Agriculture to the rescue?

LEGEND has it that Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel reluctantly acquiesced in the creation of Pakistan in 1947, partly because they believed that the new country, separated by 1,200 miles of Indian territory and with hardly any industry, would prove unviable and be forced to rejoin India. Since that time, Pakistan has struggled long and hard to overcome its economic problems and deficiencies.

The first article on this subject a few months back focused on the advantages of learning from India’s success by developing Pakistan’s IT industry. It should be made clear, however, that developing high-tech industries by itself would not suffice to bring widespread prosperity. To do that we must also promote people-friendly agricultural and industrial revolutions that could generate mass employment and curb under-employment.

Pakistan needs to consider to what extent it ought to be following India’s example of relying on its domestic market rather than the export market for the growth of its consumer industries. India’s focus has been on consumption rather than investment, services rather than industry and high-tech rather than low-skill manufacturing, according to the entrepreneur Gurcharan Das. Relying on the domestic market has insulated India from global fluctuations; at the same time, the emphasis on consumption is deemed more people-friendly. Consequently, India’s Gini index, a measure of income inequality from zero to 100, is 33 as compared to 41 for Pakistan and 45 for China.

One shortcoming of India is its failure to provide employment to the people in the rural areas. Unlike China and the Asian tigers a generation back, it has failed to get into large scale, labour-intensive manufacturing in a big way. Services account for 50 per cent of India’s GDP while tens of millions of Indians are mired in rural poverty.

Encouraging businessmen from the cities to invest in the countryside, specifically in agribusiness, is an excellent way of combating rural poverty. Unfortunately, the city dweller who invests his savings in the countryside in the Potohar districts may find that his legal title to the property is eventually challenged by locals. Under the complexities of ‘shamilaat’, the ownership of any property can be claimed by a small shareholder and the ensuing litigation may last for years. This system discourages much-needed investment in agriculture. The government ought to enact legislation to make it easier for fragmented shamilaat land to be consolidated.

How many of us have considered that Pakistan has a comparative advantage in agriculture vis-a-vis its neighbours including India, China, Iran and Afghanistan, in terms of people to arable land ratio and water per capita?

An overwhelming majority of Pakistan’s farmers practise subsistence agriculture on small, inefficiently run farms. But in spite of their low productivity, the farms provide employment and social stability in the rural areas. Thanks to the Green Revolution in the 1960s, Pakistan feeds 160 million people — not to mention several million Afghans on both sides of the Durand Line — as compared to 35 million people in 1947. This is no mean feat considering that over six decades successive governments in Pakistan have neglected agriculture.

Pakistani farmers may not be as skilled as their Indian and Chinese counterparts, but they still produce the choicest rice, meat products and fruit. Pakistan’s aromatic basmati rice sells at a premium in international markets while its cotton is in great demand abroad and forms the basis of the domestic textile industry. Unfortunately, Pakistan’s agriculture is handicapped by its feudal culture, inefficient cropping patterns and lack of knowhow. Use of scarce snowmelt to irrigate vast fields of water-intensive sugarcane, for example, violates the principle of comparative advantage.

The time is now ripe to launch a second Green Revolution in order to achieve a better balance in our agriculture. The state should assist farmers in raising the yield per acre of traditional crops such as wheat, cotton and pulses. Our rural population should be assured a fair price for its produce. We also need to emulate selected developing countries like South Africa and Egypt by going in for larger corporate farms to produce high-value cash crops, such as mangoes, citrus fruits, strawberries, grapes, melons, as well organic vegetables in order to increase exports.

The emphasis should be on organic farming and strictly regulated use of pesticides in order to penetrate overseas markets. Packing facilities have to be first class. In order to attract domestic and foreign investors, the government has to provide a proper legal framework to encourage consolidation of land without which large-scale scientific farming may not be feasible.

Corporate farming can be extremely profitable. The owners of the 6,500 acre Maghrabi corporate farm that this writer studied in Egypt invested US $80 million over a period of 15 years. In 2002, the farm produced fruit and vegetables worth over $80 million, with a net profit of over $20 million.

