-pakistan-your-demands-are-already-part-of-ministrys-charter/
Using Siddharth Vij's interpretation, here's how BL data looks for Pakistan:
1. No Schooling 38% vs 32.7% India
2. Prim Total 21.8% vs 20.9% India
3. Prim Complete 19.3% vs 18.9% Ind
4. Sec Total 34.6% vs 40.7% India
5. Sec Complete 22.5% vs 1.3% India
6. Ter Total 5.5% vs 5.8% India
7. Ter Complete 3.9% vs 3.1% India
If you add up serial numbers 1, 2, 4 and 6, you reach 100%. This is the entire universe – each and every Pakistani above the age of 15 is assigned to one and only one of these buckets. 38 out of every 100 Pakistanis (vs 32% of Indians) above the age of 15 in 2010 have had no formal schooling. 22 have been only to primary school, 35 reached as far as secondary school while the rest made it all the way to college...... All that BL tells us is that for 34.6% of Pakistanis (vs 40.7% of Indians) above the age of 15, the highest level of educational attainment is secondary schooling. If to this 34.6% you add the 5.5% who have some tertiary education, you come up with a figure of 40.1% Pakistanis (vs 46.5% of Indians) above the age of 15 having had some secondary schooling during their life time.
http://broadmind.nationalinterest.in/2011/09/23/so-how-many-indian-kids-complete-school/
Another important point to note in Barro-Lee data is that Pakistan has been enrolling students in schools at a faster rate since 1990 than India. In 1990, there were 66.2% of Pakistanis vs 51.6% of Indians who had no schooling. In 2000, there were 60.2% Pakistanis vs 43% Indians with no schooling. In 2010, Pakistan reduced it to 38% vs India's 32.7%.
http://www.barrolee.com/
Dr. Haq,
SO you say that according to Barro-Lee, which merely published data that National Governments provide, the "no schooling" percentages were as follows:
1990 Pakistan 66% India 52%
2000 Pakistan 60% Inbia 43%
2010 Pakistan 38% India 33%
Dr. Haq, how was this possible? How did we manage to achieve a decadal improvement of 22%, especially when the population increased by 31% during the same decade?
I can accept a 6-8-10% decadal increase as possible. But outside of the Totalitarian States, I find it hard to imagine a 20-25% decadal improvement in a regular developing country, especially one like ours that has a high TFR and a high population-growth rate.
What was the secret behind our SPECTACULAR success?
Was it the Sheer Brilliance of General Mush? Or was it because of the efforts of our Active Civil Society? Or perhaps it has something to do with US Assistance for Education during the post 2001 War on Terror?
Would you please clarify the MECHANISM behind this great accomplishment?
Thank you.
HWJ: "Would you please clarify the MECHANISM behind this great accomplishment?"
It's combination of increase in private and public spending.
Nationalization of education by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto devastated private education in 1970s. It rebounded in 1980s and has grown dramatically in recent years. For example the number of private schools grew 10 fold from about 3000 in 1983 to over 30,000 in 2000.
The rate of private school formation far exceeds the rate of population growth. Using numbers for primary school enrollment in 1983 from Jimenez (578,330 students in the four provinces of Pakistan) and our latest numbers we get an overall increase of 937%, far greater than the 57% population increase (in the same four provinces) between 1981 and 1998. Thus the growth in private school enrollment, even after controlling for population growth, is enormous.
http://economics-files.pomona.edu/andrabi/research/pakschool%20march29.pdf
Then Musharraf years saw doubling of pubic education spending along with rapid growth in private funding.
Here's a BR report on Pakistan's growing labor force:
The labour force is expected to grow by 3.5 percent during the ongoing fiscal year (2012-13) according to the projections of the government that have been made keeping in view the past average population growth and increase in the labour force participation rate.
The labour force growth indicates that approximately 2 million new jobs would be demanded during the fiscal year 2012-13.
As prevailing employment elasticity is 0.5, approximately 7 percent GDP growth would be required to absorb the growing labour force and to maintain the unemployment level of 2011-12, official document revealed.
The federal government has initiated a number of programmes to increase the employment through an effective human resource development, according to the document.
These programs include National Internship Program, President's Rozgar Program; Credit for Self Employment by National Bank of Pakistan (NBP), Enhancement of Residential Facilities by Construction of One Million Housing Units, Doubling of Lady Health Workers to cover Kachi Abadis, Raising of Minimum Wage from Rs. 6,000 to Rs 7,000 and Pension of workers, Establishment of National Vocational Technical Training Commission (NAVTTC), Benazir Income Support Program (BISP) and Restoration of Trade Unions.
The government together with Employers' and Workers' representatives with technical support of ILO is implementing a "Decent Work Country Program (DWCP)" in all provinces.
The main objectives of the programs include promoting decent employment in which international labour standards and workers' fundamental rights go hand in hand with job creation.
The program is also aimed to place employment at the center of economic and social policies at the global, regional and national level, improve the lives of millions of people who are either unemployed or whose remuneration from work is inadequate, and provide them opportunity and their families to escape poverty through the creation of productive employment.
Improve earnings, productivity and living standards of working women and men, especially of the working poor; and ensure that the benefits of economic growth reaches those sectors where poverty is most concentrated, urban informal economy and the rural areas, especially landless labour and small tenant farmers.
It is pertinent to mention here that an amount of Rs 2,880 million has been allocated to fund 10 proposed projects of Ministry of Professional and Technical Training for PSDP 2012-13 including Rs 300 million allocated to National Vocational &Technical Training Commission (NAVTTC) to fund 134 development projects including 90 ongoing programs at estimated cost of Rs 3,993 million costs.
http://www.brecorder.com/pakistan/business-a-economy/66522-labour-force-to-expand-by-35pc-during-current-year-.html
Here's an ET story on recognition of a Pak high school kid for his work on water filtration:
A hot sweet cup of tea will solve most problems. But it appears that more and more research is proving that tea can help clean water for human consumption.
For one, Shadab Rasool Buriro, a tenth grade student of the Pak-Turk International School in Khairpur, won silver at the GENIUS (Global Environmental Issues-US) Olympiad, for his project: The removal of harmful pollutants from industrial waste water by the use of tea waste. He defended it in front of seven impartial judges at the international competition that was jointly organised by the State University of New York (SUNY) at Oswego and the Terra Science and Education Foundation. Buriro collected used tea, washed it with boiled water till it had lost all its colour, and then dried it. He then made mixtures of substances commonly found in industrial waste, like cadmium, lead, nickel and phenol, and then mixed them with the dried tea. “After waiting for 60 minutes, I analysed different filtrates obtained by a spectrophotometer and recorded the concentration of each pollutant separately,” he told The Express Tribune. “The results proved that used tea waste can remove [pollutants].”
Buriro’s project was initially sent to the Pak-Turk School’s head office in Islamabad, from where it was forwarded to the US. “I read about the kinds of pollutants that affect our agriculture sector, and decided to work on this particular project,” he said. “I was not expecting to get any position as other students were so confident and well-prepared.”
The Turkish government has recognised Buriro’s achievement and sponsored him for a 15-day visit to Turkey, where he was officially introduced as the boy who competed against students from 50 countries.
His father, Ghulam Rasool Buriro, is a retired deputy district officer (education), while his mother, Kaneez Panjtan, was the district officer (education) elementary. “My parents encouraged me. They helped me wherever it was possible for them to,” he said.
MPA Nusrat Sehar Abbasi of the Pakistan Muslim League-Functional told Sindh Express at an event to honour Buriro that she would bring it up at the next session and recommend his achievement be acknowledged. Buriro is not the only person to have used this particular method to clean water. In the Journal of International Environmental Application & Science published a paper on how used tea waste helped remove phenol from industrial waste water in Kosovo. In 2010, a group of researchers in South Africa developed a high-tech tea bag filter filled with active carbon molecules that can be fitted on top of a bottle to purify water as it is poured on a cup. Closer to home, chemical engineers at the Mehran University of Engineering and technology, Jamshoro published a paper last year in the Sindh University Research Journal on how they used tea waste to remove arsenic from aqueous solutions. They referenced similar work done by four researchers who published their findings in the Iranian Journal of Environmental Health Science & Engineering in 2007.
A cursory search with the terms ‘adsorption of heavy metals with tea waste’ on Google Scholar revealed 10 hits per page.
http://tribune.com.pk/story/424025/khairpur-student-wins-prize-for-using-tea-to-clean-wastewater/
Demand for Food Science graduates rising in Pakistan, reports Express Tribune:
As the food processing sector in Pakistan expands, the job opportunities – and starting salaries – for graduates in food science, nutrition and dietetics are increasing substantially.
The University of Agriculture Faisalabad reports that its graduates are finding jobs faster, with higher starting salaries and rapid career progression for many of its graduates. According to Tahir Zahoor, a professor in the food science department, the top graduates of the university’s food science programmes command salaries of Rs45,000 or higher, and get employed by such brand name employers as Nestle Pakistan, Engro Foods and Unilever Pakistan.
These starting salaries are comparable to those earned by graduates of the country’s leading business schools when they join the largest banks on Karachi’s McLeod Road. And it is not just the starting salaries that are high. Many graduates report earning more than Rs100,000 per month within five years of graduation, though admittedly these are some of the best performing students.
Not all graduates get these packages, of course. But according to the university’s professors, no graduate has gotten a job offer with a starting salary of less than Rs25,000 per month, with Rs30,000 per month being the median salary package. The middle-tier of students typically go to some of the smaller names in food production, such as Dawn Foods (a leading bread manufacturer), Shan Foods (a spice manufacturer), etc.
Revenues and profits at food production firms have been soaring. Between 2005 and 2010 (the latest year for which figures are available), revenues at food companies listed on the Karachi Stock Exchange have grown by an average of more than 18.2% per year. Profits have expanded even faster, by more than 21.2% per year.
This blowout growth has caused many to invest heavily into expanding production capacity. Both Engro Foods and Nestle Pakistan invest upwards of Rs8 billion every year in increasing their production facilities. Engro Foods – started only in 2006 – has been particularly aggressive in broadening its product line-up.
These two companies, however, are not alone. K&N Foods has become the nation’s largest supplier of processed chicken, tempting other food companies to enter into the fray. Dawn Foods, long a manufacturer of just bread and baked products, is now entering meat products. Quetta Textile Mills is setting up a processed chicken facility. And Shan Foods is trying to expand its presence overseas by acquiring a brand in the United Kingdom.
This expansion in the food sector is pushed by a change in the underlying consumer behaviour when it comes to buying food. Consumer spending on processed food appears to be expanding. The average Pakistani household spent almost Rs500 per month on processed food in 2011, over two and half times more than a decade ago, according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, representing a rate of increase faster than inflation....
http://tribune.com.pk/story/424995/as-consumer-sector-booms-demand-for-food-science-graduates-soars/
Riaz Haq: "While many of the critics I berate see Pakistan's glass completely empty, I prefer to see it half full. And I believe Pakistanis' focus should be on how to fill it up to the rim"
"Glass is Half-full, Glass is Half-empty"
What Glass?
While you were philosophizing on your blog, Zardari sold the Glass to the Oil-Sheikhs and used the proceeds to buy himself a beautiful 15th century castle-estate in Switzerland.
The Army Top-Brass have been all buying houses in Dubai.
The Sharif-Brothers entourage have all been guying houses in Kuwait.
The Zardari-Bhutto courtiers have all been buying houses in England.
The Feudal Families Associates have all been buying houses in Saudia.
The high-level CSS/CSP/SBP officials all have been buying houses in Doha.
If key company insiders are selling stock, what does it tell you about the state of the company?
Karachi Rickshawallahs are saying, "sub chor mulk chhod bhag rahen hain; ab aur chori karnay kay liyay kuch nahin bacha"
Here's a Dawn report on Pakistani student winning International Computer Olympiad:
A Pakistani student from Balochistan has bagged gold medal in an international contest held in Turkmenistan leaving all the countries like Germany, Canada, Russia, England, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka behind.
M. Ubaidullah son of Haji Talib Din, a rice trader, is a class ninth student of Pak-Turk International Schools and Colleges, has brought home a gold medal from the International Computer Project Olympiad (ICPO) held in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.
The competition was held on September 14 and 15 among students from 45 countries who presented 150 projects in the Olympiad.
Ubaidullah’s project that caught attention of participants, organisers and judges was regarding plant automation system; subsequently he was awarded 1st position in the hardware category.
His project P-Bot aims at saving plants in cold-flame or greenhouse setting, especially when someone wants to protect the plants at home in all the seasons. P-Bot automates the round-the-year tasks of plant care by means of its full-automatic cold flame and greenhouse routines.
http://dawn.com/2012/09/22/pakistani-student-wins-gold-medal/
Here's a PakistanToday report on US AID training Pak youth in dairy management:
United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Mission Director for Punjab Jeff Bakken on Friday awarded graduation certificates to 22 trainees who successfully completed a one-month farm manager training program under USAID Dairy Project. This innovative management training teaches Punjabi youth pursuing a career in dairy farm management to enhance milk production and increase their incomes.
Mr Bakken emphasized U.S. support for improving livelihood for rural communities in the Punjab and Pakistan. He remarked, “today’s event highlights the importance that the United States places on deepening the impact of development assistance to the people of Pakistan and improving the lives of those in rural communities. Your dedication is critical to pave the way for long-term economic gains in the dairy sector.”
Dairy Project Director Jack Moser also congratulated the graduates. “We celebrate the success of farm managers who will make a difference in the livestock sector by offering their services to the commercial dairy farm enterprises in the Punjab. The USAID Dairy Project will continue to mobilize and support farmers in the Punjab by training 400 individuals in dairy farm management,” he said.
USAID’s three-year, $14 million Dairy Project is designed to impact the lives of 9,000 small dairy farmers by enhancing their productivity by at least 10 percent, resulting in at least 10 percent increase in their incomes. The project provides training on the best dairy farm management techniques, including artificial insemination, and provides women livestock workers training in entrepreneurship.
http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2012/10/06/city/lahore/usaid-trains-unemployed-youth-in-farm-management/
Here's an ET story of German firms establishing vocational training in Karachi:
KARACHI: Eight German multinational corporations and the German Consulate in Karachi have joined hands to tackle the need for skilled labour in the country. German Consul General Dr Tilo Klinner and representatives of the Aman Foundation’s AmanTech and Habib University Foundation’s Institute for Advancing Careers and Talents (iACT) launched the “Germany-Pakistan Training Initiative” during a ceremony on Monday.
The German federal ministry of economic cooperation and development is supporting the programme which will be spearheaded by Dr Stefan Oswald.
Dr Klinner said that a country where nearly 63 per cent of the population was under 25 years has a tremendous opportunity to progress. According to the German expert, an increasing number of youngsters were graduating from universities, “but they were mostly equipped with theoretical knowledge”.
German multinational giants such as Siemens, BASF, Linde, Mercedes-Benz, Merck, Lufthansa Cargo, DB Schenker and DHL have decided to act as partners in the programme that aims to generate a regular stream of dedicated workers. Metro, a retail chain in Pakistan, will also be part of the project. The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (the German Agency for International Cooperation, or GIZ) will be assisting the German government in the programme. GIZ has had an office in Pakistan since 1990.
