Paul Steeten, who worked with Dr. Haq at the UNDP, writes, “We got into terrible trouble when Mahbub wanted to say that development means enlarging choices not of trees, but of people”. Surely trees contribute to development but that would be a different index, mapping a very different thing. Dr. Haq’s index tries not to go beyond the basic necessities of a populace.

A composite like the HDI that has been computed for over forty years has many stories to tell. The composite has been updated with newer more indicative measures but still stays true to Dr. Haq’s original idea. The recent changes replace literacy rates with mean years of schooling, and the gross national product has been replaced by gross national income.

One finds that many of the human development components of the indicator tend to converge, though that is not true of the income components. What this says is that although over time, the world’s nation’s earnings may not be converging, but literacy rates, life expectancy, and mean years of schooling are. This suggests that the overall quality of life too, at least in terms of these indicators, is equalizing around the world and seems to be generally independent of a nation’s monetary situation. This fact is highlighted by the HDI, where from 1970 to 2010, almost every country, including Pakistan, has had an increase in HDI of around .2 points out of 1. A drop in points goes against the trend and generally tells a terrible story.

So where does Pakistan stand in such a list, what is its story?

Over the past four decades, Pakistan has shown steady growth, going from around .31 in 1980 to 0.49 in 2011 with no real fluctuations from this trend at a growth of around 1.6% a year. The lack of fluctuations in Pakistan’s HDI growth could mean that things have been improving slowly, however it also means that no policy change in the past 40 years has led to any form of miracle growth. It could also mean that an increase in one indicator may be balanced off by a decrease in another.

Pakistan’s neighbours too have had similar growth patterns. India has gone from .32 to .51 at a similar rate, while Bangladesh has grown slightly faster than both these countries, growing from .26 at its inception to almost catch up to the other two giants at .46 growing at around 2% a year.

A twist in the plot comes when we break down the index into its component parts of income, health, and education. While both Bangladesh and India are better off than Pakistan in education, health is one index where Pakistan ranks the highest amongst these three countries though it is still far behind other countries such as Turkey and Iran. The income index tells a very interesting story, interpret it as you may; despite Pakistan’s income index being much higher than both India and Bangladesh in the 70s, at the start of the 90s, Pakistan’s income index flat-lined, allowing India (and many other countries) to easily surpass it. Pakistan’s income index has shown some life these past ten years, but the lost 90′s have cost it a decade of monetary growth.

When looking at poverty, one needs to take into account other indicators from the HDR, such as the Multidimensional Poverty Index, one of HDR’s newer indexes. Instead of looking at people who live under 1.25 (Parity adjusted) dollars a day, per capita income, or using a country’s own definition of poverty, it takes a very different approach. This multidimensional poverty measure looks at three types of poverty: living standards, health, and education. The results are staggering; in Pakistan, where 23% of the people live below 1.25 (parity adjusted) dollars a day, over 51% of the people live below the multidimensional poverty line. Similarly, in India, where 28.6% of the people are below the national poverty line, almost 56% of the population lives below the multidimensional poverty line. The results are the opposite in a more developed Sri Lanka, where the national poverty line puts 23% of the population below it, but with high education and health standards, only 5% of the people there live in multidimensional poverty.

The HDR also publishes an inequality adjusted HDI, a much better tool for looking at developing nations as it takes into account the distribution of the basic necessities. According to the new index, Pakistan’s .49 index, India’s .51, and Bangladesh’s .46 all collapse down to numbers between .33 and .36.Pakistan takes its biggest hit in education where it scores .19, only a handful of countries such as Niger and Ethiopia are below it. It does comparably better in other sectors, scoring a .5 in the health indicator, and .38 in the income indicator.

Although most of these factors may be evident to us just by looking out the window, the HDR does a wonderful job of putting these numbers together for us to provide us with a bigger picture than what income indicators can provide. We know that Pakistan has steadily developed overall in the past 40 years, but not as fast as we would want it or expect it to, nor equally in all sectors. It also comes as no surprise that Pakistan has one of the worst education systems in the world; the broken system is what is currently being ignored and pushed under the rug without much hue and cry. We also know that the 90s were a lost decade in terms of income, and that Pakistan’s healthcare system isn’t awful when compared to other developing nations.

It is through composite rankings such as the HDR and the data behind them that most of us are able to find the problem areas, and to attempt to rectify the problems. Just as how without an annual publication on the educational statistics of Pakistan, many of us are able to forget or ignore the problem of education in Pakistan. Indexes such as the HDR should keep us from blowing issues out of proportion and at the same time, keep us from ignoring or forgetting them. Dr. Haq’s efforts and contributions should serve as a constant reminder of both the areas we are succeeding in and those that we are doing poorly in.