About 75 per cent of the earnings of this model corporate farm were derived from exports to the European Union and the Middle East. Yet the manager of this model farm conceded that his California-origin oranges had a difficult time competing with our kino tangerines in the Gulf markets. In Europe and the United States, however, the supermarket chains are more interested in seedless varieties and place a big premium on consistency and look rather than superior taste.

Another farm on the outskirts of Cairo, comprising a mere 27 acres, grossed $1,000,000 annually by exporting expensive tropical plants to overseas markets and also by supplying to domestic consumers, like upscale hotels, restaurants, hospitals, museums, offices, etc.

This small farm employed about 80 agricultural graduates and about 70 clerical-cum sales assistants, the latter being mostly women. The company calculated revenue on the basis of per cubic metre of water consumed and per square metre of space utilised. In Pakistan, a normal farm of this size would provide employment to no more than five to six labourers but in the Egyptian model farm, thanks to intensive scientific farming, under the leadership of a Ph.D. in agriculture, 30 times as many people have found gainful employment.

A major problem in setting up a big corporate farm in Pakistan is the fact that suitable land in big chunks is simply not available. Land holdings have been fragmented over countless generations. President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt bypassed this hurdle by allotting large tracts of virgin desert land to reputable investors, and by making available abundant Nile water through canals. The Egyptian government has also constructed roads and provided electric power at affordable rates. Entrepreneurs were expected to mobilise investment capital from domestic and foreign sources.

This may not be easy in Pakistan owing to water scarcity and a thicket of other daunting hurdles, including land fragmentation, law and order problems, power shortages, limited air-cargo space for perishables and the reputation of an unfriendly bureaucracy.

Pakistanis, proud of the superior taste of their fruit, will be astonished to learn that our mangoes were sold at half the average price of Indian mangoes in international markets during 2004 ($290 per ton vs $594), while our kino oranges sold at one-third the average price of South African tangerines ($203 vs $604).

One way to overcome this disparity would be to invite reputable foreign agricultural corporations with access to international markets to invest in fruit processing and packing facilities in Pakistan for a start. The corporations would enter into agreements with the owners of medium and large orchards of citrus fruits, mangoes, strawberries, melons and grapes.

The foreign investor or corporation would require our farmers to supply produce that meets the stringent quarantine and pesticide regulations of the European Union, Japan or the United States as the case may be. The produce would then be packed and marketed under the corporation’s brand name. The advantage for the growers would be that they would not have to sell their entire crop to local middlemen who normally pay them a fraction of the wholesale price.

In the light of the challenge that Pakistan is facing on all fronts, it is depressing to learn that we treat our agricultural scientists quite shabbily. Apart from low salaries and irksome bureaucratic restrictions, funds for research at the National Agricultural Research Centre, which comes under PARC (Pakistan Agricultural Research Council), are woefully inadequate. For example, 15 scientists at the centre are doing research on pulses and nine of them have Ph.D. degrees. It is pathetic that the regular budget for research on key staples varies from Rs150,000 to Rs400,000. This contrasts with the annual subsidy of Rs2.5 billion for pulses which the government is providing in order to avoid social unrest. Would it not make sense to spend a few extra millions on research?

In contrast to the rapid promotions in the armed forces and the civil services, agricultural scientists have been routinely denied promotion for 20 years and even more. A Ph.D. from the UK with more than 20 years service has a basic salary of Rs20,000 per month and a take home package of Rs30,000. He has to pay for his own transport and accommodation, apart from other living expenses.

Owing to the state of low morale, during the past decade, 72 PARC scientists, including 22 Ph.D. and 49 M.Phil. degree-holders, have emigrated to Canada and the EU countries. In addition, 92 agricultural scientists from PARC, including 31 Ph.D. degree-holders, have left for other organisations within Pakistan, presumably as a first step to emigration.

Reportedly, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz is aware of the situation and has promised remedial action. One can only hope that it will be a comprehensive and decisive move signifying a change in our attitude towards research, financial incentives, research linkages and autonomy for the agricultural research organisations. Otherwise, the agriculture sector will continue to stagnate as many more of our scientists inevitably leave the country for destinations where their skills are likely to be appreciated and rewarded.

