Even Trump deals with 'real power', not PM, says Miftah
Addressing a press conference at the Karachi Press Club on Monday, Miftah stated, "If the PML-N returns to its original narrative of 'respect the vote,' a political alliance with Awam Pakistan Party is possible."
Clarifying recent allegations, Miftah said he does not engage in blame games. Referring to accusations made by Tariq Fazal Chaudhry and Senator Anusha Rahman regarding the Nashonuma programme under the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP), he categorically denied any wrongdoing and demanded a public apology.
"The allegations are false and baseless. If they do not apologise, I will take them to court," he warned.
He offered condolences to the families of victims of the Gwadar incident, recent rains and other tragic accidents.
Criticising governance failures, he said, while people were drowning in floods, the Punjab government's performance drowned with them. "As for Sindh and K-P, no one expects good governance from them anyway."
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Support can include disability aid, daycare, transport subsidies, school stipends for children of widowed or divorced women, micro-loans, and one-time grants for major life events like a daughter's marriage. These measures would reduce reliance on handouts and boost FLFP. Second, BISP should help offset cost-of-living pressures that weigh heavily on low-income households. Utility bills constitute recurring burden that often push vulnerable families into debt. Targeted subsidies for gas and electricity, routed through BISP for lifeline consumers, could reduce household stress while focusing fiscal resources on clearly defined eligible groups. However, if the current structure of BISP continues, Pakistan risks pushing its female population into a vicious cycle of dependency, which we must avoid. And here is why. The hidden cost of dependency: The Economic Survey 2025 describes social protection as a 'strategic investment in the nation's future'. Yet without women's participation in formal economic activity, that claim remains open to question. Heavy reliance on social protection affects resource allocation in two ways: it increases the population's dependency on non-labour income and shifts government spending from long-term productivity to short-term relief. The concern is particularly relevant in Pakistan, where 55 percent of BISP's allocation goes to unconditional transfers with limited linkages to employment or skills training. As of 2025, 71.7 million women, or nearly 60 percent of Pakistan's female population, are listed in the National Socioeconomic Registry (NSER), according to BISP's data portal. Of these, 9.87 million are already receiving cash transfers. This means that if BISP were to extend support to all registered women, its budget would need to be more than double, increasing by 2.6 times. At the same time, government spending priorities have shifted. Prior to BISP's launch in 2008, federal allocations for education were higher than those for social protection. Since then, BISP's budget share has steadily increased, eventually surpassing education, which has seen a consistent decline (Figure 1). This shift has long-term consequences. Female literacy, still below 50 percent, limits access to formal employment and creates a cycle: undereducated women struggle to secure jobs, rely on handouts, female labour force participation (FLFP) drops, incomes fall, and poverty deepens. Evidence of a trade-off: Empirical research supports this trend. Majid and Riaz (2022) found that women receiving BISP were more likely to remain out of the workforce or in vulnerable jobs. Sarfraz et al. (2022) observed that early gains in reducing vulnerable employment vanished within five years, with no sustained improvements in work outcomes. An IMF study (Ivanova et al., 2019) found that in societies with strong gender norms, cash transfers can reduce women's willingness to work unless paired with incentives like better pay or job access. This pattern is not unique to Pakistan; cross-country data show that greater reliance on social protection is often associated with persistently low FLFP, particularly in low- and lower-middle-income countries. Figure 2 illustrates that Afghanistan and Iraq, with above-average social protection spending (as percent of GDP), report some of the lowest FLFP rates, primarily due to cultural barriers followed by other contributing factors. In contrast, Bangladesh appears in the top-left quadrant, with relatively high FLFP despite lower welfare spending. Pakistan currently performs below the global average on both metrics, but with BISP spending on the rise (Figure 1), it risks shifting into the bottom right quadrant, where dependence on social protection coincides with low female labour force participation (FLFP). The moderately negative correlation (r = 0.5549) between the two indicators suggests that without a focus on building long-term human capital, social protection systems may inadvertently deter women from joining the workforce. The rarity of countries in the top right quadrant, which achieve both high FLFP and high social protection spending, highlights how rare this balance is in practice. Political will for development outcomes: Social protection is often tied to the broader goal of human development. However, Pakistan's HDI ranking has dropped from 161 to 168 out of 191 countries between 2022 and 2025, with a noticeable decline in women's empowerment indicators. 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