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Each speaker referred to Dr. Haq time and time again with the utmost respect, highlighting his contributions to the Human Development Report and emphasizing his ideas, one of which was that one can’t fully measure the human development or growth of a society through income alone. They repeatedly referred to him as a Pakistani economist whilst discussing his achievements and contributions. To hear renowned professors and top economists and hear them speak in awe about a fellow Pakistani is truly a feeling in its own.

Moving back to the report, an article in the HDR itself talks about how Nicholas Sarkozy recently gave a speech claiming that focusing on the GDP in evaluating the overall well-being in an economy would lead to one missing out on many other aspects. The article also specified that unbeknownst to Sarkozy, the idea itself had actually originated in Karachi, over four decades ago, in the mind of Mahbub Ul Haq who then went on to become one of the founders of the Human Development Theory along with Amartya Sen.

During Dr. Haq’s tenure at the World Bank, he was able to make several contributions towards improving the social sector by targeting issues such as poverty alleviation, water policy and education. He made similar contributions whilst working as the finance minister in Pakistan by implementing policies for poverty alleviation and focusing on human development. Despite the acclaim he received for the two books and the few articles he authored, he chose to focus on his career more towards the applied side of development economics rather than the academic one.

During the presentation, Jeni Klugman pointed out one interesting fact: that growth in income is not a big driver of change in human development. That is, we find that income growth and human development growth have a very weak and statistically insignificant correlation. One could argue that that change in human development indicators only occur much after the growth has taken place. However, other research shows that change in income is not correlated with change in life expectancy at any time for 30 years. Similar research shows a lack of correlation of income growth with change in health, education, or even political freedom.  In fact, there are examples of countries with falling GDPs such as Iran and Venezuela that have concurrently had improvements in human development indicators. While there are many fine points to argue, this once again, brings one back to Dr. Haq’s Idea of Human Development, where other factors need to be observed as well, to give a fuller (and possibly more realistic) picture of a country.

Pranab Bhardan’s take on the HDR was a bit more critical of composite indexes, though he pointed out that the development process of the index was essentially a collaboration of economists from many different countries, and that good things do come from collaboration across borders.

Overall the presentation was well received, and while I learnt a lot from it, I kept thinking about Dr. Haq and his contributions to society, and how highly others think of him. It seems obvious that Dr. Haq was very inclined towards human development in South Asia, especially in Pakistan. He spent his latter years working for development in Pakistan. One important contribution of his was the founding of a policy research institute in Islamabad that was renamed in his honour after his death. Apart from the Human Development Report, he also started a report especially for human development in South Asia.

Despite making a name for himself in the field of economics and human development, becoming a significant member of the United Nations Development Program as well as serving as Finance Minister and Chief Economist for Pakistan, it seems strange that one rarely gets to hear about him. I believe that we should celebrate Pakistanis who have made such positive contributions not only to Pakistan but to the world and take their lead. In the case of Dr. Haq at least, it is sad that one does not hear about him, even though his contributions to the world are significant.

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A dedication to improving education and a disconnection from personal pride is needed to improve education in Pakistan. We must look at long term growth in many of the faulty sectors; many of these do not have direct results. For example, improving the education sector is a mammoth task, and requires unrewarding methods such as setting up watchdog organizations and private school and public school partnerships.

We are all aware of the state of education in Pakistan; in the bottom 12 countries in the world in terms of percentage of GDP spent on education, and 167th out of 177 countries on UNDP’s education index.  Pakistan’s net primary enrollment is 68%; only 60% of those enrolled actually finish primary school. Secondary education enrollment is even less, only 30%, and post-secondary is a dismal 4%.  In fact Pakistan has 6.5 million out-of-school primary school children out of a pool of 19 million primary school age children; 80% of the children that are out of school have never ever been enrolled; this makes Pakistan’s out-of-school population the second highest in the world.  We also have 19 million out of school secondary and 18 million out of school/college tertiary students.

With an astounding 67 million of Pakistan’s 167 million people at school going age (primary through university), providing quality education is a mammoth but infinitely important task for the government, one that they have/had already undertaken, at least according to our constitution which promises to provide necessities of life, including education, to remove illiteracy and provide free and compulsory education up to secondary level, and to make quality further education accessible to all based on merit.

Repeatedly, Pakistani citizens and nongovernment organizations have stepped in an attempt to fill the niche left by the government by opening private schools. By ‘Private Schools’, I do not just mean elite schools in affluent areas in Karachi and Lahore, but also neighborhood schools, village schools, and informal/makeshift schools in rural areas.  Many of these private schools are tiny, with just a couple of teachers with just a room or two to teach in.

