Question # 25
The past decade has upset many preconceptions above development and this, more than anything else, makes it difficult to be overly definite about what the next decade has in store. However, there are a few things that one can assert with some confidence. First, education, health, and productive employment are crucial both for growth and for equity. We have tended to assume that all of these are the consequences of rapid economic growth and that only growth can generate the resources required for these purposes. However, increasingly, it appears that these are better seen as the causes rather than as consequences of development. Virtually every case of successful development involves a prior improvement in literacy, technical skills, health status, and access to productive work. Second, technological competence is the most important resource endowment and it explains a tar larger proportion of growth in output and trade than more conventional factors like natural resources or capital accumulation. The competence required is not just in research. In fact technological dynamism in the factory and the farm is more important than the presence of large research establishment. Third, the environmental imperative can no longer be ignored. Today, as an international issue, it is second only to disarmament. Nationally, the developmental consequences of environmental neglect are increasingly obvious. In the Pakistani context, there are at least two further factors, which reinforce the above propositions. The first is population growth. Given the pace of expansion of the population and the work force, human resource development acquires an added urgency. Population growth is also one, but not necessarily the most important factor, which underlines environmental stress in rural and urban areas. The second factor is that as a large country we cannot carve out an independent positioning the global system without building up a substantial capacity for self-reliant growth. The acquisition of technical competence is crucial for this purpose. Until now, we have tended to treat human resource development, technology issues and environment as subsidiary to the main task of planning. The thrust has been on: quantitative expansion of infrastructure and production with a focus on production targets like tones of steel, kWh of electricity etc., capacity targets like road length, rail kilometer age; and coverage targets like number ofschools and students, number of villages electrified etcetera, catching up with known technologies -Fuller use of natural resources -Maximum mobilization of financial resources.Q:According to the author, at the national level, with passage of time the effects of which of the following are being felt?
