Critical Analysis of Rural Development Initiatives in Pakistan

Rural development agencies have been regarded as important performers in terms of influencing development policies and programmes in rural areas of the world. The main focus of these programmes is to uplift the living standard of the masses in rural areas through sustained growth in the rural economy. To improve the livelihoods of rural communities, the government has adopted various rural development programmes, but the majority of them left very little effect on the ground. Many of these programmes had been inspired by the western paradigm. Categorically the efforts to uplift the livelihood of the rural population in the North-Western Pakistan, have gained little success. According to recent reports, about one-third population of the mountainous region is still facing the problem of food insecurity, poverty and hunger which results in economic and political instability. Considering this, the government has launched many rural development programmes but almost all of them were terminated after gaining little success. Although the overall approach was institutional in nature but it failed to promote institutional aspect of rural development. Leading constraints to the rural developmental strategies include shortage of funds, dominated status of bureaucracy and lack of coordination among the implementing agency and local community. Besides state owned programmes for rural development, many non-government organizations (NGOs) are also involved in the theme of development that is participatory for decades. Among those initiatives, Agha Khan Rural Support Programme (AKRSP) remained quite successful in northern areas of Pakistan. However, rural development through a participatory approach is still far behind the predicted results, and these organizations are facing problems in delivering welfare services to the rural poor as they are being blamed that they are working on the western agenda.