Of those that are enrolled in schools, only around 33% attend private schools on each level (primary, secondary, and tertiary) while the rest attend public schools, that means, only around 7 – 10 million children attend private primary and secondary schools. The rest of Pakistan’s school-going population, 18 – 20 million, attends public schools.

By the best standards, private schools account for a miniscule 16 – 20% of the total school going population, and that too if the data accurately reflects what is happening in Pakistan, the reality might be much lower. Public schools make up for 37 – 41% of the rest of the students. The remaining children, unfortunately, are unable to attend either.

The problem with Pakistan is of size, few developing nations are as populous as Pakistan.  In fact, just Pakistan’s school-going range is much larger than most countries entire populations.  Reforms in education that work in mid-sized countries will have a harder time being implemented in Pakistan.  In most countries opening up schools that cater to 55 thousand children would be a substantial contribution, but in a country like Pakistan such an action barely makes a dent.

On paper there are around 186-222 thousand educational institutes in Pakistan for primary through secondary.  In primary education, public schools outnumber private schools by almost 8 to 1 but are equal in proportion for secondary schools.  Not surprisingly, a majority of the primary public schools exist in rural areas.  Basically, private schools cannot reach or cover rural areas effectively, public schools are pocketed in small villages all over Pakistan, this is something private schools simply cannot match; many locations in rural areas are infeasible because of economics, locality, distance to urban centers, availability and accessibility of teachers (private schools have more local teachers), or community attitudes.

Studies show that children from most private schools, even in rural areas, outperform their public school counterparts in nearby areas.  However, with the almost 100 thousand public schools in rural areas and only a few thousand private ones, it is hard to believe that the solution is to open a few new private schools.

It is obvious that despite private organizations catering to millions of students, they still occupy a very small place in educating all the children of Pakistan.  Even though there has been exponential growth in this sector in recent years, under no circumstance will they be able to fill the hole left by the government, at least not on the rural primary level.  Private schools just cannot be a substitute for the public school system. Opening private schools or donating money to open new schools, although it may bring us pride as we are providing for the education for a few dozen children, is not the most effective way to improve education as multitudes of other children go uneducated.

There already exists a network of schools and a loose infrastructure: the public school system. In order to improve education in Pakistan, we must look at fixing that.

What exactly is wrong with the public school systems?  It is purely in the way these schools are run and a lack of accountability; ghost schools and teacher absenteeism are rampant, this is especially true in single teacher schools. In many of these schools, a lack of accountability develops, and is taken advantage of by those employed.  When teachers do turn up, in some cases, misuse of students often occurs; here sometimes the teacher makes children do household chores instead of imparting education to them.  Only the most adamant of students survive this, the rest drop out. If the public school system is improved, parents in many areas will be more willing to send their children to school, as will the children themselves be more willing to go to school.

Another problem is a form of teacher tenureship; it is virtually impossible to fire teachers in the public school system even if they perform poorly.  Apparently the public school system is at least 200 thousand teachers short of meeting its requirements, this renders the administration unable to fire even the worst teachers, as underperforming teachers are supposedly still better than having any no teacher at all (however some reports suggest that there is an overabundance of primary school teachers in areas like Punjab). Private schools are able to reward effective teachers and fire the bad ones, they are able to monitor these schools much more closely, and private schools have an air of healthy competition that ensures that the teachers are motivated.

Although rural private schools usually have poorer facilities and less qualified teachers who are paid less, data shows children from private schools scoring significantly higher than those in public schools.  In general, a public school student is 2-3 years behind his private school counterpart. We already know that the private school model, in very similar localities as the public schools, works.  Therefore, we have a standard model that we can work with. One of the most important things is to increase accountability in schools.

There are obvious problems with the public education system, but instead of abandoning the system, we should try work with the system to improve what is already established. Both the government and the people have to work together to solve this problem; we must realize that education is a fundamental right of the people and is not just a means to economic stability.

One major indirect problem that results with the opening of new private schools and with adopting schools is that on a macro level, it takes the responsibility off the government’s shoulders, it gives them more reason to pay less attention to the dismal state of public schools in our country.  Private schools end up concentrating on smaller areas (i.e. improving small pockets or schools) but ignore the larger, national, picture.  We must cooperatively work in order to improve the level of education in public schools in Pakistan. There are a number of issues that need both public and private involvement.

Policies towards teachers need to be changed.  We should understand that the only way to break the cycle of unenthusiastic teachers and of teacher absenteeism is by changing these policies towards teachers.  Teachers that don’t perform well should face a probationary period or go through extra training, and should be relieved of their duty if they fail to improve. Teachers should go through testing to determine their understanding of the materials, their enthusiasm to teach, and their ability to impart that knowledge.  Help is needed from both sectors in this endeavor; the government needs to change their policies towards low performance teachers, whereas private agencies should set up testing for teachers to ensure quality education.

