 Dear students, in this module, we are going to talk about why Pakistan is facing so many social problems or social issues. In other words, we will be talking about the causes of social issues. So, as we have discussed in our previous modules that Pakistan is facing a lot of problems because of poverty, because of unemployment, because of terrorism and because of the road safety issues. So, we will try to focus on these issues one by one in this module. First, if we talk about the poverty, we have the inequality of wealth distribution that is contributed to poverty in Pakistan. The rich people are having more access to the resources and by that they are becoming richer as compared to the poor. So, they have the huge income disparities. In other words, rich people have more opportunities to excel in the society as compared to the poor people. And lack of adequate governance is also adding fuel to fire. It means that we hardly have any stable government that puts serious, considerable, sincere efforts for the poor people as compared to those who are already on a powerful position. And poor industrial standards are another factor due to which our labor class is not getting out of the poverty because of that we are having low export rates. We do not find enough of the market for our products. That is pretty much contributing to our poor industrial standards and overpopulation is another big factor that is affecting the poverty of our people. We have more people as compared to our available resources and that is also one of the contributing factors for the unemployment because when the resources are inadequate or insufficient as compared to the number of people that would ultimately become the source of unemployment. And low national income, our GNP rate is also pretty much lower as compared to the other countries because we do not find a good market for our commodities and products that we are producing domestically. So international market does not find our products much more attractive as compared to the other countries that is also impacting our overall economic conditions. If we talk about the causes of unemployment, the unemployment rate is pretty much associated with the poverty. However, some distinctive causes can include bad governance, political instability, population growth, terrorism. The recent COVID-19 disease has also been considered one of the important factors that has contributed towards the unemployment of millions of Pakistani people. Energy crisis becomes another important factor because if we do not have enough electricity which is required by our industrial units, so they are unable to work efficiently and they are unable to meet the desired standards of quality as well as quantity. It means that we won't be able to export enough products or enough commodities that would ultimately produce an impact on employment rate. Then the lack of resources and lack of modern especially modern education along with the modern innovation and invention that would also produce the unemployment. Entrenched corruption is another factor throughout the history of Pakistan. Our politicians have been reverberating for the corruption against their opponents. So it means that corruption has almost become pretty much a norm of the society and none of the governments have been able to control the corruption in the system especially in the bureaucratic system that we have. The deeply embedded poverty is also contributing to unemployment. See if we talk about it is also pretty much directly related to these social issues that we have talked about previously like poverty and unemployment. If people are poor and they are unable to afford the quality education for their children, they are less likely to send their children to school. So poor education system, particularly the bifurcated education system by having the public and private system where we find the elite schools with the good quality education, those who can afford they can easily send their children over there. However, poor children are pretty much discouraged because of that because they would be unable to compete those children who are already on a significantly advantageous position and by that means that they would find little significance or little value of public education. Learning disabilities are another important factor of literacy. It means that learning disabilities are produced not only by the education system and education policy, but also by the pedagogical methods of the teachers. So these aspects also needs to be covered and any adequate allocation of GDP to education which is merely 2% of total budget which is far less than any of the countries not only in Asia but throughout the world. So it means that our government's priorities are far more different than producing the quality of education in the country or making people literate. So poverty, gender discrimination and lack of infrastructure are also consequentially pretty much related to the illiteracy because gender discrimination as significantly reflected by the statistics that almost every third of our female is illiterate. It means that we are not providing enough infrastructure facilities so that children could get trust on the existing infrastructure and could send their daughters to the schools. Terrorism is another important issue which is the social and political injustice and it is consequentially related to the other aspects like illiteracy. The more the people are illiterate the greater is the propensity or tendency to be radicalized because radicalization is being associated with the literacy rate. And unemployment is another factor. We have the global political scenario that is also becoming a contributing factor to terrorism especially after 9-11. The situation in the whole region was politically tilted to produce a kind of structured terrorism, a kind of deliberate terrorism in the region that has significantly affected the lives of Pakistani people. Improper government setup is another issue that we see that our political government do not have the adequate will to treat the terrorism as a manace and unfortunately for the two decades or more than two decades we have been facing this issue where a lot of people not only lost their lives lost their loved ones but also their means of subsistence. The absence of law and order is pretty much associated with the terrorism because if the law and order maintaining agencies are not working adequately that would also be a motivating factor for the terrorists to commit more crimes and to produce more of antisocial behavior in the society. So it means that we had the poor law and order situation in Pakistan because of the poor performance of these institutions and similarly the poverty is also a contributing factor to the terrorism. If we see some other causes that will include the lack of political will, an effective role of media by that means two social issues are pretty much highlighted by the media yet media is also one of the contributing to bringing the social change or bringing the negative social change by producing or by inducing the violence as one of the important factors in the media because the portrayal of violence on the media or in the virtual world is significantly associated with the practice of violence in the real world. Internal migration is another cause of social issues as you see we have higher rates of urbanization because of internal migration and so our cities are bombarded with a lot of social problems with a lot of complexities that even the cities are not right now are not considered pretty much safe, pretty much luxurious and pretty much comfortable for the living. If we talk about the ideological conflicts modernization has produced a lot of different rather conflicting ideologies not only for the people but particularly for the youngsters that they receive some conflicting messages through the media through the internet and through their education sometimes they consider that the modern ideas are pretty much good to follow other times they are confused that perhaps religious ideas are pretty much good to follow and some other times their tradition is also having some impact like the traditional parents being the traditional authority they are imposing their decisions on them so these conflicting ideologies are also contributing to add more fuel to fire in these social issues.