ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE), under its Research for Social Transformation and Advancement’ (RASTA) program on Monday kicked off its first-ever RASTA conference in Islamabad.
According to the press release, the research moot comprised diverse research themes, including energy issues, urban development, technology, and public service delivery, social sector development, markets and regulation, the political economy of development and reform, and sludge – the administrative burden.
While inaugurating the conference, in his inaugural address, Dr. Nadeem ul Haque, Vice-Chancellor PIDE and Chairman RAC referred to one of his papers “Developing Research and a Research Culture: Results from a Pilot Project in Pakistan” as the genesis for the RASTA program.
He said that the ‘enlightenment movement’ was nothing but the exchange of ideas among the great intellectuals of the time. However, ideas must be indigenous. Without exchange, ideas don’t refine, and without refinement reaching a conclusive solution becomes exceedingly difficult.
The Vice-Chancellor apprised the participants that we still have not been able to free ourselves from the colonial clutches.
“Our research is primarily driven by actors that are alien to our situation. Outsiders are driving our research, with perhaps the vested agendas, ” he said.
Through RASTA, we have also proved that we can do better than those who steer local research from outside.
Dr. Durre Nayab Pro-Vice-Chancellor, PIDE, presented her study titled ‘The Assumed Shortage of Housing in Pakistan’ with some interesting results.
“We are short of 10 million housing units” has been a buzzword in politics, media, and donor-driven research for the last 10 years, she stated.
Worryingly, the government also uses this estimate without ever questioning its validity. Sadly we have based policy on this assumption and initiated a large public housing effort at considerable cost.
Not to mention the negative spillover effects on the other sector in the context of tight fiscal space. So, PIDE after digging out the reality concludes that there is certainly not a “deficit of 10 million housing units” in Pakistan.
There may be “inadequate housing” in the country, but not “housing shortage’.
The deficit is in the quality of life in the houses, not the absence of housing units.
Earlier, Dr. Faheem Jehangir Khan, Project Director RASTA, presented highlights of the RASTA journey comprising over one and a half years.
PIDE’s RASTA is a multi-year competitive grants program for policy-oriented research in Pakistan, under the Public Sector Development Program (PSDP) of the Ministry of Planning, Development and Special Initiatives, the Government of Pakistan.
The mission is to develop an extensive research network of academia and think tanks across Pakistan producing high-quality, evidence-based policy research to inform Pakistan’s public policy process, he stated.
Moreover, the program seeks to develop local thought communities and generate contextualized knowledge.
Substantial outputs are to be completed in important areas of public policy that would produce insightful research and facilitate goals that the Government wants to achieve according to its vision.
So far, there have been three rounds of the Competitive the Grants Programme (CGP), where 443 applications were received and after the competitive review process, 32 applicants won the awards, amounting to PKR 91 million.
Besides, in the second stream of Demand Driven Research (DDR), 18/49 types of research were initiated, adding up to another PKR 254 million, Dr. Khan added.
Dr. Khan also gave the good news that RASTA is going to circle Pakistan, arrange conferences in every major city of Pakistan and remote universities.
He seconded Dr. Nadeem ul Haque that research cannot be done in silos. It’s a collective action to build a rich social capital leading towards reform and self-correction.
Conference participants presented their studies under these broad themes, probing the key issues while putting forward indigenous solutions for local problems.
The participants came the from University of Oxford – UK, New School – Moscow, Ryerson University – Canada, National University of Science and Technology (NUST), Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), University of Peshawar, Quaid-i-Azam University, Applied Economics Research Center, Balochistan Council for Peace and Policy (BCPP), University of Turbat, IBA Sukkur and BUITEMS Quetta.