In the public school system, Pakistan is divided into 128 districts, each district is charged with setting up a system of monitoring and management of the schools in that area, but have nominal staff that regularly visits schools.  This area is too large and does not have enough people to cover it. There are many schools that are not visited for months; this ensures a lack of accountability of these teachers and schools. What would be better is that private organizations take over the task of conducting these surveys in certain areas; this would also result in data to be collected and made public.

Two things are essential; citizens/organizations closely working with the ministry and helping with accountability, and a policy by the government to support education and education reforms. One result of this would be the formation of organizations that concentrate on bringing in accountability to public schools through third party random visits.  This can be accomplished by recruitment of teams of people whose function would be to go around to schools, both on unannounced and planned visits to evaluate the state of these schools. These workers would be trained in methods of evaluating school systems; from checking for the existence of these schools, their teaching methods, the quality of teachers, the presence of amenities, to collecting demographics about school attendance levels and evaluating the level of education of the children that are attending these schools.

This data can then be conveyed to the public and the government who can both then work on solving the specific problems in these schools. Obviously, this plan of action would require that education becomes a priority for the government, and that certain policy changes are brought about in addressing education such as teacher retention etc.  In addition, clearer, transparent, specific, and up-to-date information would also be expected from all agencies involved.

Another thing that can be done is that nongovernmental organizations concentrate just on building secondary and higher education schools in rural areas that need them instead of building additional primary schools in areas that already have a few public primary schools, which the government and private organizations should be improving.  What results from this is that it strengthens the role of the government in education, and helps it move the public schools from a ‘failed system’ to a system with some hope.

Most people would be happier knowing that their donations helped educate two girls or helped set up a small school in some rural area.  However, what we must realize is that it is not just direct aid that we need to give; the overall infrastructure also needs to be improved.  Watchdog groups need to exist; these would collect data on schools and the quality of education being imparted, conducting studies, and suggesting/enforcing improvements when needed. This would increase accountability in public schools and would bring in the flexibility that private schools command. In the long-run they will have a far greater impact by improving the quality of education for a far greater group than just small pockets. Watchdog groups that supervise and try to improve education in public schools are a necessity.

Another economic way to measure growth would be to look at the per capita GDP increase verses the growth rate of its population. As is the problem with the earlier GNI approach, it does not encompass the problem entirely, but only looks at growth from a strictly economic point of view. Another problem one faces when we look at a country as a whole is that we tend to categorize together different factions and groups as one, that is, the rural population with the urban population, (where in Pakistan or India’s case, is a huge contrast, even in economic terms). Similarly looking at economic incomes of one province that is fertile with another province that is nothing but a desert (and would not be able to sustain as much agriculture) and expecting it to have similar incomes is again wrong.

To me, economical development means something else; it is not just about economics, it is all that, but also about raising an individual’s level of happiness, about easing a person’s unnecessary burdens such as illnesses like polio or having to walk ten miles just to get fresh water. These are things which I believe would not show up on a marker developed using the strictly economic development definition. Eventually all this might lead to economic growth, economic gain and economic growth, but I do not believe that it should be the target, rather an effect.

The past decade has presented us with many examples of the fact; that economic development does not necessarily mean that there will be real development. Still there are examples that do break the mould, while it also does seem implicitly apparent that, given a high enough and sustainable amount of economic development, real development might eventually follow, if governed and managed properly.

Examples of countries that have had growth by the economic development would be; Pakistan, which has had growth rates at around 7% for a few years, whereas India has had a growth rate of about 9.4% for the 2006-2007 year. Still these countries are greatly underdeveloped and suffer from a lack of education and many other ailments, one reason might be only the development of certain sectors of the economy and the lack of effective allocation of resources by the government.

Similarly, in smaller countries, Ethiopia actually has a growth rate of 11%, but is marred with many problems such as health and hunger, with many problems and features which are distinctive of an underdeveloped country including a high reliance on agriculture.

According to the human development index, these countries rank in either the middle or lower parts of the HDI (134, 126, and 170 respectively), they also rank low in GDP per capita(170,154,and 211 respectively).
As Economic growth is purely economical, using it as an indicator or wellbeing or a marker for standard of living would be an improper usage.

I believe that economic growth would overlook distribution of income, as it would not look at equity or equal distribution of the benefits, but rather count the entire country as a whole.

Secondly also believe that economic development, not paralleled with real growth and real development might actually be detrimental to the economy, it might cause people to develop artificial needs which the economy, a developing economy might not be able to provide.

