Milk and money

by Hussain Bux Mallah and Haris Gazdar

Photo credit: ILRI/Stevie Mann/Flickr

The livestock sector plays an important role in the economy of Pakistan contributing 10.8 per cent of the GDP, with milk as the largest commodity, accounting for about 51 per cent of its total value. According to household surveys such as the Federal Bureau of Statistic’s Household Integrated Economic Survey or HIES, milk and milk products account for a quarter of total household consumption. Typically, surveys such as HIES ask respondents to recall the total amount of a commodity consumed by the household in a reference period. If that commodity has not been bought then its value is imputed by applying local market prices to the amount consumed, before reporting it as part of the household budget. So the economic value of milk is measured using the yardstick of a market transaction.

Women’s work and wages

by Haris Gazdar

Photo Credit: Collective for Social Science Research

While researching the linkages between women’s work in agriculture and nutrition outcomes in Pakistan, for Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia (LANSA), we came across an instructive puzzle. A big segment of the workforce is ruled out from participating in a particularly labour-intensive activity. The harvesting of cotton, an important cash crop, generates a great deal of seasonal employment in the rural economy but the work is almost entirely carried out by women who might remain employed on a non-stop basis for up to four months. Women and men, labourers and employers, all concur that it is women’s work, and a man stands to lose respect and status if he takes part in it.

The chingchi's tryst with Karachi

By Kabeer Dawani

Qingqi by Carol Mitchell/Flickr

With at least 16 million people, Karachi is the largest city in Pakistan, and one of the largest in the world. Yet, it does not have a mass transit system to serve the transport needs of its residents (except motorbikes of course!). The most recent form of mass transit that was present was the Karachi Circular Railway, which was shut down in 1999. Since then, several new schemes to increase buses have failed, with the result that the total number of buses and minibuses has stayed roughly constant over the last 15 years. But with a growing population, the demand for public transport has only increased.

Hospitality: the City vs. the Village

by Ayesha Tarek

Photo credit: Eric Lafforgue/Flickr

In January of this year I was in rural Punjab conducting fieldwork on a study called Women’s Work in Agriculture and Nutrition, prior to that I was interviewing adolescents and their families in lower income areas of Karachi for a study called Being an Adolescent in Karachi. As a surveyor I was introduced to interview respondents by a local resource person in both settings and although my position as a researcher was the same in both sites I noticed a stark difference in how people treated strangers between the two sites.

Mother Karachi and the Mother

by Hussain Bux Mallah

Rent Me by Benny Lin/Flickr

Karachi is often called the mother of the poor and the indigent – she will feed and nurture those that reach her. Upon entering the city you are welcomed by billboards announcing ‘To Let’ almost inviting you to come and stay. Though it is quite another matter that you can’t find any public toilets in case of need!

I met Jumman first in 2012 when our team interviewed him as part of a longitudinal study on food security. He reminisced fondly about the time when mother Karachi had been kind to him. He had arrived a few years before, got a job through a relative, got married and regularly sent money home to his wife and his natural mother in their village in Shaheed Benazirabad. But then his fortune turned,

The Government’s Obligation to Uphold the Right to Maternal Health

by Sara Malkani

Photo credit: Patient with nurse at Koohi Goth Women's Hospital/ Dr. Sarwan

WHO estimates the rate of maternal mortality in Pakistan at 170 per 100,000 lives births. In developed countries the figure is around 11 per 100,000.

The high rates of maternal mortality and morbidity in Pakistan are not simply a reflection of inadequate resources or poverty, or lack of priorities on the part of the government. They also constitute violations of the fundamental right to health guaranteed under the Constitution of Pakistan. The right to health does not mean that everyone has a right to be healthy. Nor does it mean that the state is responsible for every death or injury. Instead, the right to health means that governments must generate conditions in which everyone can be as healthy as possible.[1]

The Developmental Role of the Central Bank

by Asad Sayeed

Photo credit: insignificantnobody/flickr

‘States vs. Markets’ was the buzzword for many of us studying economics or politics in the 1980s and 1990s. As the wall collapsed in Berlin – signaling the end of the cold war – the (false) triumphalism of markets was trumpeted. In time, the academic debate also shifted from this simple binary to give way to more heterodox ways of framing issues relevant to policy and social change.