For centuries agriculture has been backbone of Indus Basin region, especially Punjab, known as bread basket of subcontinent. Land was owned by individuals and families whose source of livelihood was revenues they earned from selling their produce. It is this incentive which has motivated farmers to achieve maximum yields. The ruling elite’s obsession of Dubai as a role model, must be shelved. UAE has converted barren desert to green pastures and built artificial lakes and all paraphernalia, like night clubs, beaches etc. to attract foreign tourists and investors of varied ethnicities, offering them a safe haven with security and strict enforcement of laws.
The state does not exploit religion, nor allows anyone else to do so. Their transformation from a barren desert to a thriving economy is because of the vision, political will and a sense of ownership by those at helm and the relatively manageable contiguous land. While PIA helped Emirates Airlines to form, they must be credited with running it professionally with help of experienced and qualified professionals at helm, with zero tolerance for nepotism in recruitment, nor any attempt to reduce it to a dumping ground for rehabilitating retired officers or cronies. PIA has been driven to insolvency, whilst Emirates has emerged as a major commercial airline. Pakistan, a country with a thriving agriculture economy, is busy converting hundreds of thousands of fertile agricultural lands to concrete jungles.
In America, a leading agricultural producing has almost 60% of total land holdings held by private small and medium land owners. The state and its institutions have never been involved directly in agriculture, but only in facilitating them. There are two basic impediments which created shortages in agricultural produce in Pakistan and the resultant escalation in prices, which has created discontent amongst the population. This can spill over and lead to chaos.
The enormity of this discontent can drive desperate masses, to commit irrational acts and harm national interest. The state has failed to regulate and facilitate those involved in agriculture, which employs millions of people and is the largest employment generating sector. Facilities required to boost their yields through research and offering them latest technological tools are essential to achieve self-sufficiency. The quantum of land acreage that exists in Pakistan is fixed and therefore optimum utilization is essential for the economy. The unchecked population explosion is another issue that must be tackled. Cartelisation of agriculture by any state institution will be counter-productive and must be avoided. Both fertile and semi fertile land must be given only to those who till the land and for whom it is their sole source of livelihood.
Cartelization of Fertilizer industries has already had its adverse impact on agriculture, because cartels exploit supply and demand chain, create shortages to extract maximum profits. The powerful lobbies which own Fertilizer Industry were hesitant to deposit GIDC, a tax collected from farmers to be deposited with national exchequer. Incentives to those who till the land must be encouraged by the state to boost production and rural employment. All unirrigated land owned by the state should be allotted to small and medium land owners. Pakistan’s annual agricultural imports exceed over $8b and is a major drain on the economy, which can be curtailed if the state has the political will and realization that it can be achieved through regulation and facilitation, instead of creating cartels.
In 1953 FPAP (Family Pllanning), now renamed RAHNUMA, was founded in Lahore by Saeeda Waheed, who made an effort to create a realization that family planning should be a state policy. However, this was resisted by religious lobbies and no government adopted this advice. The first state policy on Family Planning was under the Third Five Year Plan 1965-70, but the political will was found lacking and this could not achieve the declared objective to regulate fertility and birth rates. It was totally rejected when Zia took over and thereafter it has risen exponentially. Not only the state failed to control the population explosion, but it withdrew investment in health and education, creating a sea of people driven to desperation, used as tools to fight proxy wars etc. Whilst India took bold steps to cancel land allotments awarded by British Raj at HM’s Pleasure immediately after they adopted constitution in 1950, in Pakistan the very adoption of a Constitution which Quaid had stressed upon was delayed by conspiracies and intrigues of the paid bureaucracy and remnants of Raj legacy.
The First Constituent Assembly, when it finally managed to draft a constitution was dismissed in 1954, to avoid holding elections based on adult franchise. In 1958 martial law was imposed by Ayub Khan who announced land reforms in 1959 with minimum land holdings as 12.5 acres and maximum 500 acres of irrigated land and 1000 acres of unirrigated land. However, what followed thereafter was that he allotted to himself 500 acres and all others followed suit. Instead of curtailing inequality, a new class of novae rich was created. Pursuing a policy as surrogates of USA, foreign aid in 1961 increased to almost double foreign loans, yet because of the conflicts of interest of those at helm, unemployment during 2nd 5Year-Plan increased from 5.5m to 5.8m in East Pakistan and this created a lot of discontent in the majority there. Pakistan finally stood disintegrated in 1971.
—The writer is contributing columnist, based in Lahore.
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