“Now is the system going to eat you up and relieve you of your humanity or are you going to be able to use the system to human purposes?” – Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth – 1988

Published by the United Nations annually, Human Development Reports analyse the social development of the countries by using four indicators: Life expectancy at birth, gross national per capita income, mean years of schooling and expected years of schooling. These indicators fall under the Human Development Index (HDI), formulated by the Pakistani economist Dr Mahbub ul Haq in 1990. Countries are ranked based on the scores of HDI for each of the indicators in order to assess how much has their population benefitted from the economic growth. This is because some countries many have the same level of GNI per capita but they differ in terms of how the society has progressed overall in terms of increased educational opportunities for girls, for instance, or how better health facilities have increased the average life span of an individual. The indicator for life expectancy at birth shows the progress in health facilities; mean and expected years of schooling demonstrate the literacy rate and increase in knowledge; while the standard of living is measured by the GNI per capita. HDI is calculated by taking the geometric mean of the normalised indices for each of the three dimensions. Therefore, a country will attain a higher HDI if the lifespan is higher, the education level is higher, and the GDP per capita is higher. At the national level in Pakistan, the HDI values are provided the Social Development in Pakistan Annual Review 2014-15.These values are helpful in stimulating the government to carry out policy debates to improve the public sector facilities and help raise the GDP level. According to UNDP, Pakistan’s HDI value has increased by 36.2 percent between the years 1990 and 2015. These values are helpful in stimulating the government to carry out policy debates to improve the public sector facilities and help raise the GDP level.