It is assertive that Pakistan’s development policy brings in little benefits because of the domination of Eurocentric biases that dominated our development thinking through Western-centric research and pedagogical arrangements. This is reflected by taking the National Education Policy of Pakistan as a case study.

The education policy landscape has been revamped by globalization. Education development in Pakistan is seen as a hegemonic form of representation of international development institutions and their prevailing ideologies. Globalization and global thinking are pertinent factors that serve to block the missing local cultural context in the education policies of Pakistan. Sharing knowledge across the border comes under the umbrella of globalization. But the international institutions are forcing local institutions to operate from the lens of the global perspective. Escobar (1992) rightly pointed out how missing local cultural context leads to the further strengthening of underdevelopment in developing countries which are rightly known as the Third World. He further stated that Western science and its knowledge is just an instrument of cultural violence in developing countries (ibid, p. 420). Missing the local context undermines the visualization of the relationship between the local and the global. Local contexts offer more salient clues for developing the understanding of global issues comprehensively thus western values are devaluing the local culture. There is a need to protect the indigenous culture in the national education policy of Pakistan and redefine the representation by including the interest in the local knowledge and culture. Therefore, it is requisite to change the global Westernized outlook of the policy to the local traditions. The donor countries’ intervention in shaping the education policy of Pakistan is subverting this change.

The canvas of donor funding agencies’ intervention in Pakistan is much more than just donating for its advancement in the name of development. These institutions have agenda-setting capacities. There is a direct influence of donor agencies on Pakistan’s education policies. Such global institutions are willing to donate such heavy investments to implement their dominating neoliberal ideology (Wade, 2002). Multilateral agencies and bilateral agencies are working to assist Pakistan. Pakistan received donor assistance of about US $2191.155 million from 18 different international organizations between 2000-2012 for the education sector (Ministry of Education, 2007). World bank has commenced 427 projects in Pakistan till July 2018 (Abdullah, N. A., & Akhtar, M. S., 2019). The highest single project of the World Bank is for US $400 million (World Bank, 2018). Moreover, Verger (2014) also states that they are the key agents that define what problems are to be tackled if the member states want to be integrated into the competitive global knowledge economy. For Puchala 2005), these institutions are economically dominated by the North and politically controlled by the West. Therefore, the educational outcomes have been consistently poor. After more than a half-century of independence, nearly half of Pakistan’s population is still illiterate (Ahsan, 2010). This highlights that even with so much developmental assistance, still, a big proportion of Pakistanis are illiterate, which shows that these foreign aid donors are just to sustain their vested interests. The fundamental goal of development is not human improvement but human domination and control through multiple discourses.

Educational policies in our country can be effective only by having minimal capitalist traits in it. Educational discourses worldwide focus more on economic growth, creating more job opportunities, and teaching work-related skills only. For Frank (1986), capitalism is the leading cause of underdevelopment in developing countries. Because it generates a series of asymmetrical metropolitan-satellite relationships that exploits the developing region by extracting resources from the periphery and moving to the center. Spring (2015) coined the term “corporatization of education.” This term refers to the multinational corporations shaping global education policies and human behavior in the corporate workplace (ibid, p. 2). These corporations pressure the national school systems to adopt policies that are favorable to their interests. The concept of public-private partnerships in education is framed in such a way that this concept, along with the institutions that are funding it, makes it an illusion of education policy innovation. This is because we see western education policies as more ideal and capable of bringing a change. Pakistani policymakers often adopt global policies, for they look at these western frameworks as more rooted in stable ideational international structures. The frequent buzzwords used in the National Education Policy of Pakistan are” raising the ‘quality,’ inclusive, globalization, and public-private ‘partnerships’” (National Education Policy, 2017). These words are not neutral; they are used as tools by the West to justify their neoliberal ideology (Brock. K, & Cornwall. A, 2005). We need to pay more heed to the carriers of these ideas. This privatization agenda is more about bringing a pragmatic shift in the educational system goals and the state's role in education. The propagation of neoliberal western ideals and modernization theories is the justification for controlling us and exploiting us to the fullest with the idea of developing us in disguise.

Western cultural hegemony is being carried out through educational institutions resulting in the production of biased westernized thinking. They have impacted the development of the local community. Cummings. S, & Hoebink. P (2016) spoke of the fact that UK and US are dominating research and academia in the development fields. The hegemony of Western literature is perpetuated through education in Pakistan. English is still the de facto language of power. The language of the policy document resembles the language of aid programs of international organizations to keep the audience of its donors and lenders satisfied. Western hegemony and its discourse further perpetuate English language imperialism and clash with the Urdu language as a medium of instruction (Amir, 2008). Indigenous languages carry indigenous knowledge. There is a crucial need to frame indigenous languages and local historical culture as equally representative of all existing cultures in Pakistan to be stated within the education policy and practice. Donald (2009) stressed upon the idea that if colonization is a shared condition, then decolonization should be equally a collective endeavor. Societies can modernize without westernizing. To reap more benefits from our development policies and to remove biased westernized thinking, critical discussions on what beliefs and practices among all cultural traditions in Pakistan and delineate what is valuable and how to abide by those values in any environment. Education as a moral endeavor has to be protected on top of all personal freedoms whose policies are not to be infringed upon by other major powers.

Hence, one can argue that the policymakers focus more on what it is achieving rather than seeking how to and thus, making the difficulties in its development more evident.  Such policies are not targeted at those who are affected but use as a standard around which donor countries keep donating and keep their hegemony at the highest order because these labels are created for the powerful by the powerful as a stand for the powerful.

Ayesha Yusra is currently a student of Government and Public Policy at the National University of Sciences and Technology, H-12, Islamabad.

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