The programme will be based on the dual training system, which will combine theoretical lessons at schools with apprenticeships at a company. Theory classes will be taught at iACT’s offices in Saudabad, Malir, and AmanTech’s offices in Korangi Town. Matric graduates will be eligible to apply for an entrance test that is a perquisite for entrance into the programme. The first group of trainees are expected to enroll by April 2013. Vocational training for the commercial sector will span one year, while that for the industrial sector will extend over two years. Officials also hope to extend the programme to other multinational companies later on. The government’s technical education and vocational training authority is also expected to extend it to Pakistani companies.
“The dual training system combines theory and practice via vocational education at schools and apprenticeships at a company for a specific course,” GIZ’s principal education advisor Dr Julie Reviere told The Express Tribune. He added that meeting the need of skilled manpower was a challenge. “Well-trained [workers] who are tailored for particular skills are extremely difficult to recruit. Our multinational partners would love to hire skilled manpower from Pakistan,” she said.
Dr Oswald said that the principle objective of the project was to produce a productive workforce that would be equipped to handle the challenges presented by modern industries. It also aims to contribute to capacity building of vocational training institutes in Pakistan. He added that Germany was spending around €50 million on different programmes in Pakistan.
“We want to focus on the bottom of the pyramid, which is the largest, but poorest socio-economic group that has very little opportunity to move forward,” said Aman Foundation chief executive Ahsan Jamil. “he AmanTech vocational training institute targets male matriculates and equip them with a mix of vocational and soft skills training so that they could meet with the job market requirements.”
http://tribune.com.pk/story/455449/europes-industrial-giant-plans-to-start-vocational-training-in-karachi/
Here's a Daily Times story on Pakistan's Malala Day celebration marking the launch of Waseela-e-Taleem program for children's education:
ISLAMABAD: United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education Gordon Brown on Saturday said Pakistan could achieve more progress during next three years than any other country as the whole nation has consensus for promoting education as basic right of every child.
“This is a breakthrough moment for Pakistan’s five million out-of-school children as result of Malala’s courage,” Brown said addressing a news conference after his two-day visit to Pakistan that also coincided with Malala Day observed worldwide. He believed that the silent majority is speaking and that there is now national consensus that the country can delay no longer in ensuring girls and boys have schools to go and teachers to teach them.”
“Country after country is adopting Malala as their symbol for a girls’ right to school,” Brown commented. Brown who also telephoned Malala’s two friends Kainat and Shazia, both injured in attack, said not only in Asia but Malala Day was being observed from Latin America and Europe to Africa and several cities in the United States. “Today, we can say with certainty that as long as there are girls out of school anywhere in the world, Malala will be their beacon of hope. Visiting Pakistan and everywhere I go, the message I have received is the same: we are all with Malala,” Brown said.
Brown also praised Pakistan’s creation of four new Malala schools, a Malala Centre for women’s studies and a Malala postgraduate institute. He also expressed pleasure over the plan to provide financial support to poor families for sending their children to schools.
Mentioning to his telephonic interaction with Malala’s friends, he said both were courageous young women and wanted to become doctors. During his meetings with ministers of education from every province, he said everyone expressed their commitment to delivering educational opportunities for girls and boys.
Particularly, he said all of them have emphasised that they would work ceaselessly to ensure that three million girls who are denied schooling are no longer discriminated against anywhere in the country,” he said.
Brown also quoted that education minister is committed to expand community schools including 900 in the Swat Valley and FATA that provide route into the schooling for children who have never gone to school.
He also referred to a plan launched by Benazir Income Support Programme to expand a conditional cash transfer to families choosing to send their children to school what he said aims to enrol three million children into school over the next four years.
“So action is already underway this week to move further and faster to meeting the Millennium Development Goal for education,” he commented, adding that one million people have now signed worldwide petitions.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2012\11\11\story_11-11-2012_pg7_12
Here's an ET report on Real Madrid's plans to open a soccer school in Pakistan:
The Real Madrid Foundation (FRM), an NGO established by Spanish football giants Real Madrid, signed an MoU with a Pakistani NGO yesterday at the Santiago Bernabeu which will see FRM establish their social sports school model in Pakistan.
The project will kick off with two schools in Karachi that will comprise 400 boys and girls aged six to 17. Foreign coaches from Spain will also visit Pakistan to train local coaches. In addition, students with disabilities will receive specialised care.
“We are excited about the implementation of our FRM model in Pakistan for the betterment of children through the power of sport,” said Real Madrid’s Sporting Director Miguel Pardeza.
FRM was established in 1997 to service the disadvantaged through the power of sport.
http://tribune.com.pk/story/466253/real-madrid-to-establish-sports-schools-in-pakistan/
Here's PakObserver on growing number of people with doctorate degrees i Pakistan:
Saturday, November 24, 2012 - Islamabad—The Pakistani universities are now able to produce more PhDs in the next 3 years as compared to last 10 years. The total number of PhDs in Pakistan has reached the figure of 8,142. According to the available statistics, the number of PhDs has increased from 348 (1947 to 2002) to 679 in 2012 in agriculture and veterinary sciences, from 586 to 1,096 in biological sciences, from 14 to 123 in business education, from merely 21 to 262 in engineering and technology and from 709 to 1,071 in physical sciences, Technology Times Reported.
In social sciences, the number increased to 887 from 108 during last ten years. The figures also indicate that during the last decade, special emphasis has been paid to the disciplines of agriculture and veterinary science, biological, physical and social sciences, business education, engineering and technology. “HEC has so far introduced various indigenous scholarship schemes to create a critical mass of highly qualified human resources in all fields of studies who conduct research on issues of importance to Pakistan.
http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=183938
Dr. Haq,
Can you work with me on this calculation and let me know if I make any errors?
The graph you have published shows workforce sizes--
http://alturl.com/2oebg
The GDP PPP sizes are available here--
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/china/gdp-ppp-us-dollar-wb-data.html
A) China
Workforce: 800 Million
GDP PPP$ 2011: 11,300 Billion
Therefore,
GDP Per worker PPP$: 14,125$
B) India
Workforce: 480 Million
GDP PPP$ 2011: 4,500 Billion
Therefore,
GDP Per worker PPP$: 9,375$
C) Pakistan
Workforce: 60 Million
GDP PPP$ 2011: 488 Billion
Therefore,
GDP Per worker PPP$: 8,133$
So in terms of output **PER WORKER** on a PPP basis, it looks like we are almost neck to neck with India. And both South-Asian countries are trailing China by about 35-40% lower output per worker.
Does this sound about right? Do you see any flaws? What are your thoughts?
Thank you.
Here's an ET piece by Shahid Burki on women i the work force:
Pakistan has one of the world’s youngest populations in the world with a median age of about 22 years. This means that one-half of the population, or 90.5 million, is below that age. A much larger share of this population should be in the workforce. If this were the case, the country would be benefiting from what the economists call the demographic window of opportunity, when the proportion of the working population is much greater than those who are dependent on it. This would be realised if both men and women of working age were able to work. This is not the case in Pakistan. The proportion of men in the workforce is relatively high; 68.6 per cent. That of women is very low; only 31.4 per cent. This means that while 63.5 million men are in the workforce, the number of working women is only 29 million.
This does not mean that millions of women are sitting idly in their homes. In fact, most of them are doing a great deal of housework looking after their children, preparing food for the family, and in the countryside, often tending farm animals. Would getting them out of the house and into the workforce add to the country’s gross output? The answer is, probably yes, if the marginal return to their work in the marketplace is higher than what would be paid to those who would be called in to provide help in the house. This will be the case certainly among the middle-income households in the urban areas. By stepping outside their homes, middle-income women will create opportunities for those women lower down on the income scale. This will produce a ripple effect in the economy or in the language of economics a ‘multiplier’ will get to work.
This brings me to one of the ‘what ifs… ?’ questions about the situation in Pakistan. What would be the impact on the economy — to its size and the rate of growth — if the proportion of women in the workforce reached, not quite the level attained by men, but close to it, say 50 per cent. This would mean an addition of 25 million women to the labour force. This addition to the workforce will have the capacity to add $85 billion to the gross domestic product of $200 billion — an increase of 42.5 per cent. With this increase in the country’s GDP, income per capita will increase from the current $1,100 to $1,575. In other words, women could make a larger contribution to the economy if they are allowed to be part of the workforce. But for that to happen, the society will have to lift the many burdens that weigh down women and prevent them from contributing to the economy.
http://tribune.com.pk/story/474164/the-economic-benefits-of-more-women-in-the-workforce/
Here's an ET story on top jobs for IBA grads:
KARACHI: If a high number of students receiving multiple job offers even before they graduate is the chief yardstick to measure a business school’s performance, the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) is certainly in a league of its own.
“Some of our students receive as many as six job offers before they had graduated,” IBA Dean and Director Dr Ishrat Husain said while speaking to The Express Tribune on Friday.
Out of the 196 IBA BBAs, who actively looked for jobs in 2012, as many as 170 – or 86.7% – managed to find employment of their liking, according to the IBA’s employment survey released earlier this month. The average monthly starting salary for BBA graduates in 2012 was Rs43,200, compared to last year’s Rs36,700, reflecting an increase of 18%.
The banking sector has been the chief employer of IBA graduates in recent years. But the percentage of BBAs joining the banking sector was 18.8% this year, compared to 39% two years ago. Although the banking sector offered a salary of salary of Rs36,900 a month on average in 2012 – which is Rs6,300 less than the overall average salary this year – it still remains the single largest employer of IBA BBAs.
Husain says the fact that the number of IBA graduates entering the banking field has come down by almost 50% in just a couple of years should be attributed to slower expansion in the banks’ branch network.Dr Ishrat Husain
The education sector remained the second-largest employer of IBA BBAs this year with 13.5% graduates entering the field at an average salary of Rs36,000 per month. About 78.3% graduates joining the education field were female, according to the employment survey.
Many of the BBAs entering the education field return to IBA after getting the mandatory work experience required for the MBA programme, according to Husain.
Financial institutions were also a less preferred employer for IBA BBAs in 2012, as only 5.9% of graduates joined them at an average salary of Rs39,700 a month. Unlike the education sector, which attracted more than twice the number of BBAs this year compared to 2011, the number of IBA graduates joining the financial sector actually decreased from 14% to 5.9% over the same period.
IBA BBAs received the highest average monthly salaries in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), telecommunications and manufacturing sectors with Rs70,000, Rs67,000 and Rs35,000, respectively, according to the employment survey.
Commenting about the low level of interest among IBA graduates in joining the textile sector, Husain says it was due to the “seth mentality” prevailing in the industry. “We have taught our students professional management, so they do not want to become part of the textile industry for obvious reasons,” he said.
The employment survey says 90.5% of the fresh MBAs who actively sought jobs this year found employment of their liking. The average monthly salary for IBA MBAs in 2012 was Rs66,400, which is almost 24% higher than the last year’s average.
Sales and distribution, FMCG and IT sectors attracted 26.3%, 18.4% and 15.8%, respectively, of IBA MBAs in 2012, the survey said.
“While the general impression is that there are few jobs because of the sluggish economic growth in recent years, the truth is that there are ample employment opportunities for graduates of quality educational institutions,” Husain said.
http://tribune.com.pk/story/482633/grad-employment-offtake-puts-iba-top-of-pakistans-ivy-league/
Here's a Nation newspaper story on solar tech training in Peshawar:
National Institute of Design and Analysis (NIDA) Peshawar centre has concluded the technical training course of solar panels installation for 16 trainees. The candidates were registered community members of Sarhad Rural Support Program. To impart the short training course, NIDA Peshawar Centre facilitated with the provision of 2400 Watt hi-tech training set-up as well as arranged for proficient trainers to apprise the trainees with the astutely developed course curricula. Trainees were brought to rehearse the techniques imparted in the classrooms sessions, thereby were enabled to effectively deploy the acquired skills set for their livelihood prospects.
At the course culmination, the successful candidates were certified by NIDA Peshawar and were also facilitated in finding employment opportunities for them. NIDA Peshawar Centre is committed to enhance the manpower capacity in various employable technical trades so that the local community at KPK could be effectively mobilized to reduce poverty and resource litter in the area. NIDA Peshawar being a subsidiary concern to TUSDEC is pursuing to train manpower as well as extend infrastructural support to facilitate the renewable energy sector in Pakistan.
According to a company spokesperson, NIDA Peshawar has implemented various successful programs in collaboration with Sarhad Rural Support Program and both organizations deem to work further together to maximize their efforts for the sustainable development of the area inhabitants.
http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/business/12-Jan-2013/nida-fosters-trainings-in-alternate-energy-sector
In his piece for The Nation newspaper, author Kamal Monnoo worries about future declines in overseas remittances to Pakistan from Pak diaspora.
The author is focusing too much on the cyclical economic factors and not enough on the longer term demographic trends.
Western nations are going to need more, not fewer, workers from developing nations like Pakistan because the populations in the OECD nations are aging and shrinking.
Kerala example is not relevant either because Kerala itself has sub-replacement TFR of just 1.7 which is worse than some of the European nations.
Pakistan, with its total fertility rate of 3.5, has the world’s sixth largest population, seventh largest diaspora and the ninth largest labor force. With rapidly declining fertility and aging populations in the industrialized world, Pakistan's growing talent pool is likely to play a much bigger role to satisfy global demand for workers in the 21st century and contribute to the well-being of Pakistan as well as other parts of the world.
http://www.riazhaq.com/2011/10/pakistans-expected-demographic-dividend.html
Here's Daily Times on US-Pak cooperation in human capital development:
* Grant to help researchers turn their research into commercially viable projects with private sector partners
* Symposium on ‘Economic Growth through Technology Transfer’ kicks off
ISLAMABAD: US Ambassador Richard Olson has announced new funding for Pakistani researchers during the first Pakistan-US Science and Technology Cooperation Programme Symposium on “Economic Growth through Technology Transfer”, which started at the National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) on Thursday.
The two-day symposium is being jointly organised by the Higher Education Commission (HEC), Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), US Department of State, US Agency for International Development and US National Academy of Sciences. The main objective of this academic activity was to introduce concepts of technology transfer and foster new interactions between research projects and the private sector, enhancing translation of research across these domains.
The participants included principal investigators, private sector, government representatives and universities. Delivering the keynote address, Ambassador Olson said that international science and technology cooperation is essential in addressing global challenges. Examples of research cooperation that can improve lives include more efficient water treatment to conserve and reuse wastewater; systems that rapidly detect deadly, drug-resistant tuberculosis; and solar water-heating systems for remote, rural areas, he said.
Ambassador Olson explained several other ways that the United States promotes scientific cooperation with Pakistan. He also announced new funding for Pakistani researchers to turn their research into commercially viable projects with private sector partners. This year’s Pakistan-US Science and Technology Symposium mark the 10-year anniversary of the Pakistan-US Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement and highlights a new focus on economic growth through scientific cooperation.
The two-day symposium brings together American and Pakistani researchers, universities, research institutions, government officials, and entrepreneurs to help build partnerships between researchers and private sector. The sessions include hands-on workshops on establishing private sector partnerships, intellectual property, and how to “sell” a business idea to potential investors. Earlier in the inauguration session, HEC Member Dr Nasser Ali Khan informed that over the last decade, the United States and Pakistan have jointly contributed $38 million to fund 73 Pakistani-US scientist-led research projects among 40 different institutes and universities in both countries. He also shed light over the decade-long achievements of higher education sector.
