SO many ends need to be tied in the earthquake affected regions that one cannot really blame the government if some vital requirements escaped its managers for relief and rehabilitation.

However, the potential of plans become questionable if some basic requirements get ignored in the inventory prepared for resettling people, shorn of their assets and left without hope.

Most spheres were callously neglected in the past; this is borne out by the fact that virtually no information is available on two vital economic sectors of economy of Azad Kashmir. Mansehra is better off on that count, but only slightly.

Information about these places mostly comprises their resourcefulness in providing cheap domestic help, labour force lacking even the semblance of defence against exploitation, sundry unskilled jobs and odd openings carrying less than the bare minimum wages.

How the people lived has not been of any concern to either the government or, regrettably, the people too. But how they have died has, mercifully moved almost the entire nation. One can hardly say the same about the government because nothing seems to have changed. This opinion has been formed and expressed in the context of relief operations and plans for the future. Relief efforts and rehabilitation plans seem to have skipped basic economic conditions in the affected regions in the past.

While hundreds of thousands of people of these parts left their homes to earn a living in major urban centres, millions stayed home to eke out meagre survival wages tending livestock and raising a few crops on small tracts of land in either rain-fed conditions or climate that froze life for a productive period of the year.

The main activities of locals were thus mostly livestock-mainly goats and one two cows by the relatively affluent residents and poultry or agriculture, including fruit and horticulture farming.

However, no reliable and authentic livestock survey was carried out in the past and activities relating to agriculture were never recorded, most certainly not with an eye on enhancing productivity and farmer’s income. As a result, information on these counts hardly exists.

This underlines the treatment the people of Azad Kashmir and Mansehra were subjected to respectively by the federal government and the administration of the NWFP. Now the administrations must try to convince people that the system is changing.

The earthquake’s devastation has deprived many survivors of their rather insignificant and minimum yield assets. They lived on subsistence level but they could feed themselves and their families. One can understand why there has been no reference to loss of livestock in the count of damage because the administration needs must concentrate on human beings first; for good reason, they are the top priority.

But there surely is a case for trying to know and identify what the survivors used to do to make ends meet and how can do that in future.

The Prime Minister has announced a detailed 12-point programme for the rehabilitation of the affected people. The desire to resurrect the economy of the regions is to be lauded. But Azad Kashmir and Mansehra are two different economic landscapes. Two different prescriptions are need for them; the cure for one area does not fully apply to the other.

The absence of any reference to the income generating activities of the people prior to the earthquake makes the plan at best inadequate and at worst, not relevant to the know how and experiences, regardless of the level of financial mileage livestock and agriculture yielded to the practitioners of these professions.

One of the points in the PM’s plan concerns restoration of livelihood activities of survivors aims at financing new economic activities to raise family incomes above their pre-earthquake levels. The context of the programme has not been defined. Perhaps it would be worked out in time. But the need of the people is of instant nature. New activities would take time. Some areas can be quickly restored and livestock and agriculture present the highest potential for rehabilitating a large percentage of the people of the affected areas in the shortest possible time.

While the government of Pakistan has failed to identify the needs of the people in these fields, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN realized that it is tillers of land and livestock breeders who can resume their work in the next six months.

According to the FAO, $14.2 million (the figure was erroneously reported in the Press as seven million dollars are initially required for this purpose and that financing should go to about 100,000 of the most affected families.

The only response to the FAO initiative from the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock (Minfal) had nothing to do with the situation. A Minfal official was quoted saying that the earthquake had razed agriculture fields from the surface but the government had no plans to revise crop production targets for the next year’. The spokesman did not think that a reference to livestock could be made.

An unnamed member of the Sindh Chamber of Agriculture was quoted reaffirming that this does not mean any harm to agriculture of Pakistan. One could not be as off target as Minfal’s spokesman or the Sindh Chamber member who was described as a farmer. The issue is not the output of Pakistan’s agriculture during the year but how agriculture and livestock activities can be revived in earthquake affected areas.

Most regrettably, the government hasn’t taken notice of these aspects of the stricken region’s life which are vital to reviving economic life of the people without loss of time. Long term plans are undeniably needed but more important is a quick start and that only agriculture and livestock can provide.

Further, whatever the government undertakes in Azad Kashmir would essentially be a new opening requiring training people and preparing them for and entirely new way of life. Any effort made for the rehabilitation of affected people and offering them as better deal is to be welcomed but it should be borne in mind that they need immediate relief.

Precious time has already been wasted by the government by failing to realize that these areas are more important for the people than any other opening. Survey teams should have been sent to assess what can be done; that the damage had been extensive and colossal had been established beyond the shadow of the vaguest doubt and the possibility to be probed was when and from what point a start can be taken.

That has unfortunately not been done but this should not mean further delay because that would add to the miseries of the already terribly stricken people. A further delay would in fact be fatal.