DURING the watershed events of early May, Pakistan has once again proved what it is capable of. The repercussions amount to redefining the balance of power in the region and the world.

It was a demonstration of strategic excellence, immaculate coordination, and an iron resolve.

Now we need another national Operation Bunyanum Marsoos to address our pathetic human development situation.

What do we mean by human development? The proxy metric for human development is the Human Development Index (HDI). The HDI was created to emphasise that people and their capabilities should be the ultimate criteria for assessing the development of a country, not economic growth alone. It is a composite index measuring average achievement in three basic dimensions of human development a long and healthy life, knowledge, and a decent standard of living.

The calculation of a healthy life is life expectancy at birth; its knowledge dimension is measured as expected years of schooling and mean years of schooling; and its standard of living is expressed in gross national income per capita or GNI per capita. All three components have their own indices as well ie life expectancy index; education index; and GNI index.

The HDI is the geometric mean of normalised indices of each of the three dimensions. Human Development Report (HDR) Office is part of the United Nations Development Programme and produces annual thematic reports on human development and also calculates HDI for nearly 190 countries and territories in the world. HDR was initiated in 1990 and we have national, regional and global trends available since then.

Ironically, the idea of HDI was developed by Dr Mahbub ul Haq, a brilliant Pakistani economist whom The Economist called `one of the visionaries of international development`. He was Pakistan`s finance minister in 1985-86 and then again in 1988. He would be remembered for three things: pointing out that 22 industrial family groups dominate the economic and financial life-cycle of Pakistan; five-year development planning; and developing HDI while he was serving as a special adviser to UNDP.

Let us look at the human development situa-tion in Pakistan. For the purposes of this column, I have looked at Pakistan`s HDI over the last 10 years. Sadly, Pakistan`s HDI ranking has been declining since 2015. We ranked at 147 in 2015 and accordingto the latestreportthisyear, we have plummeted to 168, a fall of 21 notches in 10 years. This is abysmal, but are we surprised? Let us go down the notches and observe our plummet up close.

Current life expectancy in Pakistan is 67.6 years. More than 140 countries have higher life expectancy than us. An average Pakistani lives 17.9 years less than a citizen of Hong Kong, who has the highest life expectancy, 85.5 years. An average Pakistani`s lifespan is almost 10 years less than a Sri Lankan, Iranian, or Chinese citizen, and seven years less than a Bangladeshi. We live shorter, and qualitatively worse lives.

Expected years of schooling ie number of years of schooling that a child of school entrance age can expect to receive in Pakistan is 7.9 years and mean years of schooling is only 4.3 years.

Out of 193 countries, 167 countries in the world do better than Pakistan on both accounts. We have more than 25 million school-age children out of school which is roughly 36 per cent of all Pakistani children.

In nominal terms this is the second largest population of children in the world in any country, after Nigeria. Seventy-four per cent of these children are in rural areas. Seventyseven per cent of our children cannot read two sentences in any language. As for those attending school, according to a survey, 45pc of students in fifth grade cannot solve simple, second grade maths questions.

Pakistan`s population growth rate (2.5pc) is more than its economic growth rate (2.4pc). Low levels of social development, high inflation and stark inequality of income result in poverty.

Around 100m people in Pakistan live in income poverty. HDI considers poverty from a multidimensional perspective rather than solely monetary poverty, which is the proportion of the population that is multi-dimensionally poor, adjusted by the intensity of various deprivations. According to multidimensional poverty index, 38.9pc of Pakistan`s population is poor.Our gender gapindexis also one ofthe poorest in the world.

The abysmal description of human development above puts Pakistan, along with Afghanistan, in a group of countries with `low human development`. Almost all other countries in this group are from sub-Saharan Africa.

Human development is the most critical dimension of national security. We have grown to think of security only in traditional terms of borders, military, and arsenal. A great contribution was made by Dr Moeed Yousuf, as national security adviser by giving Pakistan its first National Security Policy which broadens the concept of security to human security. `The policy links the security of Pakistan with the economic and social well-being of its people.

The first step towards achieving economic and social well-being of people would be to bring political stability to the country. The supremacy of the Constitution, rule of law, good governance and democratic conduct are essential conditions for sustainable human development. Last year`s Nobel prize was shared by three economists, Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson, for demonstrating why some nations are rich and others are poorthroughtheirresearch.

The laureates explained: countries that developed `inclusive institutions` which uphold the rule of law and property rights have over time become prosperous, while those that developed `extractive institutions` which `squeeze` resources from the wider population to benefit their elite have experienced persistently low economic growth.

In order to move up the HDI ladder, all stakeholders in Pakistan have to be on the same page for our national development priorities.

If we can be the first Muslim nuclear country and have one of the best air forces in the world, we can also take good care of our stunted children, anaemic mothers, those out of school and those struggling to come out of poverty. • The writer is a former health minister and currently a professor of health systems & population health at the Shifa Tameer-i-Millat University