It is a compelling argument that at its core, economics should be approached with the same pragmatism one applies to managing a household. Just as microeconomics governs the prudent balancing of a family's income and expenditure, macroeconomics is simply the study of a national economy on a larger scale. The discipline only becomes unnecessarily dense when it retreats into complex mathematical models to prove abstract theories, yet such academic rigour is hardly required to grasp the day-to-day economic realities of a country. Indeed, the issues facing Pakistan are so visceral that one perhaps needs only to experience the struggles of the poor to recapitulate them with total clarity. There is a sense that the state remains a passive observer of its own bulging population, almost as if the planners believe the long-discarded Malthusian theory of population is still a valid excuse for inaction. This failure to manage human growth has transformed a potential demographic........

© The Express Tribune