The writer is a former ambassador.

Crash of the US conservative project

IN spare moments since Tuesday’s American elections I have been replying to a backlog of emails. Big deal, you may say. But these were not run-of-the-mill correspondents. They were Americans who wrote to me after last week’s column. This argued — correctly, as it turned out — that the Democrats were about to win the midterms, perhaps handsomely, while warning that the party should not mistake a revolt over Iraq for a wider political endorsement.

When you challenge the gospel according to King George, you should don a tin helmet. Last weekend was no exception. The electronic abuse started early and kept coming. I was a jerk who had no right to comment about America. I would have been writing my article in German had it not been for Uncle Sam. I would be eating crow come Tuesday. The reader who invited me to “pound sand, you...foreign moron...” was not alone in his views.

It was not the rudeness that made me write back after Tuesday suggesting that some apology might be in order. It was the denial about what was so clearly going to happen in the midterms. Every poll for months had signalled a serious Republican defeat. Reporting from America in May, I was told that no Republican strategist believed they could hold the House of Representatives. As David Broder, the dean of American political reporters, wrote this week: “Never was a political wipe-out better advertised in advance than the one that hit the Republican party on Tuesday.” Which part of the word defeat did my correspondents not understand?

What happened this week was not complex. It was the crash of the conservative political project begun by Newt Gingrich in 1994 and crystallised under George Bush since 2000. It was the crash heard round the world. It came in the form of a nationwide protest against the Iraq war and Bush’s presidency. A new survey of actual voters, conducted since election day by Bill Clinton’s former pollster, Stan Greenberg, confirms that Iraq was by far the most important issue that influenced Americans’ votes. The divide among those for whom Iraq was the most important issue went 3:1 in favour of the Democrats. That, in a nutshell, explains what happened.

The use of the word crash is important if we are to understand the new situation in Washington. This was not an election in which the traditional Democratic vote finally roused itself to overturn Republican rule. It was an election in which the Republican coalition that has gradually come to dominate America since the civil-rights acts of the 1960s suffered a huge existential hit as a result of Bush and Iraq.

The Democrats did not just win among the usual groups such as the poor, women and black people. This time they won among the middle class too, among small-town voters, among every age group and — crucially and emphatically — among independents and moderates. Even where the Democrats lost they polled significantly, taking 45 per cent in the south, 28 per cent of white evangelical Christians, 20 per cent of conservatives and 15 per cent of people who voted for Bush in 2004. These strong showings among unlikely groups help explain why Democrats won congressional seats in so many “red” states and why the win that finally gave them control of the senate came from the near south.

No one can say if this is an epochal hit or one from which the Republicans will bounce back in 2008. But the implications of the 2006 crash are fascinating. This is not the creation of a new majority, Greenberg stresses, but a lot of space has nevertheless opened up in which the Democrats could do even better in future. Clearly such optimism has to be highly contingent. Only a fool would overstate it. Karl Rove has not become incompetent overnight. But the recent polls defy the argument in influential books that America is a conclusively conservative country.

It will take time for this to sink in among conservative Republicans. This election has been a major blow to their self-image and worldview. Like the Thatcherites, they got used to assuming that they were always right and would always be victorious. On Tuesday the voters told them they were wrong. It has taken many false starts for the Conservative party to get back in the game in Britain. Something similar could happen to the suddenly weakened Republicans. But there’s nothing they like more than a fight.

What will this traumatic domestic political event mean for America’s relations with the rest of the world? Three main answers suggest themselves. The first is the reminder that the problem is not America but this American administration. Foreigners have had the useful reminder that Americans are not nuts. Greenberg’s poll shows that in modern times Americans have never been more multilateralist in foreign policy than they are today, with 58 per cent agreeing that America’s security “depends on building strong ties with other nations” compared with 34 per cent who think it depends “on its own military strength”. I doubt that many American politicians will trust that finding, but in the long run nothing is more important than the change from America as part of the problem to America as part of the solution.

