Photo by Hamid Roshaan on Unsplash
Social assistance is everywhere conditional, and in Pakistan it is no different. Either it comes with behavioural strings attached — ‘do this and we’ll help you, don’t and we won’t’ — or it is targeted, with receipt conditional on being a specific type of person or facing a particular type of problem (think Benazir Income Support Programme [BISP] and the extreme poor).
Those who defend this approach typically offer the same justifications. First, they argue, resources are limited, which means that we should give them to those most in need and make sure they use them well. Intuitively sensible, this position quickly gives way to the troubling claim that as the poor aren’t used to having any money, we should ‘guide’ them so that they don’t waste what they get. Inside this sits the pernicious, yet sadly widespread, prejudice that the poor are feckless and do not deserve our support.
Critics of these positions abound, as they do of conditionality more broadly.
To read the full article in Dawn, click here.
