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SOMETHING odd is happening in Sindh this year, and I’m not talking about the two quarrelling gentlemen. Although it’s possible that there is an indirect link. Let me explain.
Start with this year’s sugar cane harvest in the province, which has been one of the most troubled in recent years. Some amount of trouble always accompanies sugar cane harvests, when farmers complain that mill owners are not picking up the crop, or refusing to honour the price set by the government. In years past, we have seen these disputes escalate to such an extent that the Supreme Court intervened and at one time, even issued orders for the arrest of the Pakistan Sugar Millowners Association head.
But this time the dispute between growers and mill owners in Sindh reached proportions not seen in recent history. Sugar is a controlled item in Pakistan, and the price at which cane will be procured and sugar will be sold is set by the provincial governments. In Punjab, the process began as smoothly as it does every year, with plenty of complaints but crushing beginning more or less on time and procurement moving ahead at the government set price of Rs180 per 40 kilos.
This time the dispute between sugar cane growers and mill owners in Sindh reached proportions not seen in recent history.
But in Sindh the dispute dragged on for months as the provincial government initially delayed announcing a procurement price, and then found itself caught in the middle of a dispute between growers and mill owners over the price. The growers wanted the same price that was notified in Punjab, as is standard practice every year. The mill owners refused, saying they’ll only pick up the cane at Rs150.
As the matter stalled, the provincial government was unable to mediate, announcing one price today and taking it back tomorrow. There was a walkout from the Sindh Assembly by grower lobbies. The Sindh High Court intervened, yet despite that, the dispute dragged into the new year, and until February there were protests by growers that the mill owners were not giving them the legally entitled price.
It’s true that disputes of this sort take place every year, but nobody can remember the last time Sindh mill owners pressed the growers this hard for so long. There was something unusual about the ferocity with which the growers were being squeezed this year. And it was all the more surprising for the dogged stubbornness with which the mill owners pressed their case, arguing that they cannot remain in business with cane at Rs182 even as Punjab mill owners were paying that price to their growers. There was a walkout by the growers from the provincial assembly; the opposition parties jumped in on the side of the growers; and there were protests and interventions by the Sindh High Court and the Supreme Court. But the mill owners never relented. This was unusual.
By the time this issue faded from the headlines, the wheat crop was ready for harvesting, and the government-controlled procurement process was set to begin. Once again, every year there are disputes in this process, and the disputes look exactly the same year after year. Complaints pour in that the big farmers are being given the red carpet treatment at procurement centres while the small farmers are given the bureaucratic runaround.
At the heart of the whole enterprise is the distribution of gunny bags, or bardana in the parlance of farmers. These are government-issued bags in which the wheat must be packed before an officer at a procurement centre can accept it. The small farmers insist that large landlords, using their influence with the provincial government, are able to secure large quantities of bardana for themselves, and the small farmers are left to fight it out for whatever is left. This happens every year.
But this time, in Sindh, something unusual has happened. The sheer scale of the appropriation that is being alleged by small farmer groups has everybody stunned. District food controllers, who oversee the procurement process on the ground, have been transferred out during the procurement drive, and one secretary food and the director food have also been transferred in the middle of the process. The government says these individuals were involved in malpractice. Others say they were transferred specifically for refusing illegal orders to give large quantities of gunny bags to favourites.
Numbers are hard to come by in this exercise, but small farmer bodies are going on record to say that the scale of malpractice this year is something they have never seen before. To add to the matter, the government has downwardly revised the procurement target by almost 25pc from last year, leaving even more people shut out of the officially announced price of Rs1,300 per bag.
This leads me to wonder something. Why is it that this year both the sugarcane and wheat harvests have been marred by allegations of unprecedented malpractice? Where sugar cane is concerned, the story is easy enough to see, the failure of the Sindh government to fix the price at Rs182 and its erratic efforts to try and mediate between the growers and the mill owners betrayed its weakness and inability to make decisions on its own. As regards wheat, we’ll wait to see if the allegations of historic malpractice are borne out by further investigation, but for now it’s enough to note that the furore surrounding the exercise, and the rapid transfers of officials in the food bureaucracy speak of tremendous pressures operating within the procurement exercise.
My gut feeling is that the agriculture pricing regime in Sindh is being milked by a few powerful interests to the absolute maximum extent possible, breaking all records of the past. Are the costs of patronage politics driving this process? It can’t be greed alone, because greed has governed the process in the past too and this year appears to be different. Another ingredient has entered the picture. Good luck getting answers from the Sindh government on what that might be.
The writer is a member of staff.
Twitter: @khurramhusain
Published in Dawn, May 7th, 2015
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