The Pakistan-US Science and Technology Cooperation Programme will sponsor two competitive seed grant programmes in 2013: “Innovate! and Collaborate”. Under these programmes, researchers can apply for seed grants of up to $15,000 starting in summer 2013. Application details will be available in summer 2013. HEC chairperson Dr Javaid R Laghari, Ministry of Science and Technology Secretary Akhlaq Ahmad Tarar, National University of Science and Technology Islamabad Rector Engr Muhammad Asghar and University of Agriculture Faisalabad Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Iqrar Ahmad Khan were also present on the occasion.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2013\02\01\story_1-2-2013_pg11_1
Indian commentators have pounced upon Feroz Khan's erudite work on "Eating Grass-The Making of the Pakistani Bomb" by citing what they claim is an error regarding Indira Gandhi's triumphant speech to Indian parliament after the fall of Dacca in 1971.
http://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/books/the-story-of-pakistans-improbable-pursuit-of-nuclear-weapons#full
http://business-standard.com/india/news/a-dietgrass/492898/
Such self-serving reviews of things Pakistan by Indian commentators are not surprising. They are meant to sustain the Indian narrative of demonization of Pakistan.
Brig Feroz Khan's book is a scholarly work that offers the first authentic account of the making of Pakistani bomb.
It details a story of spectacular scientific and strategic achievement by a nation dismissed as a temporary "tent" and a "nissen hut" by Mountbatten in 1947. That same "nissen hut" is now a nuclear power about which Brookings' Stephen Cohen has said as follows:
“One of the most important puzzles of India-Pakistan relations is not why the smaller Pakistan feels encircled and threatened, but why the larger India does. It would seem that India, seven times more populous than Pakistan and five times its size, and which defeated Pakistan in 1971, would feel more secure. This has not been the case and Pakistan remains deeply embedded in Indian thinking. There are historical, strategic, ideological, and domestic reasons why Pakistan remains the central obsession of much of the Indian strategic community, just as India remains Pakistan’s.”
http://books.google.com/books?id=H_XYAq8A06gC&pg=PA34&lpg=PA34&dq=%E2%80%9COne+of+the+most+important+puzzles+of+India-Pakistan+relations+is+not+why+the+smaller+Pakistan+feels+encircled+and+threatened,+but+why+the+larger+India+does.+It+would+seem+that+India,+seven+times+more+populous+than+Pakistan+and+five+times+its+size,+and+which+defeated+Pakistan+in+1971,+would+feel+more+secure.+This+has+not+been+the+case+and+Pakistan+remains+deeply+embedded+in+Indian+thinking.+There+are+historical,+strategic,+ideological,+and+domestic+reasons+why+Pakistan+remains+the+central+obsession+of+much+of+the+Indian+strategic+community,+just+as+India+remains+Pakistan%E2%80%99s.%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=fpjjb4H5Cs&sig=C-gS4adMQFbkv-7h4PqbaTPZj9I&hl=en&sa=X&ei=goIQUYKVBcfXigLR8IC4Dw&ved=0CEQQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=Cohen&f=false
Here's a Daily Times report on AI and Robotics education in Pakistan:
ISLAMABAD: Robotics as a discipline of science and technology is being taught at the graduate and post-graduate levels by more than 60 universities of Engineering Science and Technology in Pakistan, official sources told Daily Times here on Saturday.
The research and development (R&D) in advanced fields of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence has also been undertaken by some of laboratories established in the R&D institutes and universities in Pakistan. The official in the Ministry of Science and Technology claimed that there is a technical group engaged in development of automation of industrial processes at the National Institute of Electronics (NIE), Islamabad. The group has developed Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs), which are used in automatic industrial controls.
The Centre for Intelligent Machines and Robotics (IMR) at the COMSATS Institute of Information Technology has a Research Group, which is undertaking research related to robotics, computer vision and machine learning. The IMR Research Group is conducting basic and applied research in robotics technologies relevant to industrial and societal tasks; the robotics technology in Pakistan has the potential role in boosting the productivity and competitiveness. The researchers at CIIT are working for projects on visual guided robotic systems for use in surgery, navigation control, mapping and geometric representation of environmental parameters.
National Engineering Robotics Contest (NERC) is an inter universities robotics competition held annually since 2005 at the NUST. The contest is organised by HEC, the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Careers Project with more than 60 Pakistani universities participating in the event, and aims to train individuals for engineering services in Pakistan, and cash prizes are awarded to the winners.
NERC 2011 held at the College of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering (EME), Rawalpindi from June 28 to July 2. Many universities like FAST, GIKI, LUMS, CASE and UET Lahore participated in the event, where students were encouraged to design, develop and programme their respective robots.
R&D projects on Tele-Surgical Training Robot and Simulators and Development of Intelligent Robotic Wheelchairs are being undertaken by NUST funded by ICT R&D Fund.
International workshops and seminars for knowledge sharing and events at national level for talent hunt among youth in the fields of robotics have been organised regularly at NUST. Specialisation in robotics is a popular choice for students going abroad to study under various scholarships schemes for research and PhD. This field offers job opportunities, and robotics engineers can apply their mastery in diverse fields like modern warfare, surgery, nano-technology and space-exploration.
The official claimed that developing a robot comes with the goal of finding a solution to the problem. Along with the technical know-how, interest in research is essential. This field has promising opportunities, with no boundaries and will continue to grow with the advancement of science and technology in the near future.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2013\02\10\story_10-2-2013_pg5_12
Here's a piece by Stephen Mosher on fertility decline in Europe published by Population Research Institute:
It’s happened before.
Writing a century and a half before the birth of Christ, the Greek historian Polybius observed “nowadays all over Greece such a diminution in natality and in general manner such depopulation that the towns are deserted and the fields lie fallow. Although this country has not been ravaged by wars or epidemics, the cause of the harm is evident: by avarice or cowardice the people, if they marry, will not bring up the children they ought to have. At most they bring up one or two. It is in this way that the scourge before it is noticed is rapidly developed.”
He concluded by urging his fellow Greeks to return to their historic love of family and children. “The remedy is in ourselves,” he wrote. “We have but to change our morals.” His advice, unfortunately, went largely unheeded.
The demographic winter of the Greek city-states led to economic stagnation and military weakness, which in turn invited invasion and conquest. After a century of increasing dominance in the Eastern Mediterranean, Rome finally annexed the Greek city-states in 146 B.C.
Will a Europe in the grip of a similar demographic winter come to a similar unhappy end? Certainly Europeans of today, like the Greeks of old, are barely having children. The birthrate across the entire continent is far below the replacement level of 2.1 children per couple. Italy, Spain, Austria, and Germany have total fertility rates, or TFRs, of only 1.4 or so, while Poland and Russia languish at 1.32 and 1.2 respectively. The more or less generous child allowances these countries pay the prolific has scarcely caused these numbers to budge. The birth dearth continues to widen.
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Most Muslim countries in North Africa and the Middle East have fertility rates two or three times as high as Europe. Afghanistan and Somalia, whose fertility rates are above 6 children (6.62 and 6.4 respectively), may be outliers. But other Middle Eastern countries with above-replacement TFRs include Iraq at 4.86, Pakistan at 3.65, and Saudi Arabia at 3.03. Even immigrants from the most Westernized Muslim countries such as Turkey and Tunisia average nearly twice as many children as the extant populations of most European countries.
While falling fertility may be humanity’s general fate, it is this differential fertility that will determine Europe’s destiny. Although the birthrates of Muslim immigrants to Europe are far lower than they were just a generation ago, they are still far more open to life than highly secularized Europeans. Moreover, these immigrants, once in place in Germany, Italy, Spain, etc., tend to maintain their relatively high fertility for a generation.
----
If, on the other hand, the second- and third-generation Muslims are largely secularized, then the Christian minority will be, presumably, treated somewhat better, though still subject to some level of discrimination. As everyone knows by now, the Secular Left preaches a tolerance that it generally does not practice.
Either way, believers in once-Christian Europe will probably find themselves living in what might be called a pre-Constantine moment. In others words, they will be living under regimes that punish, even persecute, them for their beliefs.
At the present moment, Europeans still control their own destiny. As Polybius, were he alive today, would surely remind them: “The remedy is in yourselves. You have but to change your morals.”
http://www.pop.org/content/europe-we-know-it-dying
Here's a piece by David Ignatius of Washington Post on declining fertility among Muslims:
Something startling is happening in the Muslim world — and no, I don’t mean the Arab Spring or the growth of Islamic fundamentalism. According to a leading demographer, a “sea change” is producing a sharp decline in Muslim fertility rates and a “flight from marriage” among Arab women.
Nicholas Eberstadt, a scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, documented these findings in two recent papers. They tell a story that contradicts the usual picture of a continuing population explosion in Muslim lands. Population is indeed rising, but if current trends continue, the bulge won’t last long.
Eberstadt’s first paper was expressively titled “Fertility Decline in the Muslim World: A Veritable Sea-Change, Still Curiously Unnoticed.” Using data for 49 Muslim-majority countries and territories, he found that fertility rates declined an average of 41 percent between 1975-80 and 2005-10, a deeper drop than the 33 percent decline for the world as a whole.
Twenty-two Muslim countries and territories had fertility declines of 50 percent or more. The sharpest drops were in Iran, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Bangladesh, Tunisia, Libya, Albania, Qatar and Kuwait, which all recorded declines of 60 percent or more over three decades.
Fertility in Iran declined an astonishing 70 percent over the 30-year period, which Eberstadt says was “one of the most rapid and pronounced fertility declines ever recorded in human history.” By 2000, Iran’s fertility rate had fallen to two births per woman, below the level necessary to replace current population, according to Eberstadt and his co-author, Apoorva Shah.
A July 2012 Financial Times story placed the Iranian fertility rate even lower and cited a U.N. report warning that Iran’s population will begin to shrink in two decades and will decline by more than 50 percent by the end of the century if current trends continue.
Big cities in the Muslim world have seen especially sharp drops. Eberstadt notes that only six states in the United States have lower rates than Istanbul. In Tehran and Isfahan, Iran, fertility rates are lower than those of any state in the United States.
Eberstadt argues that the fertility decline isn’t just a result of rising incomes and economic development, though these certainly played a role: “Fertility decline over the past generation has been more rapid in the Arab states than virtually anywhere else on earth.”
-----------
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The decline of marriage in Europe is well-known but still striking: The female marriage rate fell in Germany from 0.98 to 0.59 from 1965 to 2000; it fell in France over that period from 0.99 to 0.61; in Sweden from 0.98 to 0.49; in Britain, from 1 to 0.54.
Marriage is also plummeting in Asia: In Japan, the percentage of women between 30 and 34 who have never married rose from 7.2 percent in 1970 to 26.6 percent in 2000; in Burma, it rose from 9.3 percent to 25.9 percent; in Thailand, from 8.1 percent to 16.1 percent; in South Korea, from 1.4 percent to 10.7 percent.
Marriage rates in the Arab world are higher, but they’re moving fast in the same direction. What’s “astonishing,” says Eberstadt in an e-mail explaining his findings, is that in the Arab world, this move away from marriage “is by many measures already as far along as was Europe’s in the 1980s — and it is taking place at a vastly lower level of development than the corresponding flights in Europe and developed East Asia....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/david-ignatius-a-demographic-shift-in-the-muslim-world/2013/02/08/54ce7bf0-7152-11e2-ac36-3d8d9dcaa2e2_story.html
Here's a piece by David Ignatius of Washington Post on declining fertility among Muslims:
Something startling is happening in the Muslim world — and no, I don’t mean the Arab Spring or the growth of Islamic fundamentalism. According to a leading demographer, a “sea change” is producing a sharp decline in Muslim fertility rates and a “flight from marriage” among Arab women.
Nicholas Eberstadt, a scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, documented these findings in two recent papers. They tell a story that contradicts the usual picture of a continuing population explosion in Muslim lands. Population is indeed rising, but if current trends continue, the bulge won’t last long.
Eberstadt’s first paper was expressively titled “Fertility Decline in the Muslim World: A Veritable Sea-Change, Still Curiously Unnoticed.” Using data for 49 Muslim-majority countries and territories, he found that fertility rates declined an average of 41 percent between 1975-80 and 2005-10, a deeper drop than the 33 percent decline for the world as a whole.
Twenty-two Muslim countries and territories had fertility declines of 50 percent or more. The sharpest drops were in Iran, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Bangladesh, Tunisia, Libya, Albania, Qatar and Kuwait, which all recorded declines of 60 percent or more over three decades.
Fertility in Iran declined an astonishing 70 percent over the 30-year period, which Eberstadt says was “one of the most rapid and pronounced fertility declines ever recorded in human history.” By 2000, Iran’s fertility rate had fallen to two births per woman, below the level necessary to replace current population, according to Eberstadt and his co-author, Apoorva Shah.
A July 2012 Financial Times story placed the Iranian fertility rate even lower and cited a U.N. report warning that Iran’s population will begin to shrink in two decades and will decline by more than 50 percent by the end of the century if current trends continue.
Big cities in the Muslim world have seen especially sharp drops. Eberstadt notes that only six states in the United States have lower rates than Istanbul. In Tehran and Isfahan, Iran, fertility rates are lower than those of any state in the United States.
Eberstadt argues that the fertility decline isn’t just a result of rising incomes and economic development, though these certainly played a role: “Fertility decline over the past generation has been more rapid in the Arab states than virtually anywhere else on earth.”
-----------
---
The decline of marriage in Europe is well-known but still striking: The female marriage rate fell in Germany from 0.98 to 0.59 from 1965 to 2000; it fell in France over that period from 0.99 to 0.61; in Sweden from 0.98 to 0.49; in Britain, from 1 to 0.54.
Marriage is also plummeting in Asia: In Japan, the percentage of women between 30 and 34 who have never married rose from 7.2 percent in 1970 to 26.6 percent in 2000; in Burma, it rose from 9.3 percent to 25.9 percent; in Thailand, from 8.1 percent to 16.1 percent; in South Korea, from 1.4 percent to 10.7 percent.
Marriage rates in the Arab world are higher, but they’re moving fast in the same direction. What’s “astonishing,” says Eberstadt in an e-mail explaining his findings, is that in the Arab world, this move away from marriage “is by many measures already as far along as was Europe’s in the 1980s — and it is taking place at a vastly lower level of development than the corresponding flights in Europe and developed East Asia....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/david-ignatius-a-demographic-shift-in-the-muslim-world/2013/02/08/54ce7bf0-7152-11e2-ac36-3d8d9dcaa2e2_story.html
Here's PakObserver on Junior Achievement Program in Pakistan:
Saturday, February 23, 2013 - Karachi—Indus Motor Company (IMC) has committed USD 50,000 per year for the next 3 years to INJAZ Pakistan to support youth entrepreneurship training in Pakistan.
The event that was held at the AMANTECH premises in Korangi today was attended by CEO IMC, Parvez Ghias, CEO Aman Foundation Ahsan Jamil, Executive Director INJAZ Pakistan Azra Maqsood, Manager Corporate Planning IMC Atif Ahmed, GM Marketing Aman Foundation Sukayna Sadik and Program Manager INJAZ Pakistan Sitvat Jamal.