Development seems to have two parts to it, not only economical development, which is, monetary growth and the growth of systems to support that but also a positive and progressive change in many different sectors of society such that the people benefit. For example, health, education, population decrease, equality of different groups, etc.

I believe that development is the sustainable improvement in the quality of life without bias while at the same time improving the capabilities of the system to handle such growth at a maintainable level and for a longer term, and provide such benefits to its people.

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In September 2000, the United Nation countries adopted a plan for economic development and established a list of goals to be achieved by the year 2015. The book Economic Development states that “The MDGs are the strongest statement yet of the international commitment to ending global poverty.” Still, the same book shows doubt as to whether the goals will be achieved, “some observers still suspect that the MDGs will amount to no more than just another UN proclamation of worthy goals” and “if current trends continue, few of the goals will be achieved by 2015” (Todaro & Smith, 2006).

One look at the figures and trends for development from 2000 onwards shows that by 2015 the goals will not be met (that is, if the current trends continue) in most regions. Goals like maternal mortality are far from being achieved (OECD), in most regions and goals such as education and poverty are not improving at any rate that will meet the goals by 2015 (OECD). One asks the question if the MDGs, although a step in the right direction, are the most optimal way to proceed with helping these impoverished areas develop; if not, how can there be improvement in the process?

The eight goals are as following:

I. Halve the proportion of people living on less than one dollar a day and those who suffer from hunger.
II. Ensure a hundred percent primary education rate (for both boys and girls).
III. Eliminate gender disparities at all levels (primary and secondary by 2005).
IV. Reduce child mortality rates by two thirds.
V. Reduce women dying of childbirth by three fourths
VI. Halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV and AIDS and the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.
VII. Ensure environmental stability
a. Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policy programs and reverse the loss of environmental resources.
b. Reduce by half, the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water.
VIII. Develop a global partnership for development
(Todaro & Smith, 2006)

The MDGs seem to concentrate on four basic ideas, the reduction of poverty, increase in education, improvement in health (infant child mortality, maternal mortality, maternal health, reproductive health, AIDS etc), and improved economic and natural environment (gender equality, safer water, improved environment, and global partnership).

As is obvious from the 2007 MDG report, the goals seem to have failed on a broader scale in most of the third world regions and it becomes apparent that at the current trend, it will be impossible to realize even a portion of the MDGs.

The first fault one finds with the MDGs, as good intentioned and noble as they seem, is that they set the same goal for every country and region irrespective of their sociopolitical, cultural economic situations or their developmental stage.

Countries in the European continent (and those bordering it) will have an easier task of improving the poverty and education situations, and they have, probably because of the infrastructure present in the countries themselves or in bordering countries. Other countries, which do not have access to such resources or do not have infrastructures built for such change will have a harder time achieving these same goals or reaping similar results. Examples of these would be the Sub-Sahara African countries, where it seems that there has been very little progress, if any, in terms of poverty improvement or education (OECD).

A country’s political situation matters too, it may be that the MDGs are not the first priority in a countries political agenda, social stability and security of the countries assets also play a major role in the division of government interest. For example, in the Pakistan Development Forum 2004, the only point on Pakistan’s agenda that was in accordance with the MDGs was the reduction of poverty and there was little or no mention of the MDGs themselves. However, in the 2006 Pakistan Development Forum, it was realized that Pakistan would need 1.6 billion dollars of extra financing from outside sources in order to be able to keep on track with the MDGs.

Problems faced by larger countries might be different from the problems faced by smaller countries. For larger countries, the problem might be building the infrastructure and becoming self sufficient in providing that resource; be it health, education, feeding the masses, etc. Larger countries might look towards such things as building canals for irrigation, building quality schools and universities for education, or building hospitals and a better health system, all of which can tend to the needs of the masses. Conversely, while facing problems on its own, most countries do not have to deal with super-massive populations and might have a head start by actually importing these resources, especially health and education. Setting up infrastructure such as buildings and structures might be easier too as it would tend to a much smaller populations. For an extreme example, a much smaller for a country like Singapore improved it’s conditions from being backwards at its independence, to having a 95 percent literacy rate and improving other conditions as well.

Countries like Pakistan and India, which are third world countries, still have a larger GDP (28th and 6th) than many countries and are able to allocate some portion of their resources to each of these goals. One problem faced by most of the smaller third world countries is that they do not share the same purchasing or allocating powers as their larger third world brothers. Most of these countries probably might not be able to afford extensive, substantial, and effective programs for all of the eight goals and might be better off concentrating on a couple of them.

