THE University of Agriculture, Faisalabad the former College of Agriculture and Research Institute, Lyallpur is celebrating its centenary from 14 to 16 of this month. Included in the schedule is an international symposium on “Agriculture in the 21st century — issues and strategies.”

It would be an appropriate time to look at the success stories and the university’s handicaps that need to be overcome.

Until 1960, the college accomplished remarkable service in education, research and extension in the Sub-continent. It churned out renowned scientists at both national and international levels because of its unified agricultural education, research and extension system and high discipline.

In 1961, it was raised to the status of a university but unfortunately the process of disintegration began in every faculty. The university’s status was reduced to the education only, including post-graduate, while research and extension were transferred to the Department of Agriculture under the Secretary of Agriculture, government of Punjab.

Both research and extension departments instead of being under one director were separated under different directorates resulting in poor linkages between the education, research and extension services and their inter-action with the farmers due to the inter-departmental rivalries and lack of coordination.

On account of the separation of research from the university, the share for students and faculty in the budget was hardly 10 per cent as against about 40 per cent required according to the international standards for meaningful research. This adversely affected the research programme despite the fact that at one time it had about 65 foreign trained PhD scientists in different fields.

On the contrary, India maintained the unified system of the Lyallpur College in their relevant universities resulting in ‘green revolution’. This changed the status of India from an importer to an exporter. It now is exporting wheat, rice, sugar, vegetables, fruits etc., to other countries including Pakistan.

Pakistan is virtually importing wheat, sugar, edible oil, pulses, maize, barley, cotton etc., in spite of having the largest canal irrigation system in the world. Even with over 200 research institutes, stations and substations and a number of agricultural universities and colleges our crop yields are 50–80 below the potentials.

As a result of the efforts of the Punjab Agricultural University of Ludhiana in India, the yields per hectare of wheat, rice, maize, rape/mustard and sugarcane are 4,563 kg, 3,506kg, 2,793kg, 1,218kg, 77 tons as compared to the Pakistan Punjab’s 2,534kg, 1,994kg, 2,105kg, 969kg and 47 tons per hectare, respectively. This is the outcome of the disintegration of agricultural education, research and extension system. It needs to be unified again to make it as effective as was before 1961.

The World Bank consultants funded the ARP-11 project and made comprehensive studies both at federal and provincial levels concluding that the disintegration and poor linkages were the major causes of poor agricultural performance in Pakistan.

Unlike India and other countries, the agriculture system in Pakistan is dominated by the bureaucracy and politicians. They also reported that there was no deficiency of competent scientists here but there was too much of interference by the bureaucracy and politicians. Awards, rewards and promotions were mostly based on personal likes and dislikes of concerned bureaucrats, politicians and heads of the institutes rather than on merits. The environment for education, research and extension services are not very congenial.

This is the major issue. To overcome it, these consultants made recommendations for a unified system along with alternate strategies to make the system free of bureaucratic and political influences and to make the scientists independent. But none of these recommendations were implemented as the powerful lobby does not want to loose hold from this sector.

They do not want the country to become self-sufficient as this will stop their commission on import of farm commodities. Then what was the point in taking billions of dollars from the World Bank for this project. This has unnecessarily overburdened the national economy while making the common man a continuous sufferer.