Mr. Ahsan Jamil thanked Mr. Parvez Ghias for their generous contribution. Looking forward to more partnerships that involved community building, he asserted that sustainable development is a key to positive change which is exhilarated through such alliances.
Parvez Ghias, CEO, Indus Motor Company said that the idea behind this initiative was to promote self- employment by empowering youth so that they could build their careers towards a better future. INJAZ Pakistan, an initiative of the Aman Foundation, is a member of Junior Achievement Worldwide and has been established with the objective of fostering, promoting, encouraging and developing entrepreneurial and vocational skills (EVS) among students between the ages of 5 and 25 in Pakistan. It works closely and reports progress to INJAZ al Arab (www.injazalarab.org), which ranks amongst the top 50 NGOs of the world.
Indus Motor Company (IMC) is playing a vital role in the development of the society with its advanced technical education programs and supporting various training initiatives for young students, generating skilled based manpower for the automobile industry along with career opportunities for diligent citizens.
http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=197179
Here's an NPR story on a mobile library in Pakistan:
On a cold, rainy morning, a van pulls up outside a rural elementary school on the outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan's capital. The fluorescent green vehicle provides a flash of color on this otherwise gray day. There's a picture of children reading books under a large apple tree, and the words "Reading is fun" are painted in English and Urdu, the national language in Pakistan.
This is the weekly visit of the Bright Star Mobile Library.
Volunteer Ameena Khan starts pulling books from shelves on either side of the van.
"One is called Faces and one's an Urdu book," she says. "We're doing Bears on Wheels, which is a nice counting book. Fourth grade is going to read their own books."
The younger children gather to hear Khan read. The girls, bright-eyed and engaged, sit cross-legged on the floor in neat rows.
In Pakistan, rarely a day goes by without news of a bombing or an attack by militants. Many young Pakistanis have grown up in the grip of religious extremism, and there's little sign that that is likely to change in the near future. But the founder of the Bright Star bookmobile is trying to reverse that trend, starting at the most basic level.
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So Malik decided to take books to the children. He says the idea of creating a mobile library came to him after seeing a similar project at the San Francisco Public Library. But Malik says he soon encountered the type of bureaucracy that can choke the life out of a project — even from Pakistan's Education Department.
He waited six months just to get a single letter from the department, granting access to schools
"There was absolutely no earthly reason to delay it," he says.
Malik called in some contacts to help get the project going. The U.N. World Food Program donated Bright Star's two vans, which were used previously as ambulances in neighboring Afghanistan. Pakistan's national library, the Asia Foundation and the San Francisco Public Library donated books. There are no religious books.
Like most nascent nonprofits, funding is fragile. The project runs on a shoestring budget, and it relies on donations and volunteers like Ameena Khan. She says she has seen a positive change in the children since they've had access to books.
"You would think, how can you fix so much [that] is wrong with education in Pakistan? We don't have a very big establishment," she says. "But we're reaching out to that many children in just a few hours, it does make a difference."
At the moment, Bright Star Mobile Library reaches 2,500 kids in Pakistan. Malik says that number is set to double in the next few months.
http://www.npr.org/2013/02/28/173161452/at-a-pakistani-mobile-library-kids-can-check-out-books-and-hope
Here's a Bloomberg report on remittances helping the poor and keeping Pak economy afloat:
Living in poverty in a mud shack in Pakistan, Mazhar Ali dropped out of school, sold the family’s two buffalo and bought a visa to work in Dubai. The money he sends home is paying for a new house.
“We’re going to build three rooms with bricks and cement, plus a courtyard and a washroom,” said his younger brother Azhar in Larkana, home town of the ruling People’s Party about 300 kilometers north of Karachi. “We will then start marrying one by one, starting with Mazhar sometime this year.”
The family’s change in fortunes reflects a rising trend of rich nations with aging workers tapping poorer ones for labor -- total remittances to developing economies will rise 7.9 percent this year, and reach $534 billion by 2015, the World Bank says. For Pakistan, the income offers a source of stability, with the country poised for its first civilian handover of government in May even amid power shortages, bombings and a Taliban insurgency.
“This is our savior for keeping Pakistan out of the oxygen tent,” Farooq Sattar, former Minister for Overseas Pakistanis said in an interview in Karachi last month before his party quit the government alliance. “It has kept us from a complete economic collapse.”
Almost 10 million Pakistanis work overseas and the sum they’ve sent home has doubled in the four years through June, to a record $13 billion.
The rising tide of funds from overseas contrasts with a struggle by President Asif Ali Zardari’s administration to raise enough revenue to fund programs that would boost domestic growth. Pakistan owes the IMF $7.5 billion by 2015 and is evaluating a possible further loan from the fund as a buffer against shocks, Saleem H. Mandviwalla said in December as Finance Minister.
Falling Rupee
The local currency has fallen on concern loan repayments will erode foreign-exchange reserves, which fell to $7.5 billion in January from $11.8 billion a year earlier, according to the central bank. The rupee traded yesterday at 98.35 per dollar, near a record low, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Pakistan was among the 15 lowest revenue-gathering nations in the world as a percentage of GDP, according to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s World Fact Book 2012. The South Asian nation recorded the highest budget deficit in two decades in the fiscal year through June as it missed its tax target.
The nation’s fiscal deficit may be 7.5 percent of gross domestic product this year, wider than the government’s target of 4.7 percent, the IMF said in January.
Among the biggest challenges for the government is the need to add almost 4,000 megawatts of power generation to end a shortage that’s causing blackouts for as long as 18 hours a day, idling factories and swelling unemployment. The government said energy shortages cut economic growth last year by as much as 4 percentage points.
Keeping Afloat
“Extreme poverty has not risen as much as it would have without remittances,” Rashid Amjad, a professor at the Lahore School of Economics said in an e-mail. “Most of the remittances are flowing into consumption, real estate, housing and the stock market, and have played a critical role in keeping Pakistan’s economy afloat.”
Pakistan will hold parliamentary elections on May 11, after the outgoing government, led by Zardari’s Pakistan Peoples Party, became the first democratically elected administration in 65 years of independence to complete its term.
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Remittances that fuel a thriving underground economy may rise further in the next few years as more Pakistanis seek employment overseas, said G.M. Arif, an economist at the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics in Islamabad.
---
Some Pakistanis also use the system to avoid paying tax..
...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-25/pakistan-s-army-of-overseas-workers-keeps-economy-from-collapse.html
Here's a Daily Times report on graduation at Rawalpindi's Arid University which specializes in promoting in farming on rain-fed land:
1580 students were awarded degrees, while 39 were decorated with medals in the 14th convocation of Pir Mehr Ali Shah Arid Agriculture University Rawalpindi (PMAS-AAUR) here on Thursday.
28 graduates got gold medals, seven silver medals, four bronze medals, while 14 students got PhD degrees. Dr. Mukhtar Ahmad, Executive Director, Higher Education Commission was the guest of the day while His Excellency Choongjoo Choi, Ambassador of South Korea was the Guest of Honor. Prof. Dr. Rai Niaz Ahmad, Vice Chancellor of PMAS-AAUR was the chief guest on the occasion.
Dr. Mukhtar Ahmad, Executive Director, Higher Education Commission, said in his address that the Universities’ faculties have great potential and HEC is trying its best to provide all opportunities to facilitate them. He said HEC would continuously support institutions of higher learning. Dr. Mukhtar congratulated the graduates and expressed the views that the students are the future of Pakistan and “can make Pakistan prosper through the art of education andtechnology. It is the dire need of the time to promote education at higher level in the country and universities are source of creation of new dimensions in the field of research &knowledge.” He emphasized that students must contribute for the development of country. He also lauded the efforts of the University administration for research based education.
Prof. Dr. Rai Niaz Ahmad, Vice Chancellor, PMAS-AAUR in his address said that University stood 7th in HEC ranking out of a 116 universities of Pakistan whereas among agriculture universities PMAS-AAUR achieved 2nd position. He further said that last year the university started two new degree programs BS Forestry and Ph.D. Computer Science, in addition to this various short-term training courses were also arranged for the farmers of the area to strengthen the ties between the university and the community at large. Dr. Ahmad also asked the gathering to create favourable environment for research, brace cooperation with national and international R & D organisations. While sharing the future plan, Vice Chancellor said the university administration is going to establish a new Faculty of Agriculture Engineering and Pak-Korea Capacity Building Centre for Agriculture & Livestock Technology with the help of Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA). The total cost of the project is US $ 3.5 million, he concluded.
His Excellency Choongjoo Choi, Ambassador of South Korea, offered assurances that the Korean Embassy would do its best to enhance the development of Pakistan. While discussing agriculture and livestock he said that these are the backbone of a country and students must play their role in the agricultural development of Pakistan.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2013\03\29\story_29-3-2013_pg11_3
Here's a Gulf News report on new tech training center in FATA's Bajaur agency in Pakistan:
Islamabad: In keeping with the directives of President His Highness Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan to provide assistance to the people of Pakistan and to support technical and vocational educational there, the UAE Project to Assist Pakistan (UPAP) has announced completion of the project to build a technical college at Bajaur in Pakistan at a total cost of $3.4 million (Dh12.4 million). The project was delivered to the local government in Bajaur following completion.
The official inauguration of the college was attended by Chief of Pakistan Army Staff General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, UAE Ambassador to Pakistan Eisa Abdullah Al Basha Al Nuaimi, Abdullah Khalifa Al Gafli, Director of the UPAP, and senior Pakistani officials.
The college is built on a 34,000 square foot area. It will provide diploma-level technical education for up to 450 students in various disciplines of engineering such as electrical, mechanical, civil and mining.
http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/uae/government/emirati-charity-project-in-pakistan-completed-1.1172873
Here's a News story on Pak students participating in international robotics competition:
RAWALPINDI: Pakistan Robotics team will leave for United States of America on April 23 to take part in First Lego League (FLL) international robotics competition to be held on April 24 in United States of America (USA).
According to details, the National Robotics Champions Team would be the first-ever Pakistani team to take part in World Festival. Pakistani team, out of 20 teams, won the regional championship title earlier in qualifying round held for the International competition.
It was also the winner team in the national robotics championship as it defeated 13 other teams.
It may be noted that out of 20,000 teams which took part in the competition worldwide, only 85 teams were declared successful as they cleared the national qualifying rounds. Now they would take part in the FLL World Festival to be held from April 24 to April 27 in Saint Louis, Missouri.
Three-member team comprising Vice Captain Muhammad Rafay Arshad, Abdullah Gulraiz and Umar Khalique along with coach Saeed Akhtar will leave on Tuesday.
The team members have expressed the hope that they will win the international title for Pakistan.
Earlier, the team comprised 7 members but now only three team members will participate in world festival along with their coach, said a statement. (PPI)
http://www.thenews.com.pk/article-97782-Pakistan-robotics-team-to-compete-in-international-event
There are many misguided Pakistani writers who parrot nonsense about Pak population growth.
Larger population is in fact a blessing for Pakistan in terms of greater human capital and higher demographic dividend.
Pakistan has the world’s sixth largest population, seventh largest diaspora and the ninth largest labor force. With rapidly declining fertility and aging populations in the industrialized world, Pakistan's growing talent pool is likely to play a much bigger role to satisfy global demand for workers in the 21st century and contribute to the well-being of Pakistan as well as other parts of the world.
http://www.riazhaq.com/2011/10/pakistans-expected-demographic-dividend.html
Dramatic declines in fertility are not necessarily good for society. In a book titled "The Empty Cradle", the author Philip Longman warns that the declining birth rates around the world will cause many social and economic problems. As a consequence of declining fertility, by 2050 the population of Europe will have fallen to what it was in 1950. Mr. Longman says this is happening all around the world: Women are having fewer children. It's happening in Brazil, it's happening in China, India and Japan. It's even happening in the Middle East. Wherever there is rapid urbanization, education for women and visions of urban affluence, birthrates are falling. Having and raising children is seen as an expense and a burden.
"So we have a "free rider" problem. You don't need to have children to provide for your old age -- but the pension systems need them." Says Longman, referring to the coming Social Security crunch as the number of retired people rises faster than the number of workers.
http://www.riazhaq.com/2009/09/south-asian-slums-offer-hope.html
Here are a few excerpts of a UN report on population released today:
World population projected to reach 9.6 billion by 2050 with most
growth in developing regions, especially Africa – says UN
India expected to become world’s largest country, passing China around 2028,
while Nigeria could surpass the United States by 2050
New York, 13 June—The current world population of 7.2 billion is projected to
increase by almost one billion people within the next twelve years, reaching 8.1
billion in 2025 and 9.6 billion in 2050, according to a new United Nations report,
World Population Prospects: The 2012 Revision, launched today.
Most of the population growth will occur in developing regions, which are projected
to increase from 5.9 billion in 2013 to 8.2 billion in 2050...
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At the country level, much of the overall increase between now and 2050 is projected
to take place in high-fertility countries, mainly in Africa, as well as countries with
large populations such as India, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines and the United
States.
-----
For example,
the population of India is expected to surpass that of China around 2028, when both
countries will have populations of around 1.45 billion. Thereafter, India’s population
will continue to grow for several decades to around 1.6 billion and then decline
slowly to 1.5 billion in 2100. The population of China, on the other hand, is expected
to start decreasing after 2030, possibly reaching 1.1 billion in 2100.
Nigeria’s population is expected to surpass that of the United States before the middle
of the century. By the end of the century, Nigeria could start to rival China as the
second most populous country in the world. By 2100 there could be several other
countries with populations over 200 million, namely Indonesia, the United Republic
of Tanzania, Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Uganda and
Niger.
---
...Europe’s population projected to decline by
14 per cent. Fertility in almost all European countries is now below the level required
for full replacement of the population in the long run (around 2.1 children per woman
on average). Fertility for Europe, as a whole, is projected to increase from 1.5 children
per woman in 2005-2010 to 1.8 in 2045-2050, and to 1.9 by 2095-2100. Despite this
increase, childbearing in low-fertility countries is expected to remain below the
replacement level, leading to a likely contraction of total population size.
Longer lives around the world
Life expectancy is projected to increase in developed and developing countries in
future years, according to the report. ----
---------
At the global level, it is projected to reach 76 years in 2045-2050 and 82 years in
2095-2100. By the end of the century, people in developed countries could live on
average around 89 years, compared to about 81 years in developing regions.
--------
In terms of annual averages, the major net receivers of international migrants during 2010-2050 are
projected to be the United States of America (1,000,000 annually), Canada (205,000), the United
Kingdom (172,500), Australia (150,000), Italy (131,250), the Russian Federation (127,500), France
(106,250) and Spain (102,500). The major countries of net emigration are projected to be
Bangladesh (-331,000 annually), China (-300,000), India (-284,000), Mexico (-210,000), Pakistan
(-170,000), Indonesia (-140,000) and the Philippines (-92,500). Economic and demographic
asymmetries across countries that may persist are likely to remain powerful generators of
international migration within the medium-term future.
...
http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Documentation/pdf/WPP2012_Press_Release.pdf
http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Documentation/pdf/WPP2012_%20KEY%20FINDINGS.pdf
Here's an Express Tribune story on US aid for skills development in Pakistan:
ISLAMABAD: The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has dedicated $33.9 million to continue the Training for Pakistan Project, which is being implemented by World Learning.