One benefit from this is that one form of development will eventually support other forms of development; for example if the masses are educated, they will have a better sense of health care and will be able to afford and sustain better facilities and systems, and vice versa. As is apparent the MDGs have, in a broader sense, failed or that it seems that they will fail come 2015. Maybe the smaller developing countries should pick out a few of the goals and try to achieve them, instead of trying to attain all of the goals and falling short on most of them.

Choosing which improvements a country will concentrate really depends on which country is in context. Choosing AIDS reduction in a country like Pakistan would be feasible but it might be a tradeoff, with such a large population, by not concentrating on education; which would be a deathblow to its long run development, especially with 6.5 million children out of school and recently the government has promised to double the GDP allocation for education. Similarly, choosing not to make AIDS a top priority in an African country, such as Botswana or Swaziland, would be not tending to around thirty percent of its population. This would be both inhumane and in the longer run, it would reduce human capital and the potential to participate in a global economy. In addition, an economic reason for the latter would be that sick people would not be able to work, reduce the overall education rate, be dependents on their government for help, and increase the burden on the non HIV/AIDS infected populace for support. Apart from that, these countries seem to have a much higher education rate.

Let us choose a model country to analyze. Firstly, we must realize that there is no model country we can base our ideas on, every country is so unique in its political history and in its problems that no country would come under the title of a model country. Although there might be some similarities between some countries, not all the properties would apply to any one country. We can choose a Sub-Saharan country. this country, like most impoverished countries will be with a low population, moderate education rate, high percentage of the population with AIDs, an unstable or corrupt government and civil, be either self-sustaining or dependent on foreign aid (but not able to interact with the global economy in terms of export) , with a high external debt. Such would be the typical problems of many impoverished countries, not just Sub-Saharan ones.

One such country could be Guinea.

Guinea has a population of 9 million, it has a very low rate of education at around 20% that too is unequally divided among the genders, and it has suffered bouts of political instability, and is neighbors with some very unstable states. Almost 4 percent of its population is living with AIDS. Guinea also has many mineral resources ranging from bauxite to diamonds. Like many African countries, it has also been deemed a failed state. Political strife recently ended with the appointment of the new Prime Minister, Lansana Kouyate.

I believe that if a country like guinea would have to concentrate on any two of the MDGs, then those goals should be educating its masses and building a global partnership for development.

Although it is true that AIDS is prevalent in the society, I believe that with education, it can be contained and eventually eradicated.

The reason I chose education in Guinea is that the country suffers from a very low rate of people who complete their primary education. secondly, it seems that the country has been building its infrastructure and has improving its rate of completing primary education was around 30% in 2000, and was up to 50% by 2005 and if rates and efforts continue, they may be able to reach their goals of achieving full primary education. A third thing which one observes is that, the disparity between boys and girls stays at around 15-20% , but both seem to be increasing at the same rate of about an additional 10% a year.

The one other benefit of education is that it will rub off onto the other sections of the goals too. It will definitely benefit health, people will be more aware of diseases etc and how to avoid contracting them. Another way it will benefit the health sector would be that the children who pursue higher education might end up going into medicine and eventually help the medical sector be extensive and self sufficient. The same will be true for other sectors such as government and poverty as the educated masses would be more self aware and more empowered. In addition, it would seem that with education, political instability would decline and violent protests would decline, bringing about a change in the region.

The second goal I chose to pursue was development for global partnership. This was chosen because like many third world countries, Guinea suffers from bouts of political instability, while at the same time it has a very underdeveloped economy while at the same time being rich in minerals and resources. If applied properly, and if not hindered by political problems, I believe that with global partnership, Guinea could become a much more flourishing country. In the longer run, I believe that this would provide the capital and the infrastructure to develop and sustain a good economy and employ the newly educated masses.

Developing a global partnership and educating its people would, I believe be the most beneficial of combinations for a country like Guinea.

In the end a country will have to be able to decide what works in its own country, it may have a set path and choose to pursue development actively. Having to comply with the development goals might throw it off track

A country will have to assess what it needs instead of being told to do what it needs to do. As living in a culture, deciding what is best for the people, reading about it, and then making decisions based on the data alone are two very different and extreme paths. Educating the masses would in turn help produce a much-needed middle ground where the people would be able to govern themselves.

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To me it seems like many people have divided the recession into two parts, corporate recession and the consumer recession, with the corporate recession usually leading the way. It seems that the corporate recession started a few months back, back in October, Caterpillar had already predicted a recession in the early part of the next year.  Other companies like Ford followed a month later. It seems that the spillover had started to take its toll. Corporate profits fell at an annual rate of $19.3 billion in the third quarter, first time in years, and domestic earnings dropped by $41.2 billion.

But Lynch figures that the recession has already arrived.

