Pak. moves up on U.N.'s HDR scale

ISLAMABAD, JUNE 29. Pakistan's ``modest improvements'' in real income, life expectancy and literacy during 1999 moved it up in the ranking of the 174 countries in the United Nations' Human Development Report 2000 (HDR 2000), released globally today. Pakistan was ranked 138th last year. This year it appears at 135th position, although economists say poverty has been increasing in the crisis-ridden Muslim country.

This year's HDR links poverty alleviation to human rights and advocates ``inclusive democracy'' that goes beyond ``the brute electoral force of the majority''.

Ms. Attiya Inayatullah, a woman member of Pakistan's military regime, informed the HDR 2000 launching ceremony that the regime's plan to install elected Governments in the districts in December was a step in that direction.

``Democracy cannot survive on an empty stomach. A world in which 1.2 billion people live on an income less than one dollar a day is clearly an indictment of the national and international systems we have in place,'' she said.

Ms. Attiya assured that the military Government's ``pro-poor economic revival package and poverty reduction strategy'' would ``reintegrate the destitute into society and give each Pakistani human dignity''.

- DPA

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