THE World Food Day came and went quietly in a country which has officially admitted that 40 million of its population is living below the poverty line. Supplements were published by newspapers and magazines to spotlight the stark poverty and hunger that afflict the poor of Asia.
In Pakistan those living below the poverty line are officially put at 25 per cent, but actually around 30 per cent of the population is living below one dollar a day.
In fact because of the high food inflation, the number of poor and the hungry is increasing and urgent steps are needed to combat this malady.
The government has now come up with a welcome step of introducing crop insurance, increasing food production and saving the small farmers. That has taken the shape of the official National Insurance Corporation Limited offering insurance cover in three large sectors-- natural perils, multi- perils and insurance cover in selective areas.
This good beginning, though long delayed, is still welcome. It is better late than never. The original move for crop insurance was made in the 1970’s in the days of Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto. He wanted crop insurance to follow his land reforms but the insurance companies feared that the landlords would come up with bogus claims of losses. So it was tied to income tax payments to be made by the farm lords but the landlords did not want to pay income tax on their income nor did they want the public nor the government to know the actual size of their farms. Hence the move was abandoned and revived from time to time hazily.
A proper income tax cover can give protection to small farmers and enable many tenant farmers become independent farmers. It will also induce small farmers to invest more and more on their farms as they alone will be reaping the benefits. That will also enable co-operative farming to flourish. The late Mr Suhrawardy once described the people of then East Pakistan as those living between wind and water.
The lot of small farmers in “ West Pakistan “was not much better and in a bad crop year, they faired badly in the sharing of the crop. Crop insurance could be a solution to many such problems and make the farmers confident of their holdings and their full output.
This insurance measure has come at a time when the World Bank’s annual report has declared development through agriculture as its new target to reduce poverty in countrywide. It says 600 million farmers are very poor- one half of the very poor of the world and they have to be rescued from absolute poverty through rapid agricultural development.
The report says that through seven per cent economic growth in China, India and Morocco, they have been able to reduce rural poverty vastly. The same can be done in other countries with a larger number of poor like that of Pakistan to achieve the UN Millennium Goal of halving the number of absolute poor by the year 2015.
Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz says that Pakistan would achieve the Millennium goal in respect of absolute poverty, but when it comes to education of girls and enrollment of all children in schools that may not be possible in the tribal and associated areas because of the resistance of the religious forces.
Earlier, when cattle farmers came from abroad to set up their business, they found lack of crop insurance a major deterrent to their investment.
Crop insurance can mark the beginning of proper accountability in agriculture. It could show the production of various crops and the income of large farmers. It could show who owns which farm and how much of the land is under the control of a large landlord. Eventually it could lead to the introduction of federally-managed agricultural income tax which the Central Board of Revenue has been calling for long and the farmers have been avoiding.
So, the World Bank is attaching a lot of importance to agriculture and hopes that agricultural development will lead to the reduction of poverty in rural areas as in China and India. Pakistan is required to do everything possible to make the best use of this opportunity and develop its agriculture instead of facing wheat crisis one day, sugar crisis another day, pulse crisis yet another day and vegetable shortage forever.
In initial phases, profits of the National Insurance Corporation should not be the chief driving force. Instead placing the insurance scheme on proper lines should be the prime objective.
THE World Food Day came and went quietly in a country which has officially admitted that 40 million of its population is living below the poverty line. Supplements were published by newspapers and magazines to spotlight the stark poverty and hunger that afflict the poor of Asia.