Chief Merrill Lynch North American Economist, David Rosenberg points out the trends of consumer spending and year-over-year buying right before and into the last two recessions was very similar to what is happening now. That is, low consumer confidence at critical points shopping periods.

Amongst a plethora of economic indicators, he points out is that “real average weekly earnings peaked in January, motor vehicle sales peaked in January, consumer expectations (according to the University of Michigan) peaked in January, truck tonnage peaked in March, the Conference Board’s ‘jobs are plentiful’ index peaked in March, total construction spending peaked in May, and bond yields peaked in June.” All these seem to support the argument of an oncoming recession.

At another point, the daily mail has quoted Rosenberg claiming “that sky-high energy costs, a weak jobs market, tumbling house prices and, of course, much tighter credit have together conspired to push embattled US consumers over the edge”. Rosenberg does not expect the economy to return to growth until the end of next year. In fact, he doesn’t expect this growth to return by end 2008 unless the Fed actually cuts the interest rate all the way down to 2%

The Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. analysis of third quarter operating income posted by U.S. companies has confirmed many suspicions; economic activities slowed sharply with profits declining 8.5 percent from same quarter in the past year. For lynch, soaring energy prices, unemployment, a housing slump and an ongoing credit squeeze say it all.

The Anderson Center at Chapman University estimates that the domestic product will shrink by 1 and 2% in subsequent quarters next year, but will recover somewhat later in the year; to them, growth for the whole year seems bleak at around 1% (while the growth rate for the world is predicted to be at 4.9%).  They also claim that total private construction spending will shrink next year by $125 billion, matched with an expected $91 billion decline this year.

Still there are many optimistic views afloat too.

According to the San Francisco Times, 6th December, the UCLA Anderson report does not see the United States economy going into a recession anytime soon, there are a many reasons and indicators which they believe point the other way.

The first indicator is a simple one, Edward Leamer, the director of the UCLA Anderson Forecast, believes “if problems in housing were going to trigger a recession, the nation would be in recession already”.

The second of the indicators is that unemployment is still at a steady level of 4.6%. (Unemployment was at 4.5% in July and increased to 4.7% in October). According to the Anderson Report, unemployment would have to go up to 6% by the end of 2008, that is, 2 million people losing their jobs in the coming year, in order for a recession to take place.

A third and more obscure indicator pointed out by the report is that, after the previous recession, most companies didn’t hire too many workers so presently they don’t have too many workers to let go.

However, it seems obvious, that the housing market fiasco will definitely have an impact on the economy slowing it down considerably and it will be some time before it will be able to get back on track.

One important factor to consider in this whole event is the role of the ever declining dollar.

There have been many milestones in the decline of the dollar; in July, the dollar hit a record low against the Euro, and currently the Canadian dollar has overtaken the falling dollar. Still in such a weakened state, the Wall Street Journal claimed on November 19th, that “The weak dollar isn’t the inflation driver it once was”

The main reason for that seems to be that other countries exporting to the US, wanting to keep their market share, lower their prices to maintain the price level at which the goods are available.

Therefore, as pointed out by the article, a drop of a certain percentage is not equaled by a rise in prices at the same magnitude. In last year’s 10% decline in the value of the dollar, the actual pass-through actually amounted to only one-quarter to one-tenth of a currency’s depreciation getting passed through as higher prices for imported products.

In such a case, the Federal Reserve can lower the funds rate, a move that tends to weaken the dollar even more and help to boost the economy without worrying as much about inflation. As of early December, the Fed did lower the funds rate which in turn affects the interest rate. As there is a lower chance of inflation, the fed can continue to encourage investment and growth without much fear of inflation.

Secondly, when one looks at the reports from the November 2007 Beige Book, one realizes that tourism and consumer spending is up for areas bordering Canada, this is because since the Canadian dollar now has a higher value, Canadians would prefer to spend that money in the United States to be able to avail this extra value. Similar effects are to be observed as most of the other first world countries’ money is now worth more in the US.

Similarly subsequent reductions in the funds rate have encouraged foreign investment, have made the US economy more competitive in the world market and the US trade deficit is currently the lowest it has been in the past two years.

One direct benefit for the United States could be that Airbus could now possibly consider moving their manufacturing plants to the United States.

The International Business Times stated on December 7th that “According to the BBC, European industrialists are suspicious that the US government is happy to let the dollar drop as it makes US exporters more competitive, something US officials have denied.”

Also, even at a time like this, corporate profits and profit margins remain at or near record levels, and attributed to that, sometimes the stock market seems more upbeat than it needs to, (at others it panics like it should). The Arizona Republic quotes James Glassman saying “It’s not just about U.S. anymore, It’s a global economy”, that is, since the US companies have strong ties in the growing nations, they too reap in their profits and are not just confined to the US economy as they once were. That coupled with the ADP labor statistics report which showed that there had been a large increase in private sector employment and President Bush’s announcement on freezing rates on some of the subprime mortgages for a while has alleviated tension both from the economy and the stock market.

