UNLIKE developed nations where manifestos of political parties are taken as their respective agendas after coming to power, local farmers are not upbeat about the agriculture plans being presented by various political entities during the ongoing election season.

In view of the parties’ past performance during their respective tenures in power, the farming community considers the manifestos “purposeless” documents meant only for discussion amongst political competitors and for making “false” promises with the electorate.

Ebadur Rehman Khan, a senior member of the Farmers Associates Pakistan (FAP), which represents big landlords, declares the manifestos as each other’s copies. “If you mask the logos and some specific terms used by the parties you cannot differentiate which plan has been given by which party. And this makes one believe that the parties are giving future agendas only as a formality with neither being aware of, or clear about, issues.”

All three major political parties — the PML-N, PTI and PPP — are talking of value addition in agriculture, improving productivity and reforming the irrigation system by introducing drip irrigation and other water conservation steps.

But despite remaining in power at least in provinces during the last five years none of them worked out the quantity of water each crop needs and how the inputs required for it could be subsidised, or if it’s feasible to replace this crop with the other in the specific environment, bemoans Mr Khan.

Chaudhry Nisar, president of the Kisan Board Pakistan, which represents small landholders, regrets that no revolutionary announcement like providing free electricity to agriculture sector, as in India, has been promised by any political party. He points out that livestock, a major sub-sector of the agriculture sector, has been ignored by all political players.

He rejects the Kisan Card Scheme as a waste of public money in the name of farmers for it doesn’t benefit the small growers.

Chiding the price support mechanism promised by the PPP, he recalls that sugarcane growers have been the worst hit in Sindh, the province governed by the party during the last 10 years.

In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where PTI was in power, both sugarcane growers and tobacco growers have been facing exploitation at the hands of the related industries.

He regrets that the PTI didn’t bother to fulfil the formality of giving an agriculture sector plan in the 2013 manifesto though the three big names in the sector — most senior FAP leader Shah Mahmood Qureshi, known progressive farmer Jehangir Tareen, and Asad Umar, one of the top personalities in agribusiness — have been and are senior party leaders and part of its decision-making body.

Sindh Abadgar Board Vice President Syed Mahmood Nawaz Shah believes that the agriculture sector has recorded a negative growth in the last five years.

According to him the agrarian economy has badly suffered due to missing political will, and he regrets that the sector has not yet been linked with the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

He also notes that for almost a decade now the agriculture sector has been a devolved subject, in provincial control and should be managed with proper stakeholder input; yet apparently farmers’ suggestions, sought by the government, remain unimplemented.

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, July 9th, 2018