Article 38 of Pakistan’s Constitution outlines the state’s commitment to provide social security, food, housing, healthcare, and education to all citizens without discrimination. However, socio-economic disparities and skewed public policy design and implementation leave a great deal of the citizenry unable to access these fundamental rights. Currently, around 24–30 percent of Pakistan’s population is trapped in a life even below poverty levels, while the extent of general multidimensional poverty is between 40 and 44 percent.
Given this sea of poverty and socio-economic vulnerability, the combined federal and provincial annual spending on social protection does not go beyond a paltry PKR ~1.1 trillion, which is not even 1 percent of Pakistan’s Gross Domestic Product. Interestingly, the spending also includes ~400 billion in untargeted subsidies given across the board for food, fuel, and electricity. The bulk of social protection funds is spent via unconditional cash transfers through the Benazir Income Support Programme. Pakistan’s spending on social protection as a percentage of its Gross Domestic Product is far lower than what countries in the South Asian region, such as Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, spend.
That we direly need to spend far more on social protection is obvious, but before that, Pakistan needs to integrate and institutionalise the design and structure of currently fragmented and politically personalised social protection programmes under a national social protection policy framework. First, the subject of the socio-economic registry as a foundation must be streamlined. Currently, the National Socio-Economic Registry, maintained by the Benazir Income Support Programme, has to be more dynamic and aimed at protection programmes beyond income support. It will be prudent if provinces have their own registries with enhanced data sets in view of their contexts and complement the National Socio-Economic Registry data, as Punjab did during the COVID-19 crisis to cover data gaps in the National Socio-Economic Registry, which could have excluded millions of vulnerable people from relief assistance.
A national social protection policy framework must be developed to not only provide a national vision and objectives for all programmes, but also protocols between provinces and the centre, along with administrative thresholds and triggers for peacetime programmes and disaster-response initiatives. In line with the Eighteenth Amendment, provinces must show leadership on social protection programmes, as opposed to how we have been dealing with them so far. The provincial social protection authority, as we see in Punjab, should be spearheading the social protection agenda in all four provinces, Gilgit-Baltistan, and Azad Kashmir.
It is also because of the absence of a nationally defined social protection floor that Pakistan has a series of ad hoc and fragmented programmes which often overlap, rather than a single guaranteed set of benefits and services for all citizens
Despite modest overall allocation, there is a mushrooming of numerous protection initiatives; for instance, besides the Benazir Income Support Programme, we have Pakistan Bait-ul-Mal, the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund, and Zakat programmes at the federal level. The provinces also have a similar situation of patchwork, which reflects ad hocism and reactive responses to specific problems, often with overlapping and duplicating functions. In the absence of a national policy framework, the Eighteenth Amendment has unintentionally led the provinces to develop their own strategies, leading to a more devolved and disjointed landscape. Pakistan must articulate a shared social protection policy and vision, which all programmes at the federal and provincial levels are aligned with and contribute to.
Pakistan faces serious challenges in financing pensions and preventing people from falling into poverty, which basically negates whatever impact and gains against poverty government programmes may have made. One possible way to address this dilemma is to encourage public–private partnerships to supplement and expand contributory unemployment insurance for at least the lower-income population to cover loss of income for a limited period in case of layoff. This should also include crop and livestock insurance, especially in flood-prone areas, which will not only build resilience among communities but also reduce the relief liability for the government. There are already pension plans sold by insurance companies; for low-income workers, the government may subsidise these by tax rebates and similar means.
Given the numerous political and economic limitations, it is imperative to prioritise tangible impact and accountability through a defined social protection floor, to provide a package of guaranteed minimum social security services to targeted people throughout life-cycle events. It is also because of the absence of a nationally defined social protection floor that Pakistan has a series of ad hoc and fragmented programmes which often overlap, rather than a single guaranteed set of benefits and services for all citizens.
Last but not least, the state must start institutionalising the social protection agenda through an investment-in-human-development lens rather than charity or welfare. Coherently designed and efficiently implemented social protection programmes not only keep vulnerable groups afloat, but also act as economic stabilisers during crises like recessions, pandemics, or natural disasters, thereby preventing a collapse in aggregate demand and helping cushion the economy from prolonged downturns.
Two of the most important and immediate gains Pakistan could make through an institutionalised social protection system are bringing ~25 million 5–15-year-old out-of-school children into education, the second-highest number in the world, and defusing the population bomb, which is growing at a high rate of 2.40 per cent. Appropriate household-level incentives for child education and smaller families hold the promise of success.