Afghanistan, June 22 -- Pakistan now measures its own poverty against a line of PKR 8,484 a month. According to the Pakistan Economic Survey, that is the consumption a single adult needs to meet the most basic food and non-food requirements, calculated through the cost of basic needs approach rather than from anyone's pay slip, and it works out to roughly PKR 283 a day. Set the threshold there and the official tally turns more forgiving. Even so, the same survey puts about 70 million Pakistanis below it, a poverty rate of 28.9 percent that is the highest in eleven years and almost a third higher than the 21.9 percent recorded at the previous survey in 2018-19. The state has not reduced the hardship its people face. It has fixed the line at ...