MAJOR INDUSTRIES IN PAKISTAN AND ITS PRODUCTION

Pakistan is an independent state located in South Asia and ranked as the world’s 55th country
with the largest factory output. The country's industrial output is approximately 4% of the
country's GDP and has cotton textile production and apparels manufacturing as the largest
industry in the country accounting for 66% of all export items and employs approximately 40%
labor force in the industry. The use of cotton has increased by about 5.7% in the country over the
last five years, and the economic growth has been averaging about 7%. As of 2010, the spinning
capacity in Pakistan had 10 million spindles, and textile exports were valued at $15.5 billion, and
some of the major industries in the country include fertilizer, cement, edible oil, steel, sugar,
chemicals, tobacco, machinery, and food processing among others. 
Mining Industry
Pakistan has fast deposits of numerous minerals and other natural resources, and some of the
most important minerals in the country include limestone, chromite, gypsum, iron ore, gold,
silver, rock salt, copper, precious stones, coal, gemstones, marble, graphite, fireclay, sulfur, and
silica among others. The province of Punjab has the world’s largest deposits of salt, while the
province of Balochistan is an area with rich deposits of oil and gas, although it has not been fully
exploited or explored. The government of Pakistan has recently pursued policies to develop the
region so that it can exploit the vast resources found in the region. Other deposits of minerals
such as zinc are found particularly in the southern part of the country, while the western part has
deposits of gold. 
Oil and Gas Industry
Oil was first discovered in Pakistan in 1952 at Suo Sui in the province of Balochistan and in
1960 a the Toot oilfield in Islamabad in Punjab province with production increasing steadily.
Similarly, natural gas was also discovered 1952 at the giant gas field Sui in the province of
Balochistan. The country also is a major producer of bituminous coal, lignite, and sub-
bituminous coal. Pakistan started coal mining way back during the colonial period, and it has
been used in the country in different industries since independence in 1947. In 2005, a Canadian
based company signed an agreement with the state-owned Oil and Gas Company of Pakistan to
explore the Toot field. Natural gas in Pakistan is substantially large and the levels of the
remaining reserves are thought to so huge, and they are expected to last for at least 20 years
because of heavy use in the country.
Manufacturing Industry
Pakistan is one of the largest manufacturing countries in the world, and it is ranked as the 30th
largest. Manufacturing industry accounts for approximately 20% of the total output in the
country, and over the last five years, the manufacturing industry has experienced an average
growth of 3.4% annually. Manufacturing in the country can be categorized into two; that is large
scale manufacturing, which is valued at $28 billion and the small scale manufacturing sector,
which is valued at $653 billion. Manufacturing industry in Pakistan has been growing steadily,
and in the 2001-2003 financial years the growth in the industry was about 7.7%, and for the
twelve months that ended in June 2004, the country’s large-scale manufacturing experienced
growth of above 18% in comparison to other years. The garment and textile industry together
with its related products is by far the single largest industry in Pakistan, and it is made up of 453
textile mills which are composed of 403 spinning units, 50 integrated units having 9.33 million
spindles and 148,000 rotors. 
Prospects and Challenges Facing Pakistan
The current economic outlook of Pakistan presents some opportunities however the country is
also facing different challenges particularly in the long term where it could severely affect the
prospects of growth, and therefore the economy would only experience some sporadic bursts of
the growth as opposed to having a sustained upward trajectory. Some of the challenges facing the
Pakistanis economy include increasing public debt, reducing exports and increasing imports, lack
of political consensus, low taxation and low investment, low savings and high consumption-
oriented society, and the shrinking share in world trade among other major challenges.
Social Stratification
Social stratification refers to the ranking of members of a society in groups on the basis of their
status. • This ranking may be on the basis of occupation, power, economic resources, prestige,
caste, education. • It is structured inequality between groups. 2
It is also defined as the distribution of people of society in groups on the basis of their status.
Determinants of social stratification:
According to Max Weber
Economic resources
Occupations
Prestige
Power
Caste
Education
Political power’ Are the determinants of social divisions.
Economic resources:
The size of landholdings in rural areas belong to upper classes. While the tenants, blacksmiths,
cobblers, barbers belong to the lower class.
Occupation:
Landowners, industrialists, businessmen, high government officials, corporate officials belong to
the upper class.
Servicemen, small businessmen, whose income equals to their expenditures, are the middle class.
Manual workers, carpenters, blacksmiths, washermen all constitute the lower class.
Prestige:
Respect of an individual in society is related to the level of prestige that he enjoys.
Prestige includes nobility, harmlessness, participating in social welfare projects, helping the
needy etc.