The project is designed to offer education opportunities to more than 6,000 Pakistani professionals over the next four years, says a statement issued by USAID here today.
The Project will support Pakistan’s development priorities in the key sectors of energy, economic growth, agriculture, health, and education by making these capacity building opportunities available locally, regionally, or internationally for Pakistani professionals and decision-makers.
This project stems out of US’s policy to focus on people-to-people engagement with Pakistan specially highlighted in the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act.
The USAID Training for Pakistan Project will provide a full range of training services including needs assessments, training program design and implementation, participant recruitment and selection, technical assistance, and monitoring and evaluation.
“This partnership with USAID will allow World Learning to empower Pakistani individuals and organisations to become more engaged stakeholders in their country’s development,” World Learning President and CEO, Donald Steinberg said.
“The programme will help equip Pakistan’s future leaders with the skills they need to advance peace, democracy and development,” he added.
The project will also facilitate the formation of an USAID alumni association of training participants for a discourse on country’s development issues and experience sharing.
After completing training programmes, the alumni will also have an opportunity to apply for small grants to fund development projects inspired by their training courses. The project will extend follow-on post-training support.
http://tribune.com.pk/story/627205/honing-skills-usaid-to-spend-34m-on-training-for-pakistan-project/
Here's a NY Times Op Ed by Bina Shah on Karachi Literature Festival:
KARACHI, Pakistan — On the banks of the luminous China Creek, overlooking old mangrove swamps and the shipping cranes at the port, more than 50,000 people flocked to this year’s Karachi Literature Festival, held annually in February when the flowers bloom, the weather is temperate and the city feels alive with possibility.
The festival, featuring panel discussions, book promotions, debates, music and theatrical performances, has established itself as a safe space to discuss not just literature and the arts but also politics, history and society at a time when plurality of opinion is not always welcome in Pakistan.
A new Sindh Festival, also held in February, offered another approach to Pakistan’s rich cultural heritage. This extravaganza was a brainchild of the Pakistan Peoples Party’s patron-in-chief Bilawal Bhutto Zardari; it included a concert, art show, film festival, fashion show and horse-and-cattle show. Its aim was to showcase Pakistan’s “softer image,” in the distinctly political hope that by stimulating cultural pride, Pakistanis, especially the young, could be persuaded to reject militancy and religious extremism.
Two wars are being fought in Pakistan: a military one against the violence of religious extremists, and a psychological and emotional one to resist a more insidious change in society itself — the growth of intolerance, a drift toward the right and a decline in room for cultural, religious, ethnic or social diversity. This shrinkage of public space, or Talibanization, as the social scientist Ayesha Siddiqa puts it, is not violence itself, but creates support for “ideas which eventually feed violence.”
Talibanization has spread virally, thanks to right-wing talk shows, newspaper columns and social media. It silences debate about the role of religion, branding anyone who advocates secular democracy an atheist. For example, it whipped up a campaign against the autobiography of Malala Yousafzai, the teenage campaigner for education for girls who was severely wounded in an assassination attempt; earlier this year, the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa provincial government banned the book from private school curriculums. The proponents of Talibanization denigrate women’s rights activists as “NGO workers in tight jeans” and harass young men and women at universities who try to spend time together.
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Some 60,000 schoolchildren attended the Karachi Children’s Literature Festival last month. They listened to storytellers, participated in interactive art and music sessions, and attended debuts of graphic novels that captured the lives of “azeem” (great) Pakistanis: Begum Raa’na Liaqat Ali Khan, who championed women’s rights; Faiz Ahmed Faiz, a poet and activist; Hakeem Said, a scholar and philanthropist assassinated in 1998.
The battle for Pakistanis’ hearts and minds will be as tough as the one for sovereignty and territory. But the message will spread best when it’s free from political manipulation or overt assertions of national or civic pride. The children at the festival weren’t asked to choose between extremism and peace; they were left to enjoy themselves, to clap and cheer, to sing and dance. Experiences like these, organic and unforced, will win the cultural wars in Pakistan — if they are encouraged to flourish on the strength of unifying, not divisive, narratives and values that we all share.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/19/opinion/shah-pakistans-culture-wars.html
Great Article and I really enjoy by the way you outflow the info.
New Chief Executive Officer of the British Council Ciar?n Devane has visited Higher Education Commission (HEC), here to participate in the orientation event "The UK and Pakistan: Increasing Investment in Research for Higher Education."
The programme aimed to provide an opportunity to beneficiaries of the HEC-British Council collaborative education and research initiatives to meet the new CEO and benefit from his international experience and proficiency.
Prof. Dr. Mukhtar Ahmed, Chairman HEC, Peter Upton, Country Director, British Council Pakistan and Dr. Mansoor Akbar Kundi, Acting Executive Director were also present, besides senior and junior level researchers from Pakistan's higher education sector.
British Council has been working with HEC Pakistan since 2004 with the launch of joint Higher Education Links programme and later on with Phase II of the same programme in 2006.
The programme has been funded by the HEC and managed by the British Council in Pakistan. To date, the British Council has built 50 research and capacity-building links between higher education institutions of Pakistani and UK.
So far, over 160 partnerships under various schemes have been funded in Pakistani universities. Some of the programmes on which HEC and British Council have cooperated include Research Partnerships, Leadership, Knowledge Exchange, Capacity Building of Senior Management of Higher Education Sector in Strategic Management, Transnational Education, Quality Assurance for Pakistani HEIs, Scholarships, Policy Dialogues, Talented Research Exchange, Split-site PhDs, and Transforming English Language Skills for Higher Education.
Speaking at the occasion, Devane said,"I am delighted to meet the academic and researcher community of Pakistan. I am grateful to HEC for inviting me to speak and to meet so many partners doing such good work together to strengthen research and higher education in Pakistan.
Its really impressive to see the great work presented by senior researchers which shows how you are bringing together some most important sectors of the society, including academics, industry, students, media, and civil society."
He said that the universities can play a very important role in stimulating and contributing to innovation and social and economic growth of any country.
This role is in addition to core missions of teaching and research, complimenting and enhancing these. "It is very promising to see that the Government of Pakistan has expanding access to higher education and has worked substantially at policy level to improve scientific research activities in Pakistan.
It is not simply about commercialization of science through creation of spin offs, licenses etc. It is so encouraging to see how British Council Pakistan and HEC have worked together to make the Pakistani universities as 21st century universities."
http://www.brecorder.com/pakistan/general-news/220437-hec-british-council-to-increase-investment-in-research-for-higher-education.html
How plunging birth rates spell disaster for economic growth? #China #Europe #US http://on.wsj.com/1MqBH5Z via @WSJ
By RUCHIR SHARMA
Sept. 23, 2015 6:27 p.m. ET
News reports suggest that the world is overflowing with people. Politicians in the U.S. and Europe talk about migrants—whether from Latin America or the Middle East—as a threat: They’ll steal jobs, depress wages and upend local ways of life. The backlash plays on deep-seated fears about a “population bomb.” The latest United Nations forecasts suggest that the global population will rise to 9.7 billion over the next 35 years, an increase of 2.4 billion. Where will they live, and what will they eat?
This narrative is sorely out of date. For much of the post-World War II era the world’s population grew at an average annual rate of almost 2%. But growth started to plummet in 1990 and is now running at about 1%—the lowest level in the postwar era—according to U.N. data.
This collapse is seriously undermining potential economic growth—roughly calculated as the rate of growth in the working-age population added to the rate of growth in productivity, or output per worker—and goes a long way toward explaining the sluggish recovery from the crisis of 2008.
Global GDP growth has been trending lower this decade and now stands at just under 2.5% a year, a full percentage point below its long-term precrisis average of 3.5%. It is no coincidence that since 2005 the growth in the working-age population, ages 15 to 64, has slowed from about 1.8% to 1%.
Thanks to rising prosperity and increased urbanization, women around the world are having fewer children. Since 1960 the average number of births per woman has fallen to 2.5 from nearly 5. Yet the global fertility rate continues to slip toward 2.1—the figure required to keep the population from shrinking.
In 83 countries, which contain almost half the world’s population, the typical woman has fewer than two children, including the U.S., China, Russia, Brazil, South Korea and every major country in Europe.
Falling fertility rates typically affect the economy after a lag of 15 years, as babies grow into working-age adults. But oddly, anti-immigrant sentiment has erupted precisely as the economic fallout of the birthrate implosion has become clearly visible. This year, for the first time in the postwar era, China’s working-age population is expected to decline—and it is likely to continue falling in coming years. The emerging world is going to have many fewer people to export than the anti-immigrant populists in the developed world imagine.
The negative economic effect of falling birthrates is magnified by another trend: Since 1960 the average lifespan world-wide has climbed to 69 from 50. The overall global population is still rising, slowly, but a greater share of it is people over 50. As previous generations retire they will impose a larger burden, in health care and pensions, on working-age sons and daughters.
The aging squeeze will be felt much more sharply in the emerging world where life expectancy has risen, and fertility rates have fallen, faster. In India the fertility rate has plunged from more than 6 in 1960 to 2.5. Though India is still on track to become the world’s most populous country in 2022, the annual growth in its working-age population will fall from an average of 2.2% last decade to 1.1% next decade.
Many countries see the threat posed by an imbalance between workers and retirees. Some have offered women “baby bonuses” to have more children, but with spotty results so far. Others have focused on boosting the size of the active labor force by bringing mothers or elderly people back to work. Most European countries are raising their “retirement age”—a 20th-century concept—to prevent energetic 50-somethings from quitting work.
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Only the countries that adapt early to the population implosion will thrive in the baby-bust era. Meanwhile, the controversies over immigrants “stealing jobs” are likely to fade in the coming years, and give way to a new war for talent.
Here (in Stuttgart, Germany), migration has long been an engine of growth, and integration the bedrock of civic pride. The problems Stuttgart faces are ones that prosperous cities around the globe now share, American ones included: a dearth of affordable housing and the kind of apartments that suit the evolving demographics of the people who occupy them.
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President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey on Monday in Brussels, where he said that the key to resolving the migration crisis was for Europe to do more to contain the war in Syria.Turkish Leader Says E.U. Should Do More About SyriaOCT. 5, 2015
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“Boomtowns are integration cities,” said Gari Pavkovic, the son of a Croatian guest worker who arrived here decades ago. Mr. Pavkovic now manages immigration for the city government.
He ticked off numbers. Forty percent of Stuttgart’s 600,000 residents (or 60 percent of people under the age of 18) come from abroad, twice the national average. After World War II, foreign laborers rebuilt local industry: first Italians, then Greeks, Spaniards, Yugoslavians, Turks. And they’re still coming. Some 20,000 newcomers arrive annually, not counting the current wave of Syrians and others. Immigrants account for one of every three start-ups.
The other day, Levent Gunes, who works for the city planning office, provided a tour of a disused tank engine factory, an industrial relic being converted into an arts complex. The man who bought it was born in Turkey and owns a bakery across the street, Mr. Gunes said, next to a big Turkish supermarket and mosque.
“The percentage of entrepreneurs in Stuttgart with migrant backgrounds is the highest in Germany,” Mr. Gunes, who teaches at Stuttgart University and is the son of Turkish migrants himself, elaborated over börek and yogurt at the bakery.
“We’re talking I.T. people, engineers, architects, artists,” he said. “You only see the greengrocer and the butcher at street level, not all the doctors and lawyers upstairs.”
Stuttgart’s big move was to avoid pushing migrants into poor, isolated suburbs as in Rome or Paris, he emphasized.
“The layout of the city has reinforced integration,” he said.
One can see what he means by what’s not here. Stuttgart doesn’t have ethnic enclaves. After World War II, Mercedes and Bosch erected hostels for guest workers. But by the 1970s, when Manfred Rommel became mayor, political and business leaders adopted a different tack, integrating migrants into existing communities in the city center. Stuttgart embraced a melting pot urbanism.
Wilfried Porth, a member of the Daimler board and director of the company’s labor relations, recalls Stuttgart as a dour place years ago.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/07/world/europe/stuttgart-embraces-migrants-and-the-challenge-of-housing-them.html
Experts have underlined the importance of promoting creative and innovative entrepreneurship for harnessing the potential of over 65% young population of the country with an aim to make them job creators rather than job-seekers.
They expressed these views at the two-day ‘Annual Entrepreneurship Conference: Learn, Create and Lead’, organised by the Entrepreneurship Development Institute at the Convention Centre of Pakistan.
“Pakistan has more than 65% of youth population that is below 25 years of age; there is an urgent need for innovative use of modern technology and resources to harness this potential for constructive purposes,” said Higher Education Commission Chairman Dr Mukhtar Ahmed.
He said there were 100 public-sector and 73 private-sector universities in the country and some of them have already introduced entrepreneurship courses in their curricula, but there is still a need for more in many other universities.
“HEC is planning to establish centres for entrepreneurship in universities to facilitate the youth; we also encourage universities to pursue applied research for innovative entrepreneurship,” Ahmed said and underlined the need for establishing maximum technology parks in universities for providing one-window opportunity to the youth to develop their entrepreneurship skills at the academic level.
“We have already established one such park in the National University of Science and Technology with the support of China.” National Commission for Human Development Director General Orya Maqbool Jan said, “Entrepreneurship is not a concept of the modern world; it was founded by Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) centuries ago, who was the greatest innovative entrepreneur.”
He introduced justice, principle and ethics-based entrepreneurship, while the modern corporate culture compromises on these three points, Jan said.
Ace Consultant CEO Faez H Syel suggested that policy-makers and authorities should make traditional sectors like plumbing, farming, automobile and small mechanical works the focus of modern entrepreneurship training so that a large chunk of the population could benefit from it.
Neya Tel CEO Siraj Tahir said, “You cannot make a business a success without taking initiative. There is no need for higher education to be a good and creative entrepreneur or to have huge monetary resources. You only need ideas and commitment to accomplish them.”
http://tribune.com.pk/story/1000377/learn-create-lead-experts-lay-stress-on-innovative-entrepreneurship/
Ever since the global financial crisis, economists have groped for reasons to explain why growth in the U.S. and abroad has repeatedly disappointed, citing everything from fiscal austerity to the euro meltdown. They are now coming to realize that one of the stiffest headwinds is also one of the hardest to overcome: demographics.
Next year, the world’s advanced economies will reach a critical milestone. For the first time since 1950, their combined working-age population will decline, according to United Nations projections, and by 2050 it will shrink 5%. The ranks of workers will also fall in key emerging markets, such as China and Russia. At the same time the share of these countries’ population over 65 will skyrocket.
Previous generations fretted about the world having too many people. Today’s problem is too few.
This reflects two long-established trends: lengthening lifespans and declining fertility. Yet many of the economic consequences are only now apparent. Simply put, companies are running out of workers, customers or both. In either case, economic growth suffers. As a population ages, what people buy also changes, shifting more demand toward services such as health care and away from durable goods such as cars.
Demographic forces are assumed to be slow-moving and predictable. By historical standards, though, these aren’t, says Amlan Roy, a demographics expert at Credit Suisse. They are “dramatic and unprecedented,” he says, noting it took 80 years for the U.S. median age to rise seven years, to 30, by 1980, and just 34 more to climb another eight, to 38.
There is no simple answer for how business and government should cope with these changes, since each country is aging at different rates, for different reasons and with different degrees of preparedness.
