Pakistan's poverty is political

Express Tribune

a day ago

The writer is a Lecturer in English at the Higher Education Department, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Email him at [e-mail]
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By any decent standard, Pakistan is broke: not in fiscal lingo or glossy budgetary graphs but broke in a way that gnaws at the stomach.
World Bank numbers show a shocking 44.7% of Pakistanis stay below the global poverty line. That works out to more than 107 million people scraping by on less than $4.20 a day (under Rs1,200 for the full twenty-four hours).
That's not even the worst of it. Upwards of 39 million — 16.5% of the country - live in what the world euphemistically calls 'extreme poverty'. That's not living, that's barely hanging on, that's economic abandonment.
These numbers are long past their expiry. They're based on a 2018-19 survey, like diagnosing a patient today using a six-year-old X-ray. They don't reflect the 2022 floods that drowned homes and livelihoods alike. They don't account for the punishing inflation of the past few years, turning grocery, gas and electricity bills into waking nightmares. Imagine the horror the real numbers would reveal if they reflected today's reality. We're flying blind or pretending the plane is fine while it plummets.
World Bank says this surge in poverty isn't from worsening conditions per se but from a shift in how poverty is now measured globally. In other words, people didn't suddenly get poorer, the goalposts just moved. About 82% of that spike is due to the new poverty line; the rest — 18% — is thanks to Pakistan's own price surges from 2017 to 2021.
We'll get the full picture in September. Maybe then we'll finally see the truth for what it is. Maybe it'll stir someone awake in Islamabad. Maybe that'd serve as a reality check for those still playing policy ping-pong in air-conditioned offices.
Meanwhile, the HRCP is done mincing words. It has called for a living wage - not just a minimum wage. That's not semantics. There's a world of difference. A minimum wage keeps you just above the grave. A living wage lets you breathe with dignity. The HRCP says a family of six needs at least Rs75,000 a month to live with basic dignity while the government pegs it at Rs37,000.
Never mind that the government leaves it to rot on paper. It's policy on paper and paper doesn't quiet hunger or pay the rent when the month is up. What's the value of a policy if it never touches the ground?
I know teachers in private schools pulling in Rs9,000 a month. A woman in my neighborhood teaches at a government primary school for Rs3,000 a month. That's not a wage. That's an insult!
A middle-aged bakery salesman I know was earning Rs7,500 until recently. Yes, he finally got a raise, but you can guess how far that crumb really goes. Maybe enough for an extra packet of tea.
These aren't rare outliers. This is business as usual. Employers operate with impunity because labour laws exist like paper tigers; because they (employers) exploit loopholes and underpay at will; because there are always others desperate enough to take the same job for even less.
And then we wonder why our young people drown off Greek shores, fleeing a country that gave them nothing but unpaid internships, underpaid jobs and broken promises. They know the risks. They know they might not make it. They still go. Because hope — even a sliver — feels worth dying for when home offers only hunger, humiliation and hopelessness.
We're not just poor in numbers; we lack the will, the compassion and the basic belief that a citizen deserves more than just survival. We're not poor because poverty sneaked up on us. We are poor because we've been kept poor by policies that drone on about 'reforms' while people can't afford 'daal', by leaders who hold pressers on economic growth while schoolteachers earn less than what a politician's tie costs, by a system that only works for those already at the top.
This country is starving. Not just for food but for fairness.