Power:
Power gains one respect. In Pakistan, following characteristics could be important:
Outspoken in public, educated, well off in financial resources, interest in solving people’s
problems, active, religious oriented etc.
 Caste:
 Caste system in Pakistan is an important element in social stratification. Some castes are
considered high, some are low.
 Education:
 Education like all other societies in the world, defines social status in Pakistan too. Educated
people are better rated and respected socially owing to their occupations, professions and status
while illiterate people always belong to lower class.
 Social Class: (the Concept Given by Karl Marx.)
 A group of people having more or less equal economic resources indicating similar standards of
living in a society constitute a class.
Generally, three classes exist in Pakistan.
 High
 Middle
 Low
 Theory of struggle:
 Karl Marx gave the theory of struggle. He said that unequal distribution of economic resources
creates classes. They can only survive if they fight each other. Classification creates hatred and
enmity against other classes. Capitalism supports private ownership and creates classes while
socialism empowers people.
 Nature and character of class:
 Class’ a status group
Class can be achieved and can be changed
Class system is universal
Social class is open group
It arouses feeling of class consciousness
Caste:
 Caste is a permanent group having its status ascribed at birth. It cannot be changed.
Caste is a system of stratification, in which mobility up and down and the status ladder, at least
ideally does not occur. A.W. Green.
Caste is a closed social group.
Characteristics of caste:
 Caste is hierarchical division
Closed group
Sub culture: every class has its own norms which can be different from others. E.g.: marriage
norms / issues of out of caste marriages.
Social control: every caste has its own informal methods of social control.
 Merits of caste system:
 Biradri system.
Social solidarity
Norms are forceful and offer social control
Castes are endogamous… means they marry within caste.
Demerits of caste system:
Ethnocentrism among the members of one caste
Norms of castes are rigid in nature
New elements of changes are rejected
Marriage out of caste is rejected
Difference between caste and class system in Pakistan :
Class is flexible
Class can change
Class does not form biradri
Class can be exogamous
There is less ethnocentrism in class
Feeling of association is less strong in classes
There is less solidarity in classes
Class favors social change
Classes do not have norms
Caste is rigid
Caste  cannot change
Castes form biradri system
Castes are endogamous
Caste are ethnocentric
Feelings of association are more stronger in castes
There is more solidarity in castes
Castes reject social change
Castes have their own norms
 Biradri:
 It is the group of people belonging to same caste, intermarrying together.
Two or more families related to each other are called biradri.
People of biradri do not necessarily live at the same place.
There may be different languages, styles, and customs in biradri.
Old biradries having same caste are still strong in Pakistan. They have more rigid norms.
Social violations in biradries are strictly condemned.
Endogamy is a strict condition in some of the biradries.

Social Status
Social status refers to the honor or prestige attached to one’s position in society. It may also refer
to a rank or position that one holds in a group, such as son or daughter, playmate, pupil, etc.
One’s social status is determined in different ways. One can earn his or her social status by his or
her own achievements; this is known as achieved status. Alternatively, one can inherit his or her
position on the social hierarchy; this is known as ascribed status. An ascribed status can also be
defined as one that is fixed for an individual at birth, like sex, race, and socioeconomic
background.
Social status is most often understood as a melding of the two types of status, with ascribed
status influencing achieved status. For example, a baby born into a high-income household has
his family’s high socioeconomic status as an achieved status and is more likely to be exposed to
resources like a familial emphasis on education that will make it more likely for him or her to get
into an elite university. Admission, therefore, is an achieved status that was heavily influenced
by resources made available by the person’s ascribed status.
t is easy to see how achieved and ascribed statuses accumulate into the social status of an
individual. Pulling back into a larger perspective, these same factors accumulate into a system of
social stratification. Social stratification is a conceptual social hierarchy in which individuals are
ranked in terms of their perceived value to society. In capitalist countries, this hierarchy is
largely socioeconomic, in that high-income individuals are ranked at the top of the social
hierarchy with low-income individuals at the bottom. However, social stratification is not limited
to economics; perceived moral value is also integrated into the stratification so that a poor
member of the clergy is in a higher social rank than a rich criminal.
Social status, or the social sphere in which one belongs, can be changed through a process of
social mobility. One can move either up or down the social hierarchy and the process is
described in terms of upward or downward mobility. Simply, social mobility allows a person to
move into a social status other than the one into which he was born depending upon one’s
ambition, lack thereof, or other factors.
One’s social status depends on the context of a his or her situation and is therefore malleable.
Take, for example, an employee who works on the floor of a manufacturing company. When
considered in light of the larger social hierarchy, this worker will probably fall somewhere
toward the mid-bottom of the hierarchy because of his socioeconomic status. Yet, perhaps this
man is the floor manager and therefore has control of hundreds of other employees. When he’s at
his place of work, he is high on the ladder of social hierarchy.

Modernity
Modernity is defined as a condition of social existence that is significantly different to all past
forms of human experience, while modernization refers to the transitional process of moving
from “traditional” or “primitive” communities to modern societies. Debates over modernity have
been most prominent in the discipline of sociology, created in the nineteenth century specifically
to come to terms with “society” as a novel form of human existence. These debates revolved
around the constitution of the modern subject: how sociopolitical order is formed in the midst of
anomie or alienation of the subject; what form of knowledge production this subject engages in,
and what form of knowledge production is appropriate to understand modern subjectivity; and
the ethical orientation of the modern subject under conditions where human existence has been
rationalized and disenchanted. In its paradoxical search for social content of modern conditions
of anomie, alienation, and disenchantment, sociology has relied upon Émile Durkheim, Karl
Marx, and Max Weber. Sociological inquiry of modernity and the anthropological/comparative
study of modernization have provided two articulations of sociopolitical difference—temporal
and geocultural, respectively—that have exerted a strong impact upon approaches to and debates
within IR. The attempt to correlate and explain the relationship between temporal and
geocultural difference presents a foundational challenge to understandings of the condition of
modernity and the processes of modernization.