HR mobilisation necessary for egalitarian development
By Aftab Ahmad Khan

Population is these days described by some as the wealth of the poor. This notion is only partly true; at present population is a burden, but it is not without potential. It can be mobilised and turned into a powerful resource. Investment in man and woman for human capital formation must be made an important item on the agenda for action if a developing country like Pakistan is to find an escape from the whirlpool of poverty.

Most strategies of human resource mobilisation involve a series of assumptions. First, if they are to work, a process of ongoing structural change is necessary. This cannot be a one step affair; time is essential and the process has to be achieved by stages. But without structural change, efforts at human resource mobilisation are likely to languish. To reduce inequality, far seeing legislation and its implementation are inevitable. Pakistan and many other Third World countries have enactments that are aimed at the reduction of inequality, but they are half-hearted and their implementation has been weak. Welfare measures are necessary, but doles do not constitute development. While curbing expenditure on luxury and ostentation, it is also necessary to raise the earning capacity of the poor and to make openings for them in the structure of economic opportunity; jobs will have to be found for those who are without employment or in a state of disguised unemployment. Measures to reduce disparities between regions and groups are also necessary. Moreover, these steps should pave their way for imaginative institution building.

It should be carefully understood that if the efforts at structural change, induction of the economies of equity and institution building are halting and hesitating, it would be difficult to implement successfully any worthwhile strategy of human resource mobilisation for egalitarian development.

Most important of all, human resource mobilisation requires that people have genuine access to planning and that development endeavour becomes fully participative. An elite bias is reflected in most national plans of Third World countries, despite concessions to the ideas of grass roots planning and planning from below. No satisfactory mechanisms have been found which can integrate the elite’s and the people perceptions regarding the direction and shape of development plans. That is why the plans in most Third World countries are planner’s plans, which do not reflect the wishes and priorities of the people in any significant measure.

There can be little wonder that the common people, especially the poor show scant enthusiasm for the very abstract and sophisticated models that are developed by high level planners. Establishing two-way communication links between central planning and regional and local planning is a major task. While planning from below cannot take into account major national needs, there certainly exists a case for having a wide enough area in which people themselves can take decisions in regard to the immediate and vital needs of their lives.

Institutional erosion is one of the major causes of the limited success of planning and plan implementation. Institutions have to be renovated and re-energised. This can be done through imaginative institution building aimed at allowing the people access to them. De-concentration and devolution of government powers is necessary for meaningful planning.

The greater the load the government takes on, the more incompetently will it perform; and the more people have a share in decision making and access to planning and plan implementation, the more will development effort succeed . Access to planning can no longer be dismissed as a new fangled idea; it has become necessary.

In a large number of Third World countries, while most plans are theoretically sound, project formulation and assessment is generally weak. A component that is especially effete is the delivery system.

The public services in many development countries are being pulled in different directions. They have also to serve the survival interests of their political masters and this is often given priority over service to the people. Even with these constraints, some reforms can be introduced. The bureaucracy has to be more sensitive and responsive to the people and their wishes. It has to get out of the set grooves of precedent and procedure. Its routine and checks and balances are too cumbersome and cause delays, which are sometimes very costly. This calls for rationalisation and simplification of procedures and for the creation of a new operating culture. The bureaucracy has to be seen to work with the people.

It may be added that the bureaucracy of a country will have all the defects that are endemic to the society as a whole. Nepotism corruption and lack of work ethics will have to be fought one a societal level.

Bureaucracy, however, is a part of the intelligentsia and it is expected to be a relatively disciplined sector of society. As such changes in it will have to come in first, along with the rectification of the distortions that have crept into the political culture. The politics of power, patronage and mass deception does not allow the people genuine access to decision making; renovation and reforms in bureaucracy can be controlled more directly and immediately.

For development of a true work ethics and for mobilisation of human resources to achieve sustained equitable growth, conscientisation and politicisation are necessary conditions. Man cannot be driven to work like a slave, nor can he function mindlessly attending robot like to his assigned tasks. It is necessary for him to understand the forces that are shaping the modern world and his own place in them. It is necessary for the world’s poor to know that poverty is not divinely ordained but a man made condition.

The unhappy plight of a large section of mankind is not an unalterable fate; something can be done about it, and more equitable standards of living consistent with human dignity and freedom can be attained. This is what conscientisation is about.

Politicisation should be viewed as a complementary process aimed at imparting organised strength for goal – oriented action towards liberation. Unorganised masses, without a definite goal, can achieve little.

Conscientisation inevitably leads to politicisation and enables the people, through the strength of unity to steer social action towards a future that promises a fuller and richer life.

In the initial stages, conscrentisation and politicisation will have a de-stabilising effect and will unnerve the entrenched interests that wish to preserve their monopoly over power.

There is, however, every indication that the present social order is cracking up, and that no effort to hold conscientisation and politicisation in checks can succeed in maintaining the status quo. Any attempt to do so is likely to lead to anomic conditions and social chaos.

Thought and reflection can foresee the dangers of social anarchy much better and can initiate organised action to improve the situation; the rage of the mindless masses can only be destructive without any positive impact.

Effective human resource mobilisation for broad based development also necessitates change in the entire scheme of social attitudes and values towards women and enable them to become persons in their own rights. Ethical pronouncements and social practices in respect of women have tow different faces; in theory women have been applauded to the skies, but in practice they have been treated as the inferior sex, often as a property for the use and enjoyment of men. Social practice has to be changed and the position given to women in religions and secular doctrines has to be made a reality. Their human worth and dignity must be recognised.

 Equal participation will help bring about the necessary attitudinal changes. Happily popular reaction to their occupying high positions was much less than was feared. In traditional South Asia, there have been women prime ministers in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Increasing number of women are entering occupations that have so far been out of bounds for their sex; but a status of genuine equality has not yet been achieved. Opportunities, which can enable them to realise their full potential as human beings still remain to be created.