Automation can boost workers’ productivity and support the burgeoning ranks of the elderly. Assumptions about aging also need to change. The typical 65-year-old today is roughly as healthy as a 58-year-old was four decades ago and can thus work longer.
Older, richer countries can boost their immigrant intake from low-income economies primarily in Africa and Asia, which will make up a growing share of the world’s working-age population—if they can overcome political opposition.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-demographics-rule-the-global-economy-1448203724
In #Pakistan, cultivating young #entrepreneurs by specialized vocational training | Pakistan | UNICEF https://shar.es/16POwy via @sharethis
A vocational training programme supported by Barclays and UNICEF gives a young motorcycle mechanic in Pakistan just the start he needed.
OKARA, Punjab Province, Pakistan, January 2015 – “I have my own motorcycle repair shop and am earning enough for my family to have a decent life,” says Mohammad Tanvir, 19. “Circumstances forced me to give up education after middle school. I started working in a motorcycle repair shop just to learn some skills. I did not get paid for my work since I was a novice and the owner of the shop was teaching me.”
Poverty, along with limited access to both quality education and employment opportunities, is often a major factor hindering young men and women from fulfilling their potential. Through learning demand-driven skills and getting guidance on employment or entrepreneurship opportunities, young people can have the opportunity to brighten their futures. This is precisely the objective of Building Young Futures, a project implemented by UNICEF Pakistan, with funds from Barclays UK.
While working in the shop, Mohammad heard about a course on motorbike mechanics for young people, offered at the Vocational Training Institute (VTI) in Okara. “I thought, Why not do it the proper way and be a certified motorbike mechanic from a reputable organization? I joined the course and am enjoying the benefits now.”
After completing a 14-month training course at the VTI Okara in 2013, Mohammad had enough confidence as a mechanic to start his own business, rather than work for someone else. On the basis of his certificate from the Institute and pledging the land of his modest family home, he secured a bank loan of PKR 80,000 (about US$760).
Hard work and confidence
With capital in hand, Mohammad rented a shop in one of the bazars in Okara and bought all the tools he needed. His hard work and confidence paid dividends, and in a little over 18 months, he managed to establish his shop as a reliable and professional repair point for all types of motorbikes.
“I earn between 20,000 and 25,000 rupees [$190 to $240] per month from my shop,” Mohammad says. “Sometimes I buy a motorcycle that needs major repairs and sell it at a good price after overhauling it. This helps me make additional money, which I invest in purchasing another bike or covering an unexpected family expense.”
In 2012 in selected districts of Punjab province, UNICEF initiated the second phase of the Building Young Futures project. Its goal is to improve income-generating opportunities for socially excluded and vulnerable adolescents by enabling them to access training in life skills, financial literacy and enterprise management. To support the implementation of the project, UNICEF partnered with the Punjab Vocational Training Council (PVTC) and the Department of Youth Affairs, Sports, Archaeology and Tourism.
At the VTI Okara, Mohammad was trained by Zahid Iqbal. For many years, Zahid worked at the Atlas Honda Motorcycle factory in Lahore, but with a passion for teaching, he switched jobs and joined VTI Okara.
“I always wanted to teach and transfer my knowledge about motorbikes to the younger generation,” Zahid says. “It gives me a great deal of satisfaction to help young people progress in life. Some of them become entrepreneurs; some move abroad. But whenever they return, they come to see me and pay a lot of respect. It is a wonderful feeling to see my students do well in life.”
Prosperity and encouragement
Around 850 students are enrolled in the VTI Okara at one time, receiving vocational training in two shifts. Nearly 40 per cent are girls and young women, who often take up embroidery, cutting and stitching, dress-making or beautician courses.
#India's population explosion will make or break its economy. Not enough jobs and huge skills gap #BJP http://cnnmon.ie/1V1p0FL via @CNNMoney
unless India makes big improvements in how it educates and trains students, this demographic boom could instead saddle the country with another generation of unskilled workers destined to languish in low-paying jobs.
The need to train workers up -- and quickly -- is paramount. Currently only 2% of India's workers have received formal skills training, according to Ernst & Young. That compares with 68% in the U.K., 75% in Germany and 96% in South Korea.
It's a problem spread across industries. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors estimates that in 2010, India needed nearly 4 million civil engineers, but only 509,000 professionals had the right skills for the jobs. By 2020, India will have only 778,000 civil engineers for 4.6 million slots.
There is a similar gap among architects. India will have only 17% of the 427,000 professionals it needs in 2020.
The problem? The RICS found that India's education and professional development system has not kept pace with economic growth and is in "dire need for reform."
In industry after industry, the same story is repeated. A recent survey by Aspiring Minds, which tracks workforce preparedness, found that more than 80% of India's engineering graduates in 2015 were "unemployable."
"The quality of training offered in most colleges is not at par with the high demands generated by tech industries," said Preet Rustagi, a labor economist at the Institute for Human Development. "There is no regulatory body that keep checks on the quality of education."
Critics say India's universities are too focused on rote memorization, leaving students without the critical thinking skills required to solve problems. Teachers are paid low salaries, leading to poor quality of instruction. When students are denied entry to prestigious state schools, they often turn to less rigorous private colleges.
"When IT industries boomed in India a few years ago, many below-the-mark private colleges emerged to cater to their needs," said Alakh N. Sharma, director at the Institute for Human Development.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is racing to provide workers with training. His government is recruiting skills instructors, and turning old schools into learning centers. Programs strewn across various government agencies are being consolidated. Companies in the private sector are pitching in to help provide training.
The most pressing need, however, might be in primary education. Pupils in India are expected to perform two-digit subtraction by the age of seven, but only 50% are able to correctly count up to 100. Only 30% of the same students are able to read a text designed for five-year-olds, according to education foundation Pathram.
If the country's unique demographics are to pay dividends, improvement is a lesson to be learned quickly.
#Microsoft launches http://Rozgar.Work , #Employability & #Entrepreneurship Platform for #Pakistan. #skillsgap
http://www.winbeta.org/news/microsoft-launches-rozgar-work-employability-entrepreneurship-platform-pakistan
Microsoft has launched the first of its kind Employability and Entrepreneurship Platform, Rozgar.Work, in Pakistan, in collaboration with World Vision-Pakistan (via ProPakistani). The platform offers job-seekers with end-to-end career guidance, up skilling, job-matching and mentorship to address the ever growing issue of unemployment and underemployment. The new platform is powered by Microsoft Windows Azure Cloud, SQL, and SharePoint 2013.
The event was attended by Federal Minister for Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal as the chief guest, as well as Microsoft and World Vision executives.
Microsoft Pakistan’s General Manager Nadeem Malik said,
At Microsoft we believe in sharing our success with the communities, wherever we operate. Rozgar.Work is a robust platform which can enable revolutionary enrichments in the society, by empowering the youth, to find effective solutions for the various challenges faced by the society.
Entrepreneurship and skill-development are the solution to many of Pakistan’s economic issues. Microsoft is committed to create fresh opportunities for the youth, to play a key role in nation-building. We appreciate the valuable support from WVI-Pakistan to make this program successful.
Program Development Manager at WVI -Pakistan Rizwan ul Haq said,
We are really excited to be a part of this pioneering initiative with Microsoft. World Vision is an international humanitarian organization that works for poverty alleviation,
Social Development, Disaster-Relief, Education, Healthcare and Justice for the deprived segments. We would like to thank the leading enterprises like TIE, PASHA, that have joined today’s event to show their support for this initiative.
Career counselling is a big task, and if you don’t do your proper research, you may end up in a field which is not fit for you in the long run. With Rozgar.Work, job seekers can get in touch with people who are well informed about the careers and can help new graduates make the right choice. Additionally, the platform also boasts an Online & Mobile Job-Matching & Search-functionality allowing job seekers to search for the best possible job opportunities available.
The platform also has online courses to learn from, as well as online and offline training options for different skills, and to earn a diploma.
#Pakistan’s Enormous Long-Term #Growth Potential. Young #demographics, expanding #economy, #CPEC http://www.barrons.com/articles/pakistans-enormous-long-term-growth-potential-1461386993 … via @barronsonline
To Western eyes, building a business in Pakistan seems nearly impossible with the country’s history of political turmoil and bouts of deadly terrorism committed by Islamic extremists.
But there is a long-term growth story in the frontier market, where the economy is expanding at a roughly 4.5% annual pace. As part of a $6.6 billion loan package, the International Monetary Fund got the country to raise taxes and cut subsidies—notably for electric power. But the IMF program expires this year, a key risk. Still, the IMF noted in a recent review that Pakistan has shored up foreign reserves thanks to low oil prices, and it praised the creation of an independent monetary-policy committee. It also acknowledged that restructuring or privatizing ailing public enterprises has been disappointingly slow.
The key to long-term growth is Pakistan’s population. At roughly 190 million, it is the sixth largest in the world. Importantly, more than half of Pakistan’s citizens are under age 25, eager for education and interested in success, says Najeeb Ghauri, CEO and founder of NetSol Technologies (ticker: NTWK), a California software company with a Pakistani campus.
“Contrary to the negative headlines,” says T. Rowe Price frontier markets portfolio manager Oliver Bell, “Pakistan has been slowly progressing on a much more stable path; we saw successful elections and the peaceful handover of power in 2013, and the new government has shown a commitment to adhere to the IMF program.” Bell adds that Pakistan’s aggressive privatization of companies “is creating liquidity and buying opportunities” in its stock market.
ONE OF THE BEST WAYS for retail investors to access this growth—a decidedly long-term bet—is the Global X MSCI Pakistan exchange-traded fund (PAK). The year-old ETF’s total return is negative 11% since inception. But that’s better than the iShares MSCI Frontier Market ETF (FM) and the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (EEM), which each fell 18%.
Financials account for a third of the Pakistan ETF, and Bell likes banks. A favorite is Pakistan’s largest lender, Habib Bank (HBL.Pakistan), which the government took public last year. A high percentage of Pakistan’s population don’t use banks, and Bell expects expanded loan growth. China’s investment in Pakistan’s infrastructure, especially power plants, should boost long-term growth. Earnings on Friday beat analysts’ expectations. Bell thinks the bank’s return on equity can expand to 25% in 2018 from 17% in 2013. But he doesn’t think the stock is expensive, at 1.4 times book value, given its growth and 8% yield.
Of note: Habib Bank’s New York branch got an enforcement order from U.S. authorities in December, after they found repeated “significant breakdowns” in anti-money-laundering efforts.
Multinationals are taking notice of Pakistan’s strides. Coca-Cola (KO) is expanding its Pakistan operations, which boasted double-digit growth in the latest quarter, says Curt Ferguson, president of Coke’s Middle East and North Africa business. He told Barron’s last week, “Pakistan is growing again. We just made a huge investment near the India-Pakistan border, in Mutan, which has a gorgeous new airport. Pakistan would really surprise people.”
Perhaps, but not everyone wants the risk. Paul Christopher, global strategist at Wells Fargo, told us that Pakistan is among the frontier markets whose volatility makes it “not investible.”
#Pakistan, #China discuss increased collaboration in #vocational #training & #education #CPEC
http://tribune.com.pk/story/1126642/meeting-pakistan-china-discuss-collaboration-vocational-education/
Pakistan and China have agreed to increase collaboration in the field of vocational education and teacher training programmes.
The agreement came during a meeting between a delegation from China’s Tianjin University of Technology and Education (TUTE) and National Vocational and Technical Training Commission (NAVTTC) Executive Director Zulfiqar Ahmad Cheema here on Monday.
Cheema briefed the delegation about the working of NAVTTC and its recent initiatives such as establishment of job placement centres for its graduates.
He said the under-construction China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) would open new vistas of prosperity and development and would create employment opportunities in Pakistan.
Cheema said the two countries should enhance their collaboration to reboot the TVET system in Pakistan.
THE INTERNATIONAL BACCALAUREATE, A VIABLE OPTION FOR PAKISTANI STUDENTS.
Most Pakistani parents choose schools for their children with an eye to ensuring that they are competitive when it comes to applying for admission to U.S. or U.K. colleges. Many today are counting on the Swiss-based International Baccalaureate education program as the more holistic, and competitive, alternative to the British General Certificate of Education’s Ordinary and Advanced level pre-college qualifications.
Founded in 1968, the IB aims to develop the “intellectual, personal, emotional and social skills needed to live, learn and work in a rapidly globalizing world.” There are 4,527 schools around the world—including 15 in Pakistan, where the program was introduced in 1996—that offer 5,865 IB programs, from primary school onward, to almost a million students in 147 countries.
Karachi’s International School was the first private school to offer the IB in Pakistan, and it took another 10 years for other schools to being adopting the program. The number of Pakistani schools that offer the IB is still small compared to those in India, where the IB took off in 1976 and is offered by 120 schools.
Awareness has been an obstacle. “We did not even have a relationship with the Ministry of Education until three years ago,” says Faizol Musa, regional development manager of the IB Board. Over the last three years, IB educators have organized workshops and seminars in Pakistan to create awareness of the program and its admissions-time advantages. But despite that, and its acceptance by the world’s top colleges and universities, many Pakistani universities still do not recognize the IB for admissions.
The schools which offer the program recognize its full value. “Parents have a habit of judging their children’s studies with the amount of homework they get,” says Misbah Rani of Lahore’s Sanjan Nagar Public Education Trust. “Our program encourages students to really learn and absorb the information rather than just memorize a few lines.”
Offering the IB program requires certification and teacher training, requirements that few schools in Pakistan’s stressed and underserved education market are equipped to handle. Aitchison College recently withdrew its application for certification, while the Lahore Grammar School’s application is pending with the IB Board. (School-certification applications can take up to two years to get accepted.)
Costs also account for why Pakistan’s embrace of the IB has been slow in coming. Applications are expensive (the school-certification application carries a one-time fee of $4,383, and the IB Board charges the certified school between $7,192 and $9,846 on an annual basis.) To keep current with the prescribed standards, these certified schools are also required to undergo mandatory training programs for teachers twice a year. It also costs parents more: Rs. 40,000 per month, almost twice the price of the British GCE certification system. However, Sanjan Nagar, a school for underprivileged children with an enrollment of some 700, is managing to offer the IB for Rs. 1,500 per month.
“We hope that public schools will also be able to be part of the program as well,” says Musa. “Pakistan is one of the fastest growing regions and markets for IB. We are certain that in 10 years it will become one of the key countries for IB worldwide.”
http://newsweekpakistan.com/education-in-a-rapidly-globalizing-world/
ISLAMABAD: Cambridge International Examinations (CIE) announced O’ and A’ Level results on Thursday.
Schools in Pakistan made over 270,000 entries for Cambridge qualifications this year, an increase of seven per cent over last year. The names of high achievers across the world will be announced in January after detailed analysis of the results.
Students heave a sigh of relief as CIE announces results
“More students than ever before collected their CIE results today, as entries for Cambridge qualifications continue to grow in Pakistan and around the world,” said CIE Country Director Uzma Yousuf Zaka.
Entries for O’ Level increased by five per cent from 154,137 in 2014-15 to 162,208 in 2015-16 and entries for A’ Level increased by eight percent from 84,365 to 91,094, the CIE Pakistan office told The Express Tribune.
The popularity of Cambridge IGCSE is also growing in Pakistan, with entries increasing by 16 per cent this year, going up from 10,364 in 2014-15 to 12,019 this year.
