| October 4, 2002 | Friday | Rajab 26, 1423 |
Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)
Corporate farming question
Soaring crime rates
THE world is appalled at the jingoistic drumbeating being done by Washington. Both Congress and the White House appear to have been gripped by war hysteria. Any impartial observer of the international scene would consider the current war authorization moves between Capitol Hill and the presidency totally uncalled for after what has happened in Vienna. On Tuesday, Baghdad and the UN reached complete agreement on the return of weapons inspectors to Iraq. The inspectors will now have access to all sites, including the eight presidential palaces. So satisfactory was the agreement that a UN spokesman said no further authorization was needed from the Security Council for the inspectors’ return. The UN’s chief inspector, Hans Blix, added that all sites would be subject to “immediate, unconditional and unrestricted access.” This having been accomplished, one wonders what justification Washington now has for proceeding with plans for military action against Iraq.
The truth is that there has lately been a role reversal between the US and Iraq. Till recently, it was Washington that had been demanding a return of the inspectors, while it was Baghdad that was hedging on the issue. This had prompted charges from America that Iraq was opposed to inspection because it had something to hide. However, last month Baghdad surprised the world by agreeing to inspection. Then it followed this up with Tuesday’s agreement with the UN in Vienna. Now, it is the US which is blocking the return of the inspectors.
By conceding inspections, the Saddam regime has pulled the rug from under the feet of the hawks in the Bush administration. Yet, congressional leaders and the White House have agreed on a tough resolution that would authorize President Bush to use force. The resolution is yet to be debated, and both the House and the Senate have to agree on a compromise motion. But going by what Mr Bush and the congressional leaders said on Wednesday, they want a resolution that would bypass the UN: if the Security Council does not come up with the kind of carte blanche the US wants, Washington will unleash terror on Iraq on its own — UN or no UN.
The Americans felt angry when the justice minister in Mr Gerhard Schroeder’s cabinet likened their president’s methods to Hitler’s. But given the kind of superpower arrogance and chauvinism the US and Israel have been displaying in their behaviour towards Middle Eastern states, it is impossible not to be reminded of the fascist powers in the Europe of the thirties.
Both feel free to use force to impose their will on other nations and to bypass and defy the world body in pursuit of aims that border on unbridled expansionism and territorial aggrandisement. Iraq poses no threat to the US. The world refuses to believe this fiction. If Baghdad has any weapons of mass destruction (WMD), the UN inspectors would unearth and destroy them. There is no need for America to unleash its awesome power of death and destruction. The WMD issue apparently is a ruse for the US to strike terror in the hearts of the people of the Middle East so that they never dare challenge its political and military hegemony in the region and beyond. As an American journalist has put it so aptly, a war on Iraq will mark the “official emergence of the US as a full-fledged global empire.”
GRAVE concern is being expressed over the haste with which the government is moving to introduce corporate farming in the country. Brushing aside all objections to what is a highly controversial proposal, the government seems determined to rush through amendments in the Constitution that would allow foreign individuals and corporations to own an unlimited amount of land for this purpose. This would create a strange anomaly, as there is a ceiling for holdings by Pakistani farmers under the Land Reforms Act of 1977. The decision to promote corporate farming has been taken without initiating a proper debate among the various stakeholders. It is important to tread cautiously on this issue because it will have far-reaching implications for the economy and social structure of the rural areas. Proponents of the scheme argue that corporate farming will encourage foreign investment and boost the traditionally low yield from agriculture by bringing in new technologies and high-yielding varieties of seed and other inputs. They believe that the fragmented nature of landholdings and archaic agricultural practices are to blame for low productivity. By cultivating large tracts of land, foreign corporations will achieve economies of scale and make farming more efficient and profitable.
Critics, however, claim that corporate farming will hand over a vital sector of the economy to foreign interests who are likely to grow crops to maximize profits and ignore the food needs of the rural populace. The move could also strengthen the hands of large landholders who could form partnerships with foreign corporations and further consolidate their hold. In that sense, corporate farming could usher in a new kind of feudalism through the backdoor. It could also pauperize small farmers, forcing them to sell their lands and become tenants or migrate to the cities. To transform farming from a largely subsistence activity to an export- and profit-oriented endeavour is a major task that could endanger the food security of large numbers of people and provoke a political and social backlash. There are already large numbers of landless tenants in the country who are demanding that state lands be distributed to them. The government’s decision to hand over precious lands to foreigners is likely to open up a pandora’s box that is best left shut at least until a new parliament is in place.
ONLY a cursory look at some Karachi newspapers would bring out the alarming rise in crime the city has witnessed in recent weeks. There has been a surge in all kinds of crime that continues to go unpunished and, therefore, undeterred. With the general elections round the corner, it seems the city police have busied themselves with monitoring corner meetings and political rallies, or guarding foreign missions and key installations against possible acts of terror while thieves, robbers, rapists and murderers are having a field day. In the past week alone, an average of 20 vehicles were stolen a day, homicide, murder, hit-and-run incidents and suicide claimed nearly 20 lives, and the number of armed robberies was alarmingly high. In sharp contrast to these statistics, the number of serious crime-related arrests made by the police is negligible.
The figures only reflect the reported cases of lawlessness while the actual number of crimes, including petty thefts and burglaries, is believed to be much higher. All this only goes to strengthen the case for constituting a specialized metropolitan police force for all big cities which must be professionally trained to effectively combat crime in a modern-day urban milieu. Unless this forms part of the police reforms the federal cabinet forwarded to the provinces for implementation last month, there is little hope that procedural changes such as separating the investigation branch from the prosecution will have much effect in terms of checking the rising crime rates in cities like Karachi.