Education Reform in Pakistan v2
Education Reform in Pakistan: Through Popular Demand or
Political Activism?
education is that the disadvantaged parent gets the
beating at both ends, firstly by being already deprived
of quality education for her children and secondly for
inadequately articulating her demand. Actors such as
politicians are also constrained (and enabled) by local
contexts, history, discourses, resources, institutions,
structures, etc. However, in this simplistic narrative,
they are easily let off the hook simply because they are
seen as passive responders to the public demand.
However, as active politicians, they are, like anywhere
else in the world, seeking re-election. Here it is pertinent
to invoke the notions of selectorate — the set of people
with a say in choosing leaders and with a prospect of
gaining access to special privileges doled out by the
leaders — and the winning coalition — the subgroup
of the selectorate who maintain the incumbent in office
in exchange for special privileges (Bueno et al., 2003).
Bueno et al. (2003) argue that in the case of authoritarian
states, the size of the selectorate and the winning
coalition is too small. The implication of this, they
argue, is that what appears to be a bad policy from a
rational standpoint is actually good politics inasmuch as
it helps keep the incumbent in power. I would argue
that what Bueno et al. claim for autocracies also applies
to fledgling democracies such as Pakistan. While the
political office holders in Pakistan are responsive to the
interests of a small winning coalition to keep them in
office, they find it useful to explain their inaction in terms
of a lack of pressure on them from their constituents to
improve the performance of public sector schools (Bari,
2011).
One way out of this dilemma is to work on the actors
on both ends, i.e. by helping both the citizens to demand
better and the politicians to recognise that educating
the masses is in their own self-interest. This approach
then introduces another actor into the scene who
occupies the position of neither the citizen nor the
politician but a mentor of sorts for both. The trouble
with this approach is that it seeks to change the attitudes
and behaviours of the potential demander and the
potential responder to the demand without changing
the objective conditions which enabled their existing
apathies in the first place. As I write this, I am aware of
some innovative interventions that attempt to help
citizens articulate their demand for education and also
help politicians and political parties become more
responsive to them. We stand to learn a great deal about
their effects with time.
Another way out of this dilemma is to help politicians
develop what is called enlightened self-interest. This
involves reminding them that the positive externalities
that follow from quality education for all citizens would
eventually work in favour of their own interests in the
longer run, and that education for all is a win-win
situation. Similar arguments were used by the reformers
advocating universal education in the Western countries.
While true, it remains a long shot nevertheless. In the
near term, politicians' children are not likely to attend
the same schools as the children of our disadvantaged
parent/inarticulate demander. The demander and the
so-called responder live and operate in two mutually
exclusive spheres of existence. The crucial common
denominator that these different spheres lack is the “to-
be-educated-children”. It is unlikely that the children of
politicians will attend public schools. We need to grasp
the significance of this fait accompli. What motivation
can there be on the part of politicians, or the elite in
general, to think about the education of other children,
if not either charity (a religious motivation) or an
enlightened self-interest (a political motivation)? There
is enough, actually a lot, of the former, as exemplified
by the foundations of many sorts in Pakistan — those
that actually run the schools. But there is too little
evidence of the latter. The question then is, why are the
elite not motivated enough to think of mass education
as a huge self-interest issue? What is the specific aspect
of our political economy that enables this absence of
“enlightened self-interest”? These questions cannot be
answered by simply providing awareness about the
importance of education to politicians. It is also unlikely
that the objective conditions that have dumbed the
voices of the “inarticulate” would change through time-
bound interventions aimed at making them more