Globally there has been 10 percent growth in entries across all Cambridge qualifications this year, including 11 per cent growth in entries for Cambridge International A Levels and 8 per cent for Cambridge IGCSE.
Schools in Islamabad offering O’ and A’ levels programmes said they were satisfied with the result.
KGS tops list of outstanding Cambridge learners
We had the best results this year, said Fahim Khan, Principal of Headstart, Senior Branch, F-8/4. About 330 students had appeared in the exam, and of them, over 100 were high achievers with more than three As. The students mostly secured As and A* in science subjects, economics and math, he said.
We have regular, foreign qualified and committed teaching staff, he said, and we try to create a positive relationship between students and teachers besides striking a balance between cocurricular and academic activities.
Natalia Ahsan, the best academic student who secured five straight As in A Level in the school said the best part was that the teachers were always available to them and she did not have to do extra efforts in the exams or go to tuition centers.
Roots IVY International Schools CEO Khadija Mushtaq said her students earned over 1,200 As in IGCSE, O’ Levels, and A’ Levels.
KGS, Lyceum win big at Harvard Model United Nations 2016
The most notable among the O Level/IGCSE high achiever was Rida Shahid of DHA campus with 5 A* and 5 As, which is a phenomenal achievement, she said.
Saifur Rehman and Babar Mushtaq from Roots IVY Chaklala Scheme III excelled by attaining 9 A*s in IGCSE. other notable IGCSE high achievers with 9 As include Babar Mustafa, Haiqa Kamran, Tallina Talle, Saifur Rehman, Umer Sadiq, Humna Rehman, Muhammad Hassan Malik, and Ali Mustafa Khatai.
Tallina Talle attributed her success to her teachers and parents who made her work hard and opined that “if you work hard, you don’t need any tuition academies”.
The A’ level results included Muhammad Afaaq, Muhammad Haisam Azhar and Arham Hameed from different campuses achieves 6 straight As.
Islamabad College of Arts and Sciences (ICAS) Principal Nusrat Tahir also said praised her students, noting that they achieved 46 A*s, 100 As, and 121 Bs in O’ Levels, and 5 A*s, 60 As, and 55 Bs in A-Levels.
http://tribune.com.pk/story/1160600/cambridge-results-record-setting-year-pakistanis/
Excerpts of ADB Asia Economic Integration Report (AEIR) 2016 report:
In Asia and the Pacific, many economies could expand
their role as the source or host economy for migrant
workers. Labor supply is still growing in developing
economies—such as Cambodia, Indonesia, the Lao
People’s Democratic Republic, Mongolia, Myanmar, India,
Pakistan, and the Philippines—and they could export
labor across the region. In contrast, developed but aging
economies such as Hong Kong, China; the Republic of
Korea; Japan; and Singapore are unable to meet labor
demand with their dwindling workforce. Hence, these
economies would benefit from immigrant labor. Kang
and Magoncia (2016) further discuss the potential for
migration to reallocate labor from surplus to deficit
economies and offer a glimpse of how the demographic
shift will frame Asia’s future population structure,
particularly the future working age population. Among the
issues explored is the magnitude of labor force surpluses
and deficits within different economies in Asia
------
World populations are aging—with the speed and extent of the
demographic shift varying across developed and developing
economies. Asia and the Pacific is at the heart of this demographic
shift with the world’s largest share of people aged 60 or over—
estimated to reach 62% by 2050. With the high and growing
share of economically inactive retirees and declining fertility
rates, labor supply will suffer, ultimately undermining the region’s
economic output.
How will the demographic shift frame Asia’s future population
structure, particularly working-age population? Using population
accounting methodology, Kang and Magoncia (2016) show how
effective certain policies could address the challenges associated
with the demographic change of population aging. One of the
policies explored is the increase in regional migration to augment
labor force deficits in aging economies in the region.
https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/214136/aeir-2016.pdf
Pakistan Education Statistics 2015-16.pdf
http://library.aepam.edu.pk/Books/Pakistan%20Education%20Statistics%202015-16.pdf
In Pakistan, 1,418 degree colleges are
providing their services in education
system. Out of these 1,259 (89%) are in
public sector, whereas 159 (11%) are in
private sector.
The total enrolment at degree college
stage i.e. in grades 13 and 14, is 0.937
million. Out of these students at this
stage of education, 0.808 million (86%)
are completing their degrees from public
sector, whereas, rest of the 0.128 million
(14%) students are in private sector.
There are only 11% degree colleges are
running under private sector of
education, the reason is that these
colleges tend to be more expensive then
public colleges.
----------
There are total 163 universities
providing their services in both public
and private sector of education. Out of
these universities 91 (56%) are working
under umbrella of public sector,
whereas 72 (44%) are working under the
supervision of private sector as
reflected.
The total enrolment in the universities,
i.e., at post graduate stage, is 1.355
million. Out of this enrolment 1.141
million (84%) students are enrolled in
public universities, whereas, 0.214
million (16%) students are studying in
private universities. Despite the fact
that there are more universities in public
sector there are less students in these
universities as compare of private
sector.
The total male enrolment in the
universities is 0.753 million (56%),
whereas, the female enrolment is 0.602
million (44%).
#Pakistan (220 million incl #AJK) passes #Brazil (210 million) to become 5th-most populous nation https://shar.es/1ShVCE via @SkyNewsAust
Pakistan has surpassed Brazil to become the fifth-most populous country on earth, as the southern Asian nation's population surges beyond 220 million people, the latest figures show.
In March, the South Asian nation conducted its first population census in two decades, which was possible thanks to improved security after years of violence linked to al-Qaeda and Taliban militants.
The officials counted every individual and their housing unit in a countrywide door-to-door exercise that lasted for more than two months, said the Pakistan Bureau of Statistic, which conducted the census.
The government released the outcome on Friday. The figure came in much higher than the earlier estimate of around 200 million.
The population in the country's four provinces and the tribal regions near the Afghan border stood at 207.77 million, according to the bureau.
Another 15 million people live in the disputed regions of Kashmir and Gilgit- Baltistan in the north, near the country's border with China, a PBS official said.
But the population of these two regions are not included along with that of Pakistan's because of the disputes, although people from these areas are allowed to hold Pakistani passports.
Pakistan was previously the sixth-most populous country in the world, with an estimated population of around 200 million before the census, but it had now surpassed Brazil, which has a population of about 210 million.
Pakistan's population has been growing at an average rate of 2.4 per cent per year in the past two decades, despite efforts by the government to control the rapid increase in population, the data shows.
'This is a surprising factor. The rate is much higher than estimates,' said Shakeel Ahmed Ramay, a researcher with Islamabad-based Sustainable Development Policy Institute.
For a country like Pakistan with limited resources, such a huge population could become a burden if innovative policies are not made to turn the youth bulge into an asset, Ramay added.
'You got to have some policy framework to promote entrepreneurship to engage a sea of people ... Otherwise, more individuals means more consumption of resources,' he explained.
China to provide $4m equipment for #vocational training institutes in #Pakistan for socio-economic uplift. Vocational training will support development of skilled #labor force for low cost #housing, #agriculture, #COVID mitigation, pest control, etc. https://nation.com.pk/09-Jul-2020/china-to-provide-dollar-4m-equipment-for-vocational-training-institutes
China would provide training equipment worth $4 million (approximately 650 million rupees) for the vocational training institutes/ schools around Pakistan through National Vocational and Technical Training Commission.
The signing ceremony for Letter of Exchange for provision of ‘Vocational School Equipment and Material’ was held at the Ministry of Economic Affairs. Yao Jing, Ambassador of People’s Republic of China to Pakistan, and Dr. Wang Zhihua, Minister Counsellor, Embassy of China in Pakistan attended the ceremony and from Pakistan side Noor Ahmed, Federal Secretary of Economic Affairs Division, signed the LOE.
The ambassador reassured cooperation by government of China for socio-economic development in Pakistan. A number of projects under social welfare of the poor and vulnerable people are already under progress like cooperation in PM’s Low Cost Housing Scheme and boosting rural economy through agricultural support. Government of China has also supported Pakistan to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 pandemic. Pesticide and equipment has been provided to control the locust spread in the southern parts of the country. The ambassador also appreciated the continuity of CPEC projects particularly establishment of export-based industry in Special Economic Zones under SEZs despite challenging conditions globally due to pandemic.
Secretary Economic Affairs reiterated strong commitment towards further strengthening and expanding of bilateral economic cooperation between China and Pakistan. Both sides agreed that all the ongoing initiatives will be pursued very closely to achieve the targeted completion so that people of Pakistan can benefit from the Chinese assistance in a more productive manner.
Falling Populations May Keep Poor Countries From Getting Rich - Bloomberg
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-07-26/falling-populations-may-keep-poor-countries-from-getting-rich
New population estimates suggest the window for many big developing nations may be closing faster than they realized.
The United Nations currently predicts that by 2027, India will overtake China as the world’s most populous country. Estimates suggest India and Nigeria will together add 470 million people in the next three decades — almost a quarter of the world’s population increase to 2050. According to a new study from the University of Washington, however, several developing nations may find their so-called demographic dividend much less of a boon than anticipated.
Published in the Lancet, the UW study has improved on the UN’s model by modelling fertility differently and making its decline more sensitive to the availability of contraception and the spread of education. In many parts of India, for instance, the total fertility rate — the expected average number of children born to each woman — is already well below the replacement rate of 2.1 and dropping faster than expected. The study, which also tries to account for the feedback loops between education, mortality and migration, concludes that populations around the world are going to start shrinking sooner and faster than projected.
South Asia, for example, would have 600 million fewer people in 2100 than previously predicted thanks to lower-than-expected levels of fertility. Instead of growing throughout, India’s population would peak in 2050 and then decline to 70% of that number by the end of the century. By that point, China’s population would be about half its current size. On the other hand, sub-Saharan Africa would continue to grow, with Nigeria entering the 22nd century as the world’s second-largest country, behind India and just ahead of China and Pakistan.
For policymakers in India and several other developing nations, this isn’t good news. As the authors of the UW study point out, a shrinking global population has “positive implications for the environment, climate change, and food production.” But it also means time is running out — indeed, may already have run out — on those nations’ development clocks.
China has been truly fortunate in its demographics; it peaked at the right time. Working-age Chinese people, both in total numbers and as a share of the population, crested just when world trade was most open. This made the possibilities for manufacturing-led growth easier to seize than they had been for centuries.
Those countries that come next — India and Pakistan in particular — will confront a more closed world. And, worse, they now know that it is people currently in the workforce, or children in school, who over their lifetimes will have to lift the country to prosperity. For countries whose populations will begin to decline in the 2040s, this generation of workers and the next is all there is: They must, like their Chinese counterparts in the last two decades, push their countries from farm to factory and beyond.
Right now, India’s boosters tout the fact that its working-age population swells by a million people a month, propelling economic growth. If that demographic push runs out sooner than expected, growth will depend on individual productivity, not sheer numbers. That means education and healthcare and similar “soft” infrastructure no longer look like rich-country luxuries. Unless they are put into place within the next decade, indeed within the next few years, countries such as India, Indonesia and Brazil may never become rich.
#America's population is aging. We need learn to live with low fertility. #US is going to be living for a long time with slow population growth & low #GDP growth. And we need to start thinking about #economic policy with that reality in mind. #demographics https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/opinion/low-population-growth-economy-inflation.html?smid=tw-share
Last week the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported much higher inflation than almost anyone predicted, and inflationistas — people who always predict runaway price rises, and have always been wrong — seized on the news as proof that this time the wolf is real.
Financial markets, however, took it in stride. Stocks fell on the report, but they soon made up most of the losses.
Bond yields rose only slightly on the news, then ended the week right where they started — namely, extremely low.
Why so little reaction to the inflation news? Part of the answer, presumably, was that once investors had time to digest the details they realized that there was little sign of a rise in underlying inflation; this was a blip reflecting what were probably one-time rises in the prices of used cars and hotel rooms.
Beyond that, however, is what I think is the realization that while we’re achieving dramatic, almost miraculous success in defeating Covid-19, once the pandemic subsides we’re likely to be in an environment of sustained low interest rates as a result of weak investment demand. And the biggest reason for that low-rate environment is plunging fertility, which implies slow or even negative growth in the number of Americans in their prime working years.
This isn’t a new issue. Last month’s census report showing the lowest U.S. population growth since the 1930s only confirmed what everyone studying the subject already knew. And America is relatively late to this party. Japan’s working-age population has been declining since the mid-1990s. The euro area has been on the downslope since 2009. Even China is starting to look like Japan, a legacy of its one-child policy.
Is stagnant or declining population a big economic problem? It doesn’t have to be. In fact, in a world of limited resources and major environmental problems there’s something to be said for a reduction in population pressure. But we need to think about policy differently in a flat-population economy than we did in the days when maturing baby boomers were rapidly swelling the potential work force.
OK, let me admit that there is one real issue: An aging population means fewer active workers per retiree, which raises some fiscal issues. But this problem is often exaggerated. Remember all the panic about how Social Security couldn’t survive the burden of retiring boomers? Well, many boomers have already retired; by 2025 most of the growth in the number of beneficiaries per worker caused by retiring baby boomers will already have occurred. Yet there’s no crisis.
There is, however, a different issue with low population growth. To maintain full employment, a market economy must persuade businesses to invest all the money households want to save. Yet a lot of investment demand is driven by population growth, as new families need newly built houses, new workers require the construction of new office buildings and factories, and so on.
So low population growth can cause persistent spending weakness, a phenomenon diagnosed in 1938 by the economist Alvin Hansen, who awkwardly dubbed it “secular stagnation.” The term and concept have been revived recently by Larry Summers, and on this issue I think he’s right.
Secular stagnation can be a problem, because if interest rates are very low even in good times there’s not much room for the Fed to cut rates during recessions. But a low-interest-rate world can also offer major policy opportunities — if we’re willing to think clearly.
In 1962, a landmark legislation laid the foundation of vocational training in Pakistan. The Apprenticeship Ordinance, 1962 was promulgated by the government of Gen Ayub Khan to feed the growing industries with skilled technicians and process operators.
https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/854127-vocational-training
This was followed by the Apprenticeship Rules in 1966, which quite comprehensively provided modalities of the training scheme, obligations of both the employers and apprentices and the latter’s terms and conditions of apprenticeship.
The Ordinance of 1962, has been made applicable to undertakings employing fifty or more persons, as are notified by the provincial government in the official gazette. The notified undertaking is obliged to introduce and operate an apprenticeship programme and get it registered with the Competent Authority defined in the Ordinance.
Such undertaking is required to train apprentices in the proportion of a minimum of twenty percent of the total number of persons employed in the ‘apprenticeable trade’. For instance, if an undertaking employs five electricians, it should have at least one apprentice in this trade. There are more than three hundred vocational professions to choose from, encompassing different areas.
The induction of the Ordinance met with immense success and all the notified undertakings established their apprenticeship centers in accordance with the law. The most notable among them was the remarkable apprenticeship training center established by the American corporate giant Exxon Chemical Pakistan Limited at its fertilizer plant in Daharki (Sindh).
