| October 29, 2001 | Monday | Shaba'an 11, 1422 |
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Deadly clusters
Civic priorities
PAKISTAN’S economy is largely dependent on cotton but cotton growers today are facing a bleak prospect because they have raised a good crop this year. Their earnings have declined as prices have plummeted much below the level promised at the time of sowing. Whether it is a good crop or a bad one, it is always the growers of agricultural commodities, especially major crops, who are at the receiving end of a rough deal in our kind of market economy. Inherently, the market forces here are weighted against the weaker partners in the production-distribution chain, although in theory an equilibrium is presumed to come into play provided there is open and fair competition in the market. This is not the case now. In agriculture small, illiterate and unorganized farmers far exceed the better-financed, better-informed and better-organized processors and distributors in number and influence. By and large market forces are stacked in favour of the latter. This fact is nowhere more glaring than in the case of cotton and sugarcane growers. When these crops are good, the market forces work in favour of the small number of processors and distributors and bring down the prices and the farmers’ earnings. When the crop is bad and production falls and consequently prices rise, the net earnings may in many cases be on the low side because there is less to less. In both cases farmers are the losers.
This year the cotton crop is projected to be good both locally and internationally. Consequently, the prices have fallen. At the time of sowing, the government had announced a support price of Rs 780 per 40 kg of phutti. However, the price prevailing today ranges between Rs 650 and Rs 700. Small farmers who, under pressure for repayment of input loans and for their day-to-day living, have no option of holding for better times but to sell their produce at the prevailing prices and suffer losses. The government has no clue about how to deal with the issue of fluctuating prices of farm produce in a free market economy, with all its uncertainties and variables. Although it fixes support prices, it does not have the required machinery and resources for buying stocks, especially from millions of small farmers in rural areas. In such situations, after a lot of delays and vacillation when enough damage to small farmers has been done, the Trading Corporation is sometimes allowed to enter the market. It buys mainly from the middleman who reaps the primary benefit of the TCP’s intervention, leaving the secondary benefit for those farmers who have the capacity to hold the crop until the government steps in. Either the government should not fix the support prices and delude the farmers, or it should keep the machinery and resources ready to intervene as soon as the prices show a tendency to fall below the support prices and thus save millions of small farmers from sustaining losses on account of the vagaries of the market forces.
In the present circumstances, when the government is not in a position to provide subsidy, the present unreliable price support system may be abandoned and the farmers left to their own options and judgment in the matter of sale of their produce. As an alternative, some kind of crop insurance system can be introduced. In this all the stake-holders should voluntarily participate and the pool fund should be set apart to be operated by the representatives of the stake-holders whenever the prices fall below a certain pre-determined level. The incentive of preferential credit may be used to induce the stake-holders to participate in the insurance scheme.
THE air strikes on Afghanistan, now in their fourth week and hitting civilian targets with increasing frequency, have taken an even deadlier turn with the use of cluster bombs. The way this anti-tank and anti-personnel weapon works — by scattering hundreds of little bombs, or ‘bomblets’, over a wide area — has understandably created wide controversy and concern because of its potential to kill innocent civilians. While some of these smaller bombs explode on impact, a significant number do not, and lie on the ground or barely buried just like land mines, only to explode on touch or under pressure. Experience in other conflicts, areas, especially Kosovo where around 35,000 of the bomblets did not explode and still cause on average one death a week, suggests that cluster bombs are a serious threat to the civilian populations. The United Nations and several humanitarian organizations, particularly those involved in limiting the use of land mines, have criticized America for using these bombs in Afghanistan. However, the Pentagon has stubbornly defended its actions saying that operational and tactical planning required that they be used.
Proof that the hapless and beleaguered Afghan civilians have already borne the brunt of this cluster bombing comes from Herat, where they were first dropped, with the UN confirming that eight civilians died there early last week and another was killed later after picking up one of the bomblets. Cluster bombs have also been dropped north of Kabul, to weaken the Taliban frontline. This, however, does not guarantee that innocent civilians fleeing the fighting will escape the lethal effect of these devices. Each day of the bombing campaign adds to the civilian death toll because many of the bombs dropped have gone off target. The addition of cluster bombs to the deadly weapons raining down on Afghanistan will invite greater international criticism and make matters only worse, not just for the Afghan people, but also for the anti-terrorism coalition. A country already ravaged by the presence of hundreds of thousands of unexploded land mines could do without any more instruments of death.
IT is good to see the newly-elected Nazim of Karachi urging the bureaucrats to expedite various development projects in the city. On Friday, the mayor was briefed about a number of projects that were in various phases of completion. The briefing related to the roundabout near the Board Office in North Nazimabad and a women’s sports complex in Gulshan-i-Iqbal. While these projects are undoubtedly important for the city, it is time the mayor got his priorities right. The major problem facing Karachi is sanitation. The people have noted that the induction of elected city councillors has made no difference to the city’s sanitary condition. While in many localities sewerage lines stand choked, the most disgusting site is uncollected garbage. Heaps of rubbish are found throughout the city in the midst of residential localities, and the newly-elected town councils and the city government have made no effort to move to tackle this situation.
Revolting though the sight of garbage heaps has been for years, an average citizen had often attributed this to the absence of an elected city government. However, now that a city government and the eighteen town councils are in place, citizens are entitled to know what stops the city fathers are taking to ensure regular garbage collection and giving the city a neat look. Certainly, sanitation requires no funding nor foreign technical assistance. All it takes to ensure a cleaner city is to make the sanitary staff do their job. Why the newly-elected city fathers have so far failed to do this is indeed baffling.