With growth in certain sectors seemingly on the horizon, it seems harder to believe that the US will completely fall into a recession.

Still, it seems that even the larger US companies seem to be facing recession, and this had seemed imminent, with companies which do not have very deep ties with the rest of the developing world, and were affected by the rise in energy prices. The S&P 500’s revised operating profits for the fourth quarter are predicted to rise to 1.1% but that is a far cry from 8.8% predicted earlier.

Currently it seems that certain groups are trying to do damage control by trying to convince the rest of the world that the recession wont spillover onto them, but this seems to me to be just some way to keep the foreign investors interested and investing in the United States as that is one of the few sectors that is still working for them, Merrill Lynch itself is one of the groups preaching that the recession wont affect the rest of the world. The two problems I see with this is that, firstly a similarity between this and what just happened in the local housing markets and the damage control that was done for it and what is being done for this situation; just like we were assured that the housing market fiasco would not spill over onto the rest of the market, we are being assured that the world would not be completely affected. Secondly it seems that just as the weak dollar shows positive signs for the United States; it holds the opposite tidings for other countries in the world, especially those reliant on the US for exports.

When one looks at the many indicators, it seems obvious that there will strong decline in growth; it is hard to say whether this would result in a severe depression or just a lull in growth. Sometimes it just seems like a battle between a just few factors; the weakening dollar and a few other sectors elevating growth enough to combat the decline in growth faced by the housing and other weakened markets, and the Federal Reserve doing just enough to see it all through without going over the top. At other times it seems like it’s just a spillover that needs to be contained and fixed, but at times it seems like its too late for that. Economies weave such intricate webs, everything has different effects on the rest of the variables, and one would think that with all this experience and history, there would be easier and smoother handling of the situation every time there seems to be a recession on the horizon. In some cases, this idea itself makes one optimistic enough that the recession will be as hard hitting as everyone expects it to be.

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The names initially, in whichever order they were derived, were to label the countries which had no political inclination towards either of the two superpowers of the cold war, which in turn, with their allies became the first and second world.

In addition, it does not seem to matter whether a country is developing, or is already at a high level of development, an example of which would be Singapore, which has a high level of development but would be classified as third world country just because of its geographical location. Similarly, some of the newly formed pieces of the former Soviet Union, the second world, might actually be worse off than many of the countries in the third world.

Conversely, it may seem that for actual developing nations, the title of the third world might actually be a self-fulfilling prophecy, a sort of placebo effect. Here a country titled the third world will believe that it is one of the worse of countries and will thus experience problems which might be attributed to underdeveloped countries and so in a sense, become one itself.

If we agree that we should stop numbering the world, then we should agree that we should stop making rankings such as the failed state index (published by the fund for peace) either, which singles out countries, which, as the word suggests, have no hope left and seems to suggest that nothing more can be done for countries like that.

What I personally find worse is that when a country is titled the third world, it brings with it notions of underdevelopment, of civil disobedience and gives the impression of a backwards and deformed nation. Having Lived in Karachi, Pakistan, I would never have guessed that Pakistan is a third world country, indeed there are many parts of Pakistan and even parts of Karachi that are underdeveloped, but most of the metropolitan cities like Karachi , Lahore and Islamabad are remarkably developed.

The label might even bring on a superiority complex in the rest of the world, such that the standard of living is better in a first world, many would argue that there are many people living happily (and probably are much happier) in the third world. In addition, that the degrees of freedom, although of a different type, are present in the third world too, another way of saying that would be that people when faced with a certain hindrance, find their way around it.

Which brings us back to our original definition, the first world would be the purely capitalist powers, the second being the old/present socialist powers and then the third world would be the powers which do not conform to either of these systems and thus are slightly out of the understanding of these two worlds. Each of these systems have their own drawbacks and each system is constantly developing on its own.

Labeling a country a third world implies that it should aspire towards being a first world country, which in itself implies that a third world should adopt the ways of the first world and also that it should look up to the first world. One obviously asks who divided and numbered the parts of the world, and it is obvious that the term was not coined in the ‘third world’ itself.

I do not believe that the distinction between the three worlds should be withdrawn. Maybe by numbering them, we give a perception of ranking, so that should be revoked if possible. Nevertheless, in all cases, there is a difference between the three systems (and even more so between the third world nations themselves), and so, not discriminating between them would be wrong.

It seems that imposing labels is never a good idea.

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