The Political Economy of Social Sector Development ;some thoughts

The gender disparity issue is again raising its ugly head in our excessively underdeveloped,human disparate society due to the unexpected,illiterate kind of edict or sermon thrusted by the Council of Islamic Ideology that the gender parity is un "Islamic".I read a book by Dr Iftikhar published in 1997 which showed clear differences in gender development ,social sector underdevelopment and poverty,ethnic intolerance,clear linkages to reliogiosize the society leading to massive underdevelopment.Eleven years hence we stand at the edge or maybe inside of an hole of massive underdevelopment,polarisation of society and almost no hope for coming out as the time for corrective measures has passed.The irony is that we take guidance and loans from institutions such as world bank and the IMF,not understanding their policies,their failures and what they are doing to us a s people and our society.We need to internalise our thinking in order to understand our society which is very diverse in its ethnic,religious,racial make-up.We clearly need to cultivate the values of fratenity,pluralism,socialistic behaviour and egalitarianism.Only a truely insightful attitude towards development,especially of the social sector will enable us to improve our indicators.No quick fix solutions to any measures will help.
Pakistan has a very large population ,of which fifty percent is women.They are actively involved in house work,farm work ,raising family,industries,service sector and other activities.They are contributing a large part to the economy in both formal and mostly informal economy.Their rights are not defined, addressed,or bestowed upon them.There is no mechanism in our society where human rights are disseminated as international agreed criteria and issues are made aware to all sections of society.We have not utilized the forum of religious scholars to adress this issue.Now in the post 9/11 world all religiuos issues have been superceded by terrorism.The good offices of the religious scholars to propagate the human rights to all masses has taken a backseat.Now there is so much confusion over secularism,human rights implementation of laws that almost no work is bieng done on scolarship of tehse issues.No muslim scholar has done any independant work on these issues so that we can live peacefully in modern world.All scholars shun away from new work as there are no chairs for such scholarship.Idealism as that of Iqbal is now used of context as some sort of magic wand to wake up muslims.It has worked to the detriment of society as various groups have used it for their own presumed advantage.(end of part 1)