White Collar Class: Silent Suffering Segment

Harf - A Journal of South Asian Studies, 2018

The New Pakistani Middle Class by Ammara Maqsood explores the emergent politics and contestations between an old, established middle class and a new, upwardly mobile middle class in contemporary Lahore. In particular, she interrogates how the struggle between these different middle class groups for social recognition and legitimacy is mediated by the politics of modernity and practices of piety.

2019

This volume makes a major intervention in the debates around the nature of the political economy of Pakistan, focusing on its contemporary social dynamics. This is the first comprehensive academic analysis of Pakistan's political economy after thirty-five years, and addresses issues of state, class and society, examining gender, the middle classes, the media, the bazaar economy, urban spaces and the new elite. The book goes beyond the contemporary obsession with terrorism and extremism, political Islam, and simple 'civilian-military relations', and looks at modern-day Pakistan through the lens of varied academic disciplines. It not only brings together new work by some emerging scholars but also formulates a new political economy for the country, reflecting the contemporary reality and diversification in the social sciences in Pakistan. The chapters in this volume dynamically and dialectically capture emergent processes and trends in framing Pakistan's political economy and invite other scholars to engage with and move beyond these concerns and issues.

Since 1960 world has witnessed a change in the composition of population where developed countries have face aging working population and on the other hand developing countries like Pakistan has been blessed with young working population that has shown the way of potential development in every field .It has been further complemented by the fact that world has entered into "human age" where the driver of development is believed to be the talented individuals rather than capital. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the way Pakistan can adopt to cash the unemployment among its white collar professionals to gain economic benefit on the part of Pakistan as well as to the individuals themselves. The study reaches to the conclusion that skill mobility can provide the means for Pakistan to integrate into the world and generate capital for its development.

Inflation is simply rise in prices of commodities and devalues of money. It directly influences the standard of living. This paper dealt with the effects of inflation on standard of living in terms of expenses on food and non-food items, income, saving, loan and recreation. A sample of 200 male heads of families was taken from 2 towns out of 6 towns of Multan, Pakistan; using multistage sampling. Interview schedule was used as a tool for data collection. It was inferred from analysis of data that inflation did highly affect the middle class. People are compelled to get loan and to do over work, to fulfill their family expenditures due to the inflation. It was also concluded that standard of living of middle class people is decreased in 2011 as compared to 2010 due to the inflation because their expenses boomed up but there was minor increased in their income . Inflationary effects, at family level, can reduce, never eliminate, through keeping money circulation and abating saving during persistently intensifying inflation and renouncing to pay interest over money and goods, and income ought to be increased with the same ratio of rise in inflation.

1999

Economic Growth, Economic Performance and Welfare in South Asia

After a retarded economic growth over the past few years, a recovery in economic growth rate began as result of faster growth in industrial sector and respectable growth in services sectors. Although macroeconomic stability has been achieved, the reduction in fiscal deficit was also at the expense of public sector development and social sector expenditure over the past few years. While acceleration and pattern of economic growth together with stagnant investment are not propoor since sufficient employment is not likely to be created, the recent surge in food inflation will hurt the poor. While economic reform programmes undertaken within the framework of IMF/World Bank over past 15 years were aimed at increasing efficiency and/or reducing poverty, the trends in various dimensions of poverty indicate that absolute poverty and inequality have worsened and progress in human development dimensions remained poor in Pakistan.

2016

Pakistan is a large country with a population estimated at 130.580 million.1 The economy has a low-income of US $ 490 per capita, with an estimated Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) of US $ 2230.2 It has managed to achieve substantial economic growth in the past thirty years until the dawn of 1990s. The growth rate has averaged 6.8 percent, 4.8 percent and 6.5 percent in 1960s, 70s and 80s, respectively.3 Evidence from the National Income Accounts, Household Surveys and time series data on the real wages of unskilled workers shows that economic growth has contributed to reduce consumption poverty4 in Pakistan. The table placed as Appendix A at the end shows that GDP per capita has increased in real terms by about 63 percent between 1972-73 and 1990-91. Private consumption per capita also increased in real terms by about 36 percent. Despite the fact that the population has nearly doubled during the period, there have been gains in income and consumption in per capita terms.5 Further evid...

2019

The writer teaches economics at SOAS University of London, and is a senior research fellow at Bloomsbury Pakistan. INFLATION is once again the news, having risen further to 8.2 per cent in February. That inflation comes with costs is not news. For the poor, a rise in the prices of essential items (if it exceeds income growth) can be a death knell, both literally (for subsistence households), and indirectly, due to the inability to afford

LOW WAGES OF INDUSTRIAL LABOURERS WITH IMPACTS ON THEIR FAMILIES - A CASE STUDY OF INDUSTRIAL ESTATE PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN, 2020

The present study attempts to focus on the challenge of low wages with its impacts on industrial labourers' families in the Industrial estate Peshawar, Pakistan. Data was collected from the respondents (384) through questionnaire and focused group discussions. The analyzed data was presented and interpreted through univariate and bivariate analysis. Chi-square test was applied to access the association of dependent and independent variables. The results show a significant association between the determinants of the low wages and its worse impacts on the labourers' families.

2012

While trying to help its employees fight inflation and fluctuation in food basket price through yearly pay raises, the government of Pakistan failed in its obligations. Despite annual increase in pays, the low scaled government employees always get further compressed purchasing power. The problem resides in the tight differentials in the Basic Pay Scales. Annual pay raises are always announced as a percentage of basic pay for all scales resulting into inadequate increase in comparison with prevailing unleashed inflation for low paid employees. The major reason for increase in price of food basket is the oil price. Nevertheless, the tight differential in low scales demands optimization, remedial approach can be linking pay raises with oil prices, reducing unit production costs by increasing productivity to lower food prices, monetizing perks and privileges of top level managers etc.