THE Punjab government wants to provide girls in school with “four chickens, a cock and a cage” to teach them about kitchen skills, nutrition and raising poultry. The public is either amused or outraged.

In an age when other countries are preparing their female workforce to operate at the frontiers of science and technology, Pakistan wanting to teach its girls how to get the chicken karhai just right does sound absurd.

But in a country where 25 million children are out of school, of which 55pc are girls, and almost 40pc of children who are under-five are stunted and underweight, mocking and dismissing programmes that could encourage school attendance and improve nutrition outcomes for poor families is a luxury available to only those who have never known hunger or illiteracy.

The government hatches new plans to cover up old failures.

So now that the disdain of the well-fed has died down, we should ask if giving schoolgirls a small flock of hens is really a recipe for reinforcing gendered stereotypes and furthering the oppression of women as women’s rights activists have argued.

Philanthropist Bill Gates and his Gates Foundation would disagree. The Gates Foundation is giving small poultry flocks to families in Sub-Saharan Africa to combat malnutrition, lift families out of absolute poverty and empower women economically. The Gates Foundation finds that this programme has significant positive outcomes for women in Africa.

Unfortunately, Bill Gates would not be the one implementing the plan in Pakistan. What works in Africa when done by the Gates Foundation might not work when done in Pakistan by the Punjab bureaucracy. But this is a policy debate we will never have. The government will rely on hatching new plans to cover old failures and civil society will respond with shallow knee-jerk reactions not grounded in reality or research. In the age of social media, our policy discourse is determined more by what will get the most Facebook likes or retweets on Twitter than what makes rational policy sense.

While the colossal sexism of the civil bureaucracy of Punjab is appalling, the lack of thought put into a scheme that could combat some of our gravest challenges is criminal. Given the poor quality of Pakistani education and the impoverished nutritional status of our children, it is unlikely that our population will be able to meet the demands of a rapidly modernising economy and be competitive in global labour markets.

This is a future we should be very afraid of; if we fear this future even in the slightest, then we should bring to our policymaking a thoughtfulness that it is currently devoid of. Many children, particularly girls, have dropped out of school because the government has not been able to provide basic education facilities such as boundary walls for safety and security, clean toilets or drinking water in existing schools. Having to cover long distances to reach the nearest school remains a major reason for girls dropping out or failing to enrol.

While we don’t even have the basics in place, building poultry farms in the sky seems like a bad proposition. Creative and new solutions, such as the chicken and egg programme or other incentive schemes targeted at getting children into schools, can be complex and difficult to implement and monitor but if done right can be effective.

We should spend some resources on piloting and learning from new programmes be­­fore rolling them out on a larger scale. Someone in the Pun­jab government should talk to the Gates Foundation. Simul­ta­neously, the government should channel the bulk of its efforts and resources into getting the basics in place — across Pakis­tan and not just in Punjab.

Instead of spending disproportionate time chasing the next new breakthrough idea, the government should spend time fulfilling old promises and bringing the severely lacking educational and health infrastructure up to speed.

On the other hand, civil society activists should take a break from the online outrage and put some thoughtfulness into their support or opposition of public policy schemes. While we should continue to fight against the sexism embedded in our society, we should also let a few girls have some chickens — even if it is under the pretext of making them better in the kitchen.

We should do whatever we need to get girls into school and then keep them there for as long as possible. Then we can step back and watch them defy our expectations of succumbing to the sexist plans of a few unimaginative old men.

Watch them become poultry farmers, bakers, business owners, vets and whatever else they fancy. Because if there is one thing that has consistently surprised us in pleasant ways, it is the brilliance and resourcefulness of our women and girls.

The writer is a policy analyst based in Islamabad.

Twitter:@sehartariq

Published in Dawn, September 8th, 2016