Issues in Pakistan’s Economy Third Edition

This book is about understanding Pakistan’s structural transformation over six decades in a political economy framework. The author examines how and where such transformations have taken place in the economy, society, in class and gender relations, in manifestations of consumerism and culture, and in other ways. He assesses Pakistan’s trajectory of economic and political development and focuses on an economic and social history of Pakistan, using a political economy framework to examine the nature of this structural transformation. The book follows the narrative of the evolution of Pakistan’s social, economic and even political dispensation over many decades, highlighting key developments and events. As has happened so many times in Pakistan’s history, events with unintended consequences have shaped developments. Yet, social and economic change has also been somewhat anticipated and predictable, giving rise to relatively more certain outcomes. The immense growth of urban populations, of a middle class, and of a buoyant informal sector, alongside the breakdown of state authority and state institutions, has been unfolding almost expectantly. The previous trend of the ‘urbanization of everybody’, seems to have morphed into an ‘urbanization with informalization’, with the co-movements of urbanization and informal relations of production and exchange perhaps dominating social and political interaction. What this means for subsequent developments remains uncertain.