Second, a weakened presidency inevitably means a weakened America. And that means less not more American foreign policy during Bush’s final two years. The Democratic agenda is a domestic one, Iraq apart. In the short run that may be a relief all round. But it means fewer good initiatives as well as fewer bad ones. The fall of Donald Rumsfeld does not portend the rise of Condoleezza Rice. Bush will have his work cut out dealing with Congress and trying to extricate America from Iraq. Rice is manoeuvring to be her party’s vice-presidential nominee. It’s stay-at-home time for America. Good news for Iran, which now more than ever must believe it is playing a winning hand. Bad news for Palestine.

And Iraq? Those who expect a sudden sea change may be disappointed. It won’t be a 180-degree shift, a senior British Washington-watcher suggests. But maybe a 60-degree shift is now on the cards. The name of the game now is minimising the damage of a lost war. With Democratic approval, American policy has been explicitly subcontracted to James Baker and his Iraq Study Group. But that doesn’t in itself solve the problem. The damage of Bush’s Iraq adventure has just got bigger, not smaller. It now stretches from the streets of Baghdad and Basra into the heart of the once triumphalist and now humbled Republican party.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service

Poland down the ages

THE consulate general of the Republic of Poland in Karachi recently celebrated the 88th anniversary of the restoration of the country’s independence — an event that took place 88 years ago at 11 minutes past 11 on the 11th month of the year 1918, marking the end of the First World War. However, what distinguishes the Polish card from other diplomatic invitations is the use of the phrase restoration of independence.

It might give those not conversant with Polish history the idea that the country had once been a colony of one of the leading European powers. No such conquest had ever taken place. But the phrase nevertheless highlights the great tragedy of the Polish people who were in the unfortunate position of being sandwiched between Prussia in the west, Austria in the south and Russia in the east — three powerful neighbours who appeared to be hell bent on either occupying their country, physically or ideologically, or partitioning their territory.

In the Great War, most of the fighting on the eastern front took place on Polish soil. Germany had a major crack at tearing down the Polish flag in 1939; and the Soviet Union completed the process at the end of the Second World War when it invaded the country and imposed the socialist creed on the hapless Poles. So it wasnt really until the break-up of the Soviet Union, that colossal monolith that spread across eight time zones, that the Poles tasted real independence. After that there was Solidarity, elections, a little less Solidarity, more confusion and more elections. But they have never looked back. One doesnt know just what it is about Poland, but the very name brings back memories.

The first time this writer came into contact with a citizen of the land between the Oder and the Bug was during his boarding school days in Panchgani — a hill station in the western ghats of India. There were five plateaus, known as tablelands, and the place had five boarding schools for boys and three for girls.

There was a camp not far from our school which housed young Polish refugees of both sexes who had been evacuated when the Nazis invaded their homeland. For some curious reason, the British had dumped them in this hill station which in the summer was bathed in soft focus sunlight and in the four-month monsoon was hosed down by torrential rains.

We were at once struck not only by the cheerful and positive attitude of these Polish youngsters, but also by the many talents they displayed in the fields of carpentry, embroidery, music, painting and the culinary arts. They were an exceptionally gifted bunch of teenagers.

The Parsi High School, which was the only seminary in the hill station that owned a 35 mm projector, and screened films on the last Saturday of every month, gave students their first glimpse of the indomitable spirit of the Poles when they showed an early British war movie with the unlikely title of Dangerous Moonlight. In this melodrama, Anton Wallbrook, a displaced Polish pianist, much against the entreaties of his fiancee who wanted him to pursue a musical career, went on an apparent RAF suicide mission during the Battle of Britain.

The next day the principal of St Peters, Reverend F.M. McKeown, did his bit for king and country by inviting all the refugees in the camp over to our school for high tea. He praised the valour and courage of the Polish people. He said that though the Poles were hopelessly outnumbered, unprepared and ill-equipped, they wouldnt surrender. They attacked the invading tanks on horseback, brandishing their swords and lances, and fired on enemy aircraft with shotguns and trench mortars.

