One way is to learn from your own experience the hard way after making a lot of mistakes. The other is to learn from the mistakes of others. I personally prefer the latter.

Hopefully, you can come up with better ideas when you seriously answer the following questions based on intelligent analysis:

Is there really a strong connection and correlation between poverty/inequality and rising violence in our society? If so, what is it? Has anyone seriously explored this hypothesis?

Can poverty be reduced without encouraging investors/businesses to invest? How do we encourage them?

Where will the resources come from to alleviate poverty? Even if we equally divided the nation’s entire gdp, we would end inequality but wouldn’t that make every one poor?

Will violence and militancy simply evaporate even if we reduced inequality or ended poverty?

I think it’s much easier to write a column or blog post than to come up with defensible answers to these questions. Just sticking to our ideologies and pre-conceived, untested notions will not help.

As I said in an earlier comment, I do admire your initiative to start this debate online.

By Devinder Sharma

Tt didn

Well, I am not sure what the comparisons with other countries will lead us to: the fact is that Pakistan’s poverty levels have increased in the past few years and the recent energy and food crises have pushed millions below the poverty line is what matters.

I don’t care what happens in India and China – let’s talk of Pakistan and its woes.

I was also surprised to read a comment that tried to undermine the poverty in FATA – the comparison between a Punjabi village and most parts of FATA cannot be made. The truth is that 50-60 percent (depends which estimate you consider) of the population lives below poverty line is a major source of worry and related to the current predicament of militancy.