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six - Pakistan: a journey of poverty-induced shame
- Edited by Erika K. Gubrium, OsloMet - storbyuniversitetet, Sony Pellissery, Ivar Lødemel, Gesellschaft für wissenschaftliche Datenverarbeitung mbH Göttingen
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- Book:
- The Shame of It
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 03 February 2022
- Print publication:
- 11 December 2013, pp 111-132
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Summary
Introduction
A federal parliamentary republic of over 180 million people, Pakistan has the sixth largest population and 27th largest gross domestic product (GDP) purchasing power parity (PPP) in the world (IMF, 2012). However, its multidimensional poverty headcount stands at 49.4 per cent and it ranks 145th on the Human Development Index (OPHI, 2011; UN, 2011). Although the responsibility for policy theoretically rests with the Cabinet and individual ministers, because of a feeble and erratic democracy, it is often senior civil servants who assume the central roles in the conception, framing and delivery of policies.
This chapter begins by tracing the evolution of anti-poverty policy in Pakistan over the last 66 years to understand its role in the poverty–shame nexus. It then goes on to consider the specific psychosocial impact on beneficiaries of Pakistan's two largest ongoing cash assistance programmes, Zakat and the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP). Research involving interviews with adults and children living in poverty and with those in economically stable positions, including nine parliamentarians (Choudhry, 2014a, 2014b, 2014c), largely supported a connection between poverty and shame (see Smith, 1776; Sen, 1983) and also suggested that shame may be largely influenced by relevant state policies. In order to investigate this finding more closely, an in-depth analysis of anti-poverty policies in Pakistan from the start of independence in 1947 until the present day was carried out. Within this time frame, a closer focus was reserved for the most recent five years, encompassing government policies introduced in the post-Musharraf era.
Historical framework: the evolution of inequality and the space for poverty-related shame
Historically, concepts such as dignity, pride and self-respect in Pakistan derive from collective religious, political and cultural traditions. Muslim minority rule over India for almost 800 years, for example, injected a certain communal pride among them that was instrumental in the demand for a separate homeland at the time of the British departure in 1947. M.A. Jinnah, the founding father of Pakistan, made a broadcast to the people of Australia on 19 February 1948 and described the collective identity of the nation in terms of ‘all equal in rights, dignity and self-respect’ (Dawn Archives, 2001). On the ground, however, the reality of being ‘equal’ was intricately rooted in a past that was hugely influenced, socially and economically, by political allegiances formed during the colonial era and by migration outcomes at the time of India's division.
Poverty in Global Perspective: Is Shame a Common Denominator?
- ROBERT WALKER, GRACE BANTEBYA KYOMUHENDO, ELAINE CHASE, SOHAIL CHOUDHRY, ERIKA K. GUBRIUM, JO YONGMIE NICOLA, IVAR LØDEMEL, LEEMAMOL MATHEW, AMON MWIINE, SONY PELLISSERY, YAN MING
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- Journal:
- Journal of Social Policy / Volume 42 / Issue 2 / April 2013
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 28 January 2013, pp. 215-233
- Print publication:
- April 2013
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- Article
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Focussing on the psychosocial dimensions of poverty, the contention that shame lies at the ‘irreducible absolutist core’ of the idea of poverty is examined through qualitative research with adults and children experiencing poverty in diverse settings in seven countries: rural Uganda and India; urban China; Pakistan; South Korea and United Kingdom; and small town and urban Norway. Accounts of the lived experience of poverty were found to be very similar, despite massive disparities in material circumstances associated with locally defined poverty lines, suggesting that relative notions of poverty are an appropriate basis for international comparisons. Though socially and culturally nuanced, shame was found to be associated with poverty in each location, variably leading to pretence, withdrawal, self-loathing, ‘othering’, despair, depression, thoughts of suicide and generally to reductions in personal efficacy. While internally felt, poverty-related shame was equally imposed by the attitudes and behaviour of those not in poverty, framed by public discourse and influenced by the objectives and implementation of anti-poverty policy. The evidence appears to confirm the negative consequences of shame, implicates it as a factor in increasing the persistence of poverty and suggests important implications for the framing, design and delivery of anti-poverty policies.