YET another World Bank report has been published highlighting the unending immiseration of Pakistan’s working people. Pakistan’s economic plight is described as largely on par with war-torn countries in the Arab region like Syria and Yemen. Unsurprisingly, the bank makes only limited mention of its own role in relentlessly enforcing the ‘structural adjustment’ policies which have greatly contributed to mass impoverishment. But the report is damning nonetheless.

Almost 20 per cent of Pakistan’s 260 million people now fall into the extreme-poor category, defined as a daily income of less than $3. Extreme poverty has increased three-fold in less than a decade. If the poverty line is simulated at the slightly higher daily income level of $4.20, almost half of Pakistan’s people are poor. It is not all doom and gloom, of course, because Pakistani capitalists, landlords, and state mafias are doing very well. This is reflected in inequality markers. What economists call the Gini coefficient is at its highest level in almost 40 years.

The report goes on to name a series of ‘shocks’ which have triggered the huge uptick in poverty; the Covid pandemic and the 2022 floods top the list. Missing is a meaningful political........

© Dawn