The new government has pledged to follow policies of the military regime. That was apparently the basic condition for permission to enter the citadel of power.

The outgoing administration that has been blowing its trumpet loud has thus managed to ensure continuation of its agenda. Whatever the worth of its claims in other areas of life, the government has been an unqualified failure in the agriculture sector.

The economy is generally stagnant and the publicized list of achievements is both hollow and substantially incorrect. This is borne out by statistics from official sources. Reality is however even grimmer than official records but it is ignored in speeches, advertisements and special publications. In fact, a false view is presented before the public.

For instance, the industrial sector appears to have been progressing well at a five per cent growth rate. But details are less than appetizing as much of the success comes from the expansion of automobile and beverage industries. While the efforts of automobile manufacturers are to be appreciated, the sector’s progress is an adverse comment on the administration’s management of public transport and implies higher import of fuel. Similarly, the success of the beverage industry makes little contribution towards generating employment.

But even this is a rosy picture in comparison with the state of agriculture. Some problems of the sector are known. There is shortage of water. One has to bear with it. The government has been producing big plans but they haven’t even reached the take off stage so far. New reservoirs that can have an impact on the availability of water for irrigation are nowhere in sight.

A government advertisement on the day when the new assembly was installed in Punjab claimed that support price for growers of wheat, cotton, rice and sugarcane was promptly paid to farmers, is less than an accurate statement. The support price of Rs. 300 for per bag of 40 maunds of wheat was unavailable to a majority of small farmers who constitute the bulk of the farming sector in Punjab. They sold their crop for prices ranging from Rs. 225 to Rs. 250-60. Conditions in Sindh were a little better but not a boon for growers in any way.

Moreover, while the cost of inputs has been rapidly increasing, the support price has remained static at three hundred rupees. That means that the farmer’s lack of options has been exploited. Another claim that middlemen have been eliminated from the farming sector is similarly not factually correct. There has been no reportable change in the marketing system of crops.

Shrinking resources of water indicated a revision of the cropping pattern and greater emphasis on water friendly crops. Nothing was done in that direction. Vested industrial interests blocked such moves, not that many were made. Cotton growers are still very much at the mercy of textile millers. The government’s intervention to safeguard the interest of small farmers, a pledge made by General Musharraf in his seven point agenda, has gone by and large unfulfilled.

The farming sector has actually slumped to one of its lowest levels in the past two years despite a praiseworthy performance of the sector that continued to produce sufficient wheat for domestic needs and thus saved the government from expensive imports to meet the food needs of the people. But the sector that had reached a growth rate of over six percent 1999-2000 was reduced to minus 2.6 percent in 2000-1.

In view of the last year’s performance, the government scuttled its ambitions and fixed the growth target at 1.4 per cent. What happens in anyone’s guess but portents are hardly promising as the cotton crop is reportedly short of expectations and wheat sowing has been delayed, an unfortunate pattern that causes loss of yield. The crop must be cultivated by mid November.

When that is not done, about one percent produce is daily lost. The managers of the sector failed to attend to such basic and vital needs.

Another change from the year 1999-2000 has been a sharp decline in the growth of major crops. As per statistics of the State Bank of Pakistan, growth rate of these crops was 1.4 percent while 2000-01 recorded a decline of nearly ten percent.

Livestock, one of the most important components of the agriculture sector, has been totally ignored during the past three years in Punjab. The government did not feel that it deserved to have a full time minister. That underlined the priority given to livestock by the administration.

At one stage, the cultivation of edible oil crops had been extended to over 300,000 acres but it has shrunk to a few thousand acres, thanks to official neglect of promoting the crops and the dominance of importers over policies. One of the major reasons for the disenchantment of farmers with the edible’s crops has been the government’s refusal to fix a support price for canola and sunflower. The sale of the crop was not guaranteed. Growers of conola and sunflower gave up the cultivation of these crops for crops of surer marketability.

The agriculture sector, regarded as the backbone of national economy, presents a scene of neglect. The new government will have to give it a boost and not merely for economic reasons; the social repercussions of increasing non-productivity of the sector forces migration to urban centres that are mostly already under pressure and cannot provide adequate civic facilities to their existing populations.

The sector is crying for change, a radical, innovative approach and equity. The new government would do the country a favour if it can revive the sector that houses a majority of the country’s population and is the biggest employer of manpower in the country. Failure to that would be another blow to the national economy. The country can hardly afford that.