I know most people thing that government is all evil and cruel, but the truth is government is just like a big company. Each and everyone of them want to make profit for themself while at the same time maintain the government and the nation to survive and keep running. Government won't make a huge policy that will sink the nation, kill most of the citizen or make them very poor and stop working, they need to make the citizen able to work so the economy is not stop. Most of their decision will be made to increase productivity and nation income thus increase their own income, those decision will most likely dictate by the stakeholders or some of us call them Oligarch, some of the decision will be based on good research, but then again even if the decision is based on research the goal is still to increase productivity and income so the stakeholders get richer, and the government get more bonuses. In some special case, like in the country where I live, the Oligarch is also the government, most of the new laws that made are actually benefitting their business.
I wish this were true, but it can only be true in some countries. There are countries where the leaders do not care if the country or its citizens get better. The whole country can be burning for all they care as far as their accounts will get fat.
Illiteracy and poverty is a very strong tool for politicians. They can country the masses if the masses don't need them so they make sure the masses are never free.
The leaders keep giving them crumbs so they keep coming back for more.
During campaigns, they promised them electricity and better transport systems and better education and security, blah blah blah. Now imagine if all these things are already what these people have and they have good jobs that pay them well, what would these politicians use as bargaining chips to win votes?