It was, however, during the high tea that there began one of the great love affairs of the century between a dashing young prince from one of those obscure Indian Muslim principalities and an exceptionally beautiful dark haired Polish girl from the wooded foothills of the Tatra mountains. One hastens to add, the romance had a happy ending and the Indian state inherited a Polish princess.

Years later, when this writer went to university in London he frequented the White Eagle Club, a sanctuary for Polish exiles, where they served mushroom-stuffed beefsteak rolls in sour cream served with boiled buckwheat. There was a grand piano in the place and on a good day a Polish pianist would belt out a Chopin polonaise or mazurka, and if the mood took him — a nocturne.

For a while this writer became a paying guest with a Polish family whose patriarch had the familiar clean shaven head and huge handlebar moustache associated with the Central European military, and had once been a colonel in Marshall Joseph Pilsudskis Territorial Army. It was here that I heard my first Polish tango — Scravavione Cerce. It certainly wasnt my last.

Poland is a land of lakes, woodlands and incredible wildlife. The country has also an astonishing variety of architecture which ranges from the modern urban glass and concrete residential block to the ubiquitous cathedral and castle which form a focal point of interest in every major city — Warsaw, Gdansk, Poznan, and Wroclaw.

Few castles can rival in sheer magnificence and splendor the 18th century Lazienki park and palace in Warsaw where in summer boaters paddle on the lake, or drop in at the open air Greek theatre; the 12th century neo-gothic Lublin castle; or the 13th century Malbork castle where the March wind chisels the edge of the Nogat river. For the tourist anxious to strike a bargain, there is the rebuilt covered market in Krakow, and for the culture buff on the hunt for rare works of art, there is Leonardo da Vincis painting Lady with an Ermine in the Benedictine Abbey of Tyniec.

Poland borders with the Baltic sea, the Russian Federation, Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany. Warsaw, the capital, was completely destroyed during World War II, but the Old Town, where the heroic resistance known as the Warsaw Uprising took place, has been completely and faithfully rebuilt, brick by brick. Krakow, Poland’s second city still retains its charming mediaeval air, having largely escaped destruction during the war.

The CIA World Factbook has this to say about the country: Poland has steadfastly pursued a policy of economic liberalisation throughout the 1990s and today stands out as a success story among transition economies. Even so, much remains to be done, especially in bringing down unemployment This, according to official figures, hovers around the three million figure. The privatisation of small and medium-sized state-owned companies and a liberal law on establishing new firms has encouraged the development of the private business sector, but legal and bureaucratic obstacles alongside persistent corruption are hampering its further development.

Poland’s agricultural sector remains handicapped by surplus labour, inefficient small farms, and lack of investment. Restructuring and privatisation of sensitive sectors, for example coal, steel, the railroads and energy, while recently initiated, have stalled. Reforms in healthcare, education, the pension system, and state administration have resulted in larger-than-expected fiscal pressures. Further progress in public finance depends mainly on reducing losses in Polish state enterprises, restraining entitlements, and overhauling the tax code to incorporate the growing gray economy and farmers, most of whom pay no tax

Poland joined the EU in May 2004, and surging exports to the EU contributed to Poland’s strong growth in that year, though its competitiveness could be threatened by the zloty’s appreciation. GDP per capita roughly equals that of the three Baltic states. Poland nevertheless stands to benefit from nearly $23.2 billion in EU funds, available through 2006. Farmers have already begun to reap the rewards of membership via higher food prices and EU agricultural subsidies.

The government naturally has its detractors, especially among the former Polish socialists. Zbigniew Wiktor believes the growth of unemployment is rising very alarmingly and is closer to five million. According to him, from the end of 2001, the government has been composed of a bunch of liberals with a strong Bourgeois-Catholic orientation which has conducted a pro-western reactionary policy that favours the multinationals.

The privatisation of the economy has created a new capitalist class which has benefited 10 to 15 per cent of the population and has adversely affected the fortunes of the Polish worker. By forcing Poland to join Nato and the European Union, this new ruling class has made Poland more dependent on foreign capital. But then, isnt this the price one has to pay for re-introducing laissez-faire?