February 13, 2006	Monday	Muharram 14, 1427

Economists describe opportunity cost as, “the value of good or services forgone and the benefits that could be received from that opportunity”. It does not necessarily mean cost in terms of money but means cost of lost benefits.

The cost can be in the shape of lost benefits to a society as well as the country. This also means that awareness of issues, planning and decisions are important parameters for availing opportunities and it is also clear that lost opportunity is the result of poor decisions or poor decision-makers.

What makes our economy and development unimpressive? Why do we import wheat and other edibles, when we have the potential not only to be self-sufficient but even to export these items?

Why is it that after 57 years of the so-called economic development, we do not have a single multinational company, which can boast of an internationally recognized brand?

What role our universities have played in the national development in improving the skill and the standard required in the 21st century? How are we going to meet the future food and energy needs in the face of growing population?

As entrepreneurs, we can manage the ups and down of business, but we have a little control over law and order. Hence, a big percentage of would-be-entrepreneurs never take a risk. Since we are not in the habit of calculating the loss or conduct research on loss to economic activity, we may never know about the opportunity cost to the country’s economy.

An example closer to future prosperity is the construction of dams and water reservoirs for affordable electricity and agriculture. It is unwise even to think about alternate and expensive energy production when we have an opportunity for generating energy from hydro power plants.

Related to the water and energy problems is the production of food. Agriculture is confronted with a wide range of complex challenges— diminishing availability of farming land, inefficiency of fragmented small farms, climatic changes, future shortage of water resources, and the need for timely development of necessary technologies. Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs, is our guideline for sustainable development.

Sustainable development means continuous innovation, improvement and utilization of environmentally friendly technologies with the aim of reducing environmental impact and consumption of resources. Improving sustainable agriculture means re-disposition and re-arrangement of resources or, in other words, produce more with less inputs!

For example, development of a new plant species which might be grown for food, feed and feed stocks for energy and industry would be of great benefit. Can any of our public research institute boast of such an activity? probably not. However, we expect some other country to deliver and solve our problems. Obviously, it is going to cost us.

We are a peculiar people, who witness other nation’s development in awe and are spellbound by their technology and try to imitate their models, yet we forget our comparative advantage; land, environment, climate, geography, people and culture. We are impressed by their efficiency, but do not realize that they have economic models which are based on equality of opportunities. This is precisely why their economies are run and supported by 90 per cent small and medium business ventures.

We on the other hand, develop policies to favour the few and expect that the tiny minority will probably change the course of our nation’s economy. This fallacy is due to our attitude to make a quick buck. A recent news item about importing cows from Australia was amusing and ironic, because Australia imported Sahiwal and Red Sindhi cow breed back in the 60’s and 70’s from Pakistan, mainly for its ability to produce large quantity milk in tough climate.

The Sahiwal breed still exists, but is it available to a farmer? The government research farms are supposed to have these cows as well as other breeds, and they are supposed to provide this to farmers at a reasonable price. The general idea was and still is, self-sufficiency in milk and possibility of export.

But as in other areas of lack of development, such government farms were stripped of these breeds by opportunists and in their place you find mongrel or half breeds to complete the numbers for audit purpose. While the opportunist benefit by selling the breeds at high prices to a select few,. the government departments think that these select private dairy farms are going to bring prosperity to the nation, which they cannot. Opportunity for few, opportunity cost to the country.

We can probably export $1 billion worth of dairy products, but can we change our attitude from favouring the few to considering the many or can we enforce a price mechanism to protect the farmer? Probably not, because we are awe struck by the foreign consultants who are going to advise us on how to organize our dairy industry on modern mechanized technology, which is going to cost us extra money and will be affordable by only a select few.

The policy-makers need to educate themselves by reading research papers on sustainable agriculture and visit our farms to observe the present advantages we enjoy in the shape of climate, fodder, labour, etc.

A similar situation exists in other areas of development. For almost half a century, our universities have performed unimpressively. We believe research is waste of time, and that professors are not supposed to conduct research work or write books nor do we need PhD’s. The recent initiatives by the Higher Education Commission are commendable, but sending students abroad for PhD’s is questionable. PhD’s are supposed to make a difference and propose new models and ideas in different areas of national development.

The PhD students sent to foreign universities will conduct research on topics of foreign country’s issues while our country will miss out on research and proposals. Another issue is of students who cannot go abroad and wish to pursue the doctoral programme in Pakistan. Do our universities offer these programmes to the local people? Yes, but insufficient.

We are one of the most unfortunate country where education for masses has become a luxury.

And what about the masses without skills? The apprenticeship phenomena is still witnessed at workshops and factories in the absence of enough and quality technical and vocational training institutes. Most of these vocational and training institutes are in big and small cities, while concentration of our masses is in the rural areas, who find it difficult to come to these cities for training and benefit from possible business venture in their home town or job at factories.

What about our engineering and medical universities? Can they claim that they have invented a machine or medicine for the people of this country, or that their research has helped the industry? So, who is responsible for the opportunity cost of importing machinery for local use and medicines and equipment for the nation? Our performance is pathetic to the extent that we cannot even collect information about our wildlife and its affect on ecology.

We also need to review, in the light of our past performance, the validity of our current educational programmes that have failed to provide innovators, entrepreneurs and skilled work force for the industry. We cannot overlook the difference in public services / facilities enjoyed by urban and rural population or even the difference of quality of service in rural or urban community. It is not surprising that significant migration trends are visible from rural to urban areas seeking job opportunities.

We need to understand and explore the change in curriculum, assessment and viability of our programmes. Questions like, what will the graduates learn and be able to contribute in national development? What are the current issues in our country and how can we overcome these issues?

We are happy in adopting foreign educational models without understanding that they are specifically developed for their own requirements. We must realize that our environment / situation do not allow us to produce only clerks / administrators. Most bachelor or master programmes negate their purpose when they profess that their graduates will be able to perform in business / industry, information technology, economics, etc., because the fact is that it is very rare that these students spend more than a few hours in any factory or working environment.

And yet they are supposed to be competent in organizational processes. To compound this irony, these programmes recommend textbooks, which are at least a couple of year’s old editions and written by foreign writers with focus on their own industry.

The prevailing globalization, being forced on the world by trans-national economic and financial interests, is neo liberal globalization in which the interests of trans-national capitalism are clearly uppermost. “A central problem of the present globalization process is the growing power of trans-national corporations, answering only to their shareholders and not to their states of origin or to the countries into which they expand.

What happened to us and our institutes that were supposed to build this country? If anyone disagrees with our performance, they have only to witness the falling living standards, change in our attitudes, law and order, corruption and lack of respect for human beings and their rights and most dangerous of all, ignorance of issues at hand and its affect on future of the nation. There is no doubt that lack of education, research and management system is affecting our decisions and giving opportunity to the few who are leading the country towards a chaos.