Pakistan's future: Investment in human capital.

• Author: Aijaz, Urooj

Byline: UROOJ AIJAZ

With each passing day, Pakistan becomes an even more crucial player in world affairs. Home of the world's second-largest Muslim population, location of perhaps the planet's most dangerous borderlands, and armed with nuclear weapons, this South Asian nation will go a long way towards determining what the world looks like ten years from now.

The future of Pakistan presents and evaluates several scenarios for how the country will develop, evolve, and act in the near future, as well as the geopolitical implications of each. History reveals the fact that, the future of any nation will not determine by its physical and defense power but by its human power; the ultimate source behind every action. The source behind productivity and growth of the economy where the role of the state is just to utilize this limited physical and human resource wisely for attaining the economic and social well-being of its people.

A nation's output of goods and services, and thus its capacity to living standards, is limited by its resources and by the state of technical knowledge regarding how to utilize them. The traditional triumvirate of resources-land, labor, and capital-only capital has been thought of generally as subject to significant and appropriate social control. The land is given by nature, while population and hence the labor supply have been considered to be determined by forces outside the economic system The state of technological knowledge, too, has been considered determined largely outside the economic system, except to the extent that resources were directed toward research and development. Moreover, knowledge is significant largely to the extent that it becomes embodied in resources in the form of man-made capital.

Economic, social and environmental

Investment in human capital is one of the basic components of development and one of the fundamental rights enjoyed by human beings. It is considered the core of the sustainable development process. This investment is linked to a set of direct and indirect personal and social gains that make it essential in achieving all three dimensions of sustainable development: economic, social and environmental.

Healthy people and people who have access to quality education are better able to contribute to their communities, as they are more able to work, produce, innovate, tackle crises, or solve or adapt to problems compared to people who are less healthy and have not had access to quality...