For reasons best known to successive governments, the five-year development plans have become moribund for the past 18 years.
Gauging the status of development on a periodic basis is a prime prerequisite in public administration. Governments learn about the outcomes of public spending done in different sectors and locations through such exercises.
These assessments also provide the justifications for strategising investments through programme or project modes. For reasons best known to successive governments, the five-year development plans have become moribund for the past 18 years. One can argue about the success or otherwise of this time-tested approach to development planning.
However, it is abandoned without instituting an alternative, and apparently replaced by project-based spending in different sectors of performance. Various exercises of information gathering keep informing us about the drastic shortcomings and development related disparities between provinces, intra-province comparisons as well as intra-district situations. Pakistan Standards of Living Measurement Survey (PSLM) 2019-2020 unfolds many realities.