Down there with the worst
EDITORIAL: Pakistan's descent to 168th out of 193 countries in the latest Human Development Index (HDI) ranking is an indictment of decades of governance that prioritised short-term economic indicators over long-term investment in people. As of the UNDP's 2025 Human Development Report, Pakistan now ranks among the world's 26 lowest-scoring countries — a category overwhelmingly composed of war-torn or desperately poor Sub-Saharan African states, and only one other South Asian country: Afghanistan.
This new classification is not merely embarrassing; it is revealing. Pakistan's policymakers have long pointed to growth spurts, booming construction, rising remittances, or even stock market rallies as signs of progress. But these celebrations never masked the ground reality for most Pakistanis. Even in years when GDP growth neared 6 or 7 percent, Pakistan's HDI score remained stubbornly low. The economy grew, but people did not prosper. Development, in the human sense, never took root.
The HDI, unlike GDP, captures a more complete picture of life. It measures not just income, but life expectancy and education — the very foundations of a functional society. For Pakistan to rank this low in 2025, despite decades of rhetoric about reform and digital revolutions, is to admit failure where it matters most. Literacy, maternal and child health, nutrition, and access to clean water remain chronic deficits. The education system is broken at the base, while public health infrastructure is perpetually under-resourced and overstretched.
This is not a problem that began yesterday. It has been hardwired into the country's development priorities for generations. Instead of building institutions, governments outsourced education and health to underfunded provinces or private entities. Instead of investing in people, the state spent on prestige projects — highways, metro lines, power plants — without laying the social groundwork to make them count. And when debt-fuelled growth faltered, there was no social safety net to fall back on. The masses were left to fend for themselves.
The UNDP report underlines that global human development is stalling, but it also shows that Pakistan is falling behind even within the group of low-income countries. The gap between nations with 'very high' and 'low' HDI scores — once slowly narrowing — has now begun to widen again. In this divergence, Pakistan is firmly on the wrong side. And it has reached this point not just because of global headwinds like conflict, Covid-19, or climate shocks — which have affected everyone — but because of its own refusal to confront structural rot.
It is also telling that this year's Human Development Report focuses heavily on artificial intelligence and the possibilities it opens for countries willing to invest in the future. The implication is clear: countries that modernise, reform, and reimagine their systems with technology at the centre can leap ahead, even from low baselines. Pakistan, however, remains caught between two worlds — reluctant to reform, yet eager to declare itself open for business in the digital age. The contradiction is glaring.
The country continues to produce tens of thousands of unemployed graduates each year with little digital fluency. It continues to run schools where basic arithmetic and literacy are not guaranteed. And it continues to invest more political capital in regulating dissent or controlling narratives than in improving what matters to people's lives — access to doctors, teachers, jobs, clean air, or safe drinking water.
Pakistan's chronic underdevelopment is not simply a result of poverty. It is also a result of misplaced priorities, weak institutions, elite capture, and the persistent failure of successive governments — military and civilian — to put human capital at the centre of national planning. GDP figures can be manipulated by temporary inflows or accounting tricks. HDI figures cannot. They expose not just how a country is doing today, but what future it is building — or failing to build.
With the 2030 sustainable development targets slipping further out of reach, and even basic development indicators going into reverse, the choices ahead are stark. Either the state undertakes a radical rethinking of its development paradigm — one that centres the citizen, not just the economy — or Pakistan will remain locked in a cycle of borrowed growth and deepening inequality.
The warning signs are all there. And now, so is the global label: one of the least developed nations in the world. The longer that is accepted as normal, the harder it will be to escape.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
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