 Dear students, in this module, we are going to talk about what causes the poverty in Pakistan. So there are areas of varieties of causes of poverty in Pakistan. We will be talking about these causes one by one. So first, we talk about the lack of proper education or lack of quality education. The literacy rate in Pakistan is 59%. It means that almost more than 40% of Pakistanis are yet to be literate and people do not have any concept about the modern earning sources. So they need to be properly aware about the modern entrepreneurship or entrepreneurial skills should be imparted to them. The most people are unable to adopt technology due to the lack of relevant skills. And then we have the large scale import as compared to export that only in 2019 Pakistan's imports include 12.4 billion from China, 6.33 billion dollars of worth of export from United Arab Emirates UAE and 2.6 billion from United States, 2.4 billion from Saudi Arabia. So it means that a huge revenue is consumed each year because of the import products that which are very expensive like the products like IT related products, mobile phones, computers as well as the modern gadgets, the latest vehicles and different communication communication related commodities. So these large scale imports are having a significant burden on Pakistan's economy that is ultimately producing more poverty in the country. And then we have the lack of political will. It means that political elite is far less aware of the ground realities. While making the social policies, they usually adopt an idealistic approach which is not being really situated with the indigenous realities of the country. The policies are often based on the official surveys where it is usually portrayed that most of the things are going in the better way. The things are improving, which might not be the case, the ground realities might be different than what is being portrayed through the official statistics. And the implementation of these policies also lack the efficiency, why? Because there is no political will, there is no proper engagement of enthusiastic workers. So they half-heartedly try to implement those policies which ultimately result, usually result on failure. So these policies need to have a strong political will with strong dedication in order to reduce the poverty in Pakistan. And then corruption also makes a very important contribution in sustaining rather increasing the poverty in Pakistan. As we see that Transparency International 2017 Corruption Perception Index ranked Pakistan at 117th position out of 180, which is considered pretty shameful for the countries who fall very low in this index. So Pakistan's 117th position is also not a very good indicator. In other words, we need to control the corruption in our system. And privatization can be another important factor that government is unable to manage different departments. So sometimes these departments are being privatized and country has the lower reserve assets and a number of companies are sold to the foreign investors and says government cannot run those companies and when they are selling those companies or the employees are also being affected because they lost their jobs and services provided by these companies then become pretty much expensive for the people and for the citizens of Pakistan because they are the profit earning companies whereas the government is usually applying the policies of non-profit basis. And as we know that overpopulation is also another significant factor and Pakistan has one of the highest population growth rates in South Asia which is 2.1. The current population of the country is considered to be more than 200 million people which is the 5th largest population of the world and its growth rate and all these growing populations are pretty much contributing factors for the poverty. And since 1947 Pakistan's population has tripled. So you know the geographic area has not increased the resources has not increased where on the other hand the population is now threefold. So you see that how these problems have significantly increased and on to that we are finding some very unproductive trends of population in Pakistan. One of them is urbanization rather rapid and unplanned urbanization and because of that we see that more and more population is trying to dwell in urban areas as compared to the rural areas and in addition to that we are producing more and more housing societies by effacing the agricultural land by wasting the agricultural land that is also adding to the environmental degradation so all these issues are pretty much contributing to the poverty of Pakistan. So unemployment is ultimately of contributed to all these aspects which is 4.45%. It means that a huge chunk of Pakistan population is unemployed and it complicates the poverty because if you do not find the adequate opportunities of employment you would ultimately go to the other antisocial activities and by that the crime rate would increase and this all makes it a vicious cycle of poverty where everything is interrelated to one another so they are continuously cyclically contributing from one factor to another one factor to another and by that the whole poverty cycle goes on and if we need to break the poverty we have to have a holistic approach to address these issues so there are lesser opportunities for youth to utilize or to materialize and if this potential population of youth which is the huge chunk of our population if it is being realized that there are not enough opportunities in Pakistan that can become pretty much catastrophic for not only for the population of Pakistan but for the situation of poverty as well so other causes also include the worsening of law and order situation as you know the poverty also is the contributed factor to increase the crime rate and low national income GDP if GDP is low Pakistan's GNP is also low because we have more expo imports as compared to the exports so increase in the utility charges as you can observe that we have a higher rates of electricity higher rates of gas higher rates of water supply nowadays as compared to the past so it means that there is a price hike or inflation and imposition of unjustified taxes as well as low living standards so all these are contributed to the non-productive expenditures which means that we are spending more on the luxurious items as compared to being productive or being investing in those items which can further lead to generate the capital so backward infrastructure and is also another factor which means that if we do not equip our society with the latest available technology or modern infrastructure we would be lagging far behind than the developed countries and nepotism and landlord culture is also contributed factor to poverty because when there is no merit people are continuously being discouraged from being part of productive activities they are less likely to be part of the business philanthropy as well as of creative opportunities so landlords are also discouraging the labour population to be more productive by making their work less incentivized so all these factors are interrelated and if we currently observe poverty it is because these factors are contributing to the overall situation of poverty in Pakistan