Nasra Shah and Muhammad Anwar. Basic Needs, Women and Development: A Survey of Squatters in Lahore, Pakistan.

Mahmood, Mir Annice

Nasra Shah and Muhammad Anwar. Basic Needs, Women and Development:

A Survey of Squatters in Lahore, Pakistan. Honolulu: East-West Center, and Ottawa: International Development Research Centre. 1986. x + 163 pp.

The book is an outcome of a project that was carried out in collaboration with the East-West Population Institute, Honolulu and the Punjab University, Lahore. It focuses on the basic needs requirements of the urban poor, specifically women who reside in katchi abadis, Data were collected through a sample survey carried out in Lahore City. The study is useful in that it attempts to establish what the poor in Pakistan perceive as their basic needs. These are defined in a broad sense to include not only a minimum income and nutritional level but also in terms of clothing, education, educational aspirations, health, morbidity and mortality. The book thus looks at the basic needs requirement of the "poorest of the poor" who live in the katchi abadis in the urban centres of the country.

Some of the important recommendations include the need for female education and for the provision of more family planning facilities in the katchi abadis. Improved health and immunization cover, particularly for the children, is required also if the high mortality levels are to be reduced, Finally, ways and means have to be thought out to raise the income levels of the residents of the katchi abadis.

Prepared by Mir Annice Mahmood, Research Economist at the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, Islamabad.