In the late 1960s, the Exxon corporation was attracted to install a plant in Pakistan looking at its rapid pace of industrial development. The company not only imparted training to apprentices in mechanical and chemical trades for two to three years duration but also devised a competitive scheme for their career development in the post apprenticeship employment of the company. Exxon’s successor company Engro Fertilizer Limited continues to follow the scheme.
The federal government has promulgated the Apprenticeship Act, 2018 by repealing the Ordinance of 1962, which has become outdated. However, due to the 18th Amendment, provisions of the act of 2018 extend only to the Islamabad Capital Territory. The provinces should make and enforce their own apprenticeship acts, to revive the effectiveness of a most beneficial training scheme.
In order to supplement the apprenticeship scheme and boost vocational training in the country, the government promulgated the National Training Ordinance, 1980, which was amended through the Amendment Ordinance, 2002. The purpose of the ordinance was to constitute training boards in the respective provinces to regulate and promote vocational training facilities in various fields. By virtue of this ordinance, the scope of vocational training has widened beyond the confines of notified undertakings. While the apprenticeship training extends only to the apprentices enrolled with some undertaking, any person whether or not he/she is employed, can join the vocational training institutes established all over Pakistan, to learn the desired skill.
The National Board has 17 different functions relating to promotion of technical, vocational and in-plant training and skill development etc. The provincial boards have nine functions, which include: (a) registration and licensing of establishments, organizations or institutions, which are offering vocational training; and (b) conducting trade tests and certifying the skilled persons and trainers, who may have received vocational training through any source or acquired the skill through experience or informal system of Ustad-Shagird.
Most of Pakistan’s blue-collar workers learn their work informally and have little to no formal academic education. However, raw potential is not a substitute for proper industrial skills-based training.
Govt set to launch Kamyab Pakistan Programme this month
https://www.dawn.com/news/1633071
Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin said: “We have finalised every aspect of this programme, and it would be launched in mid-July.” — PID/File
• 4m households to be supported
• Minister says around Rs400bn worth of interest-free loans to be offered
ISLAMABAD: The government has decided in principle to launch ‘Kamyab Pakistan Programme’ this month under which four million households would be assisted in various schemes.
The programme appears to be one of the major initiatives taken by the government for the poor segment of society ahead of next elections.
Talking to Dawn on Saturday, Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin said: “We have finalised every aspect of this programme, and it would be launched in mid-July.”
Detailing some of the features of the programme, he said it aimed at providing support to people in housing projects, skill development, health cards and interest-free loans for businesses and agri-services.
However, he made it clear that the targets would be achieved over a period of time and not in one year.
The minister said approximately Rs300 billion to Rs400bn interest-free loans would be given in the current fiscal year 2021-22, adding that the amount had also been budgeted to provide subsidy against interest-free loans.
The minister said ‘Kamyab Jawan’ would be a part of this programme.
About broadening of tax base, Mr Tarin said a strategy was being devised to bring 7.2 million people under the tax net. The strategy will be finalised soon, however, no taxpayer would be harassed, he added.
He said the point of sales programme would be extended to maximum traders in the current fiscal year.
Meanwhile, at a meeting of the Economic Advisory Council (EAC), Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin stressed the importance of long-term planning to achieve sustainable and all-inclusive economic growth.
He said Prime Minister Imran Khan had reconstituted the EAC after decades with an objective to draw up concrete proposals for sustainable economic growth through comprehensive and seamless planning and by taking all stakeholders on board.
During the third meeting of the EAC, four sub-groups gave their presentations on State-Owned Enterprises and Privatisation, Energy, Domestic Commerce and Price Stability.
Special Assistant on Finance and Revenue Dr Waqar Masood Khan gave a detailed presentation on price stability which included short-term, medium-term and long-term proposals to bring price stability in the country.
He drew a comparative analysis between prices prevailing in Pakistan and those in the entire region – both in current and historical perspectives.
Zaid Bashir, in his presentation on ‘Domestic Commerce Sector’, underlined the need to enrich and revive documented/integrated sectors and fully realise the true potential of e-commerce during the short term by bringing retailers into a more organised environment, ultimately benefitting the national exchequer.
Tax credit on enlistment of companies and to incentivise the induction of women in workforce were suggested as part of medium-term plans whereas financing facility for growth of the retailers and tax adjustability were suggested as part of a long-term strategy to promote domestic commerce sector.
In his presentation on energy (power) sector, Farooq Rehmatullah highlighted global, regional and local trends in the refining sectors.
The presentation also included recommendations for bringing in sustainable solutions to streamline operations from oil downstream to marketing sectors.
Mr Rehmatullah gave suggestions to deal with challenges faced by the LPG, exploration and production sectors and to explore renewable energy resources in Pakistan.
Sultan Ali Allana, meanwhile, spoke on ‘State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs)’ while the privatisation secretary, Hassan Nasir Jamy, updated the EAC on privatisation.
UP's fertility rate nearly halved from 4.82 in 1993 to 2.7 in 2016 - and it's expected to touch 2.1 by 2025, according to a government projection.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-57801764
Given the falling rates, "incentivising sterilisation is counterproductive", Ms Muttreja added, because "70% of India's increase in population is going to come from young people. So, what we need is non-permanent, spacing methods".
Fertility rates have dipped below replacement levels - 2.1 births per woman - in 19 out of India's 22 states and federally administered territories for which data has been released in the latest National Family Health Survey (NFHS). Data from the remaining nine states, including UP, is not ready yet.
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Increased awareness, government programmes, urbanisation, upward mobility and greater use of modern methods of contraception have all contributed to this.
Nearly half of the world's countries have seen an extraordinary decline in fertility rates. By 2070, the global fertility rate is expected to drop below replacement levels, according to the UN.
China's fertility rate had dropped to 1.3 in 2020, while India's was 2.2 at the last official count in 2016.
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So, why implement this rule now?
One reason, according to demographers, is the differing rates across India.
Six states - Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh - that are home to roughly 40% of India's population also have fertility rates higher than the replacement level, 2.1. This is in sharp contrast with Kerala (1.8), Karnataka (1.7), Andhra Pradesh (1.7) or Goa (1.3).
"Also, our cities are overcrowded and ill-planned. They convey an image of over-population," Dr KS James, director of International Institute of Population Sciences, said.
Political analysts also believe UP's chief minister, Yogi Adityanath, has an eye on state elections slated for next year. And, with such a drastic move, he hopes to signal a development agenda that is removed from his controversial image as a divisive right-wing Hindu nationalist.
This is not a new idea either. In 2018, more than 125 MPs wrote to the president asking for the implementation of a two-child norm. The same year the Supreme Court dismissed several petitions seeking population control measures as it could lead to a "civil war-like situation". In the last year, three MPs from Mr Adityanath's governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) introduced bills in parliament to control population.
Since the early 1990s, 12 states have introduced some version of the two child-policy.
Did it work?
It's hard to say because different states implemented different versions of it - some left loopholes and others introduced financial incentives alongside the punitive measures.
There has been no independent evaluation either but a study in five of the states showed a rise in unsafe and sex-selective abortions, and men divorcing their wives or giving up their children for adoption so they could contest polls.
But the results are mixed - four states revoked the law; Bihar started in 2007 but still has the country's highest fertility rate (3.4); and Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu have all seen a remarkable drop in fertility rates with no such norms in place.
"India is at a perfect stage as far as population distribution is concerned," Niranjan Saggurti, director of the Population Council's office in India said.
Experts say India has entered a demographic dividend - the ability of a young and active workforce to catapult economies out of poverty. How India can harness this, especially in populous states like Uttar Pradesh, remains to be seen.
World #Population Is About to Hit 8 Billion—Some Argue It Is Near Its Peak. Demographers’ forecasts vary and are based on assumptions such as how well-educated and healthy people will be, especially #women. #Africa #heath #education #development #fertility https://www.wsj.com/articles/global-population-is-about-to-hit-8-billionand-some-argue-it-is-near-its-peak-11660252977
But as we cross eight billion people, it is worth considering that the world might never make it to 10 billion, or even nine billion, and that the world’s major demographic problems won’t stem from the growing masses but from shrinking countries, aging populations and dwindling workforces.
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Later this year—any day now really—the global population is projected to cross eight billion people. The United Nations recently pegged the date as Nov. 15, but we don’t know with any exact precision.
Since the 1960s, when the global number of people first hit three billion, it has taken a bit over a decade to cross each new billion-person milestone, and so it might seem natural to assume that nine billion humans and then 10 billion are, inexorably, just around the corner. That is exactly what the latest population projections from the U.N. and the U.S. Census Bureau have calculated.
But as we cross eight billion people, it is worth considering that the world might never make it to 10 billion, or even nine billion, and that the world’s major demographic problems won’t stem from the growing masses but from shrinking countries, aging populations and dwindling workforces.
We aren’t talking about meteor strikes, alien invasions or apocalyptic scenarios (though, of course, that could do it, too) but rather straightforward demographic projections that conclude that birthrates have been falling so rapidly around the world that we could potentially reach the peak of human population in less than a generation.
The U.N.’s projections are the best known. But an alternate set of projections has been gaining attention in recent years, spearheaded by the demographer Wolfgang Lutz, under the auspices of the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital at the University of Vienna, of which Mr. Lutz is founding director.
These forecasts project the population peak is closer and lower. A look at the assumptions behind the forecasts shows they are hardly implausible.
“There’s two big questions,” Mr. Lutz explains, that determine whether his forecasts or the U.N.’s end up closer to the mark. “First, how rapidly fertility will decline in Africa…. The other question is China, and countries with very low fertility, if they will recover and how fast they will recover.”
The U.N. projects population using historical trends for each country, and calculating how other countries in similar conditions fared in the past.
Lyman Stone, the director of research for the population consulting firm Demographic Intelligence, compares this methodology to technical analysis in stocks, a method of looking for historical patterns and predicting if they are likely to recur.
The Wittgenstein forecasts, by contrast, look not only at historical patterns, but attempt to ask why birthrates rise and fall. A big factor, not formally included in the U.N.’s models, is education levels. Put simply: As people, especially women, have greater opportunities to pursue education, they have smaller families. (U.N. demographer VladimÃra Kantorová said the U.N.’s approach implicitly accounts for development, urbanization, women’s education and contraceptive use since it relies on historical data from countries that underwent similar transitions.)
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The U.N. projects Africa’s population will grow from 1.3 billion today to 3.9 billion by century’s end.
Once education is accounted for, Wittgenstein’s baseline scenario projects Africa’s population will rise to 2.9 billion during that time period. In another scenario from Wittgenstein, which it calls the “rapid development” scenario, the population of Africa will only reach 1.7 billion by century’s end.
From #Singapore to #Thailand, #Asia courts talent for post-#COVID #economic boost. Battle for high-skill workers is not just an #Asian phenomenon, but a global one. #UK has launched a new system called High Potential Individual visa for university grads.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Asia-Insight/From-Singapore-to-Thailand-Asia-courts-talent-for-post-COVID-boost
TOKYO/SINGAPORE/BANGKOK -- During the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Singapore tightly closed its borders. While many countries did the same, it was a sharp shock to the system for a city-state that had thrived as a hub for travel and as a magnet for foreign workers.
As some foreign nationals left, and entries were largely halted, Singapore's population dropped by 4.1% over the year through June 2021, to 5.45 million.
The latest data released on Sept. 27, however, shows nearly as swift a turnaround, thanks to a gradual lifting of restrictions. The population rebounded by 3.4% to 5.63 million, largely driven by workers in sectors like construction and shipyards -- the unsung labor that keeps the economy going.
Now, Singapore hopes to attract more highly skilled professionals with expertise and ideas that could jolt growth in the post-COVID era. "This is an age where talent makes all the difference to a nation's success," Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in his annual National Day Rally speech on Aug. 21, days before his government announced a new type of visa designed to lure such people. "We need to focus on attracting and retaining top talent, in the same way we focus on attracting and retaining investments."
The city-state is far from the only place that covets high-flyers. From Thailand to Taiwan, a competition is heating up to entice the best of the best, and to fill hiring gaps with people equipped to excel in today's pandemic-altered workplace.
Innovative sectors like digital technology and biotechnology are especially hungry for talent.
Singapore's latest carrot is called the Overseas Networks and Expertise (ONE) Pass, a new visa for high-skill professionals who earn at least 30,000 Singapore dollars ($20,800) a month. The program will allow people with these visas to stay at least five years and work at multiple organizations.
Thailand, meanwhile, began taking applications on Sept. 1 for a new visa that lets global professionals stay in the country for 10 years. The government hopes to bring in 1 million foreign nationals with the Long-Term Resident (LTR) visa, designed for those with skills in targeted sectors such as electric vehicles, biotechnology and defense.
Tourism-oriented Thailand, like Singapore, has been hit hard by travel disruptions. Both also have aging populations. While Singapore is expecting growth in the 3% to 4% range this year, the Asian Development Bank's latest outlook forecasts Thailand's growth rate at 2.9%, far below Indonesia's expected growth of 5.4%, Malaysia's 6% and Vietnam's 6.5%.
Malaysia, for its part, aims to attract wealthy investors with its new Premium Visa Program. The program, which began accepting applications on Saturday, allows people who can deposit 1 million ringgit (about $215,000) in the country and have an annual offshore income of around $100,000 to stay for up to 20 years. During that time, they can invest, run businesses and work.
As part of a broader move to bring in more human resources, Australia recently raised its annual permanent immigration cap to 195,000 for the current fiscal year, from 160,000.
Digital census process continues smoothly: PBS
https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2023/03/16/digital-census-process-continues-smoothly-pbs/
ISLAMABAD: The process of the 7th Population and Housing Census, being conducting digitally for the first time in the country’s history, has been going on smoothly all across the country, the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) reported here on Thursday.
“The overall progress and speed of the census process is very encouraging and satisfactory,” PBS said in a press statement issued here.
The process includes an option for self-enumeration, which was made available from February 20, 2023, till March 10, 2023, and field operations of house listing and enumeration commenced from March 01, 2023, that will continue till April 4, 2023.
Conducting a census digitally ensures transparency, data-driven procedures, real-time monitoring of progress through geo-tagging using GIS systems, and wider acceptability of census results, said PBS press statement.
It said structures were listed from March 1st to March 10, 2023, during which all the residential and economic units were geotagged along with the classification of economic activities as per international standards.
It said, the self-enumeration portal was very well received by people who have enumerated themselves using the portal launched and this method was optional.
Currently, the final phase of the census i.e. enumeration is ongoing starting from March 12, 2023, and would continue till April 4, 2023. In this phase, the data about household members and their demographic characteristics, various Socio-Economic Indicators, as well as Housing characteristics, are being collected.
PBS technical team is analyzing and assessing the data and trends on a day-to-day basis to ensure the quality of the data and progress in identified 291 blocks all over Pakistan. Physical verification and digital monitoring are being used for quality assurance.
PBS has established 495 Census Support Centers (CSC) at the Census District level and 495 Census Support Centers (CSC) at the tehsil level where over 1,095 IT experts of NADRA and PBS team are available 24/7 for technical assistance and facilitation of field staff.
The control room has been established at the CSC level which facilitates census field staff during field operation and for this purpose, NADRA technical teams are available to redress all IT-related issues.
A call center is operating 24/7 for facilitation, assistance and suggestions through the toll-free number 0800-57574.
It said, certain quarters were spreading false and misinformation, adding information shared on the PBS website and official social media should be believed and considered.
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