Foreign investors will be required to invest not less than $1 million of which 40 per cent will be held by locals. Other likely inducements include duty-free imports of seeds and equipment, immunity from labour laws, and repatriation of profits. So, who will gain and what will the gains be?
The idea is to increase investment, agricultural output, productivity, exports, and foreign exchange earnings. The means to these ends, that is, the bulk of the human resource is not factored into the equation that is heavily tilted in favour of the minority human resource of foreign investors and their local counterparts.
The workers will be made to believe in a “trickle down” while the shareholders are promised fast and immediate gains even if these are at the expense of national interest. They may repatriate all of their profits without leaving anything in the country they are gaining from. Their profits must maximise even if it is done in utter disregard of the labour laws.
So, their profits will swell all the more because they are likely to squeeze the maximum effort out of the workers who will not have the protection of labour laws. The rich will argue that the workers will, at least, have jobs. The question is, how many and what per cent of the unemployed and the discouraged workers? The next question is, why should workers be given the “least” when the investors are promised the “most” and when their gains are impossible without the toil of the workers?
So, to give them jobs at the expense of their rights at work is illogical and unjust to begin with. Irrationality begets irrationality and then the difficulty with workers that archaic managers blame workers instead their poor management capability.
The entire corporate farming model is based on an outdated management mode that thought only of the investors first and last. Workers without whom, there is nothing that the investor can deliver, are no less a driving force behind any business venture. These may be viewed paternalistically or worse still authoritatively in this obsolete management outlook.
It is this archaic outlook that underpins our corporate agricultural farming (CAF) policy. A management outlook behind times to attain modern day economic goals does not appear like a feasible proposition to begin with. The only defence is that CAF will provide jobs. But jobs at a cost is a questionable proposition.
To do the workers good at a cost of their rights is not good enough unless the good gives them their just share out of the farming effort that is not expected, which is why immunity is sought from labour laws.
One would like to know whether the international trade regime will impose social clauses like they try to on exports from export processing zones (EPZs). In EPZs too, the labour laws are disregarded and by hiring docile women workers they even ensure that no voice is raised against this malpractice.
World bodies agitate against imports from such EPZs in the interest of level playing field. Will they not object to imports from such CAF produced agricultural exports? Or, will the foreign “colonising” beneficiaries use their influence to counter such liberal voices in the West?
So, the first minority group of beneficiaries will be the foreign investors’ who will in all likelihood also cultivate intensively with little or no regard for environmental concerns.
The second minority group of beneficiaries will be the local counterpart investors with a 40 per cent share. With 40 per cent share in investment, they will also share proportionately in the profits that will be maximised as discussed above. Will the rapid gains of minority local shareholders lead to the uplift of the province when uplift means uplift of the people at large?
Sure, there will be a great deal of talk about distribution at a later date. One will want to know when and how. What accrues to the local shareholders goes into their personal coffers with a 2.5 per cent zakat if at all.
Their tax-exempt status will further legitimise tax-exemption of agriculture thus further contributing to horizontal inequity in the taxation structure. So, no taxation should mean no direct distribution.
Further, the gains to the macro economy that do occur are not even distributed to the satisfaction of the representatives of the provinces, leave alone the individuals’. To connect exports growth with the prosperity of the people of the NWFP is a long shot that may not even be realised any time soon.
While there is a need for disaggregated data on the economies of provinces, it is known that NWFP is a poor province with very high incidence of child labour. Almost 30 per cent of total child labour of Pakistan is found in the NWFP. This alone indicates the extent of poverty because of which, children have to be pushed into informal employment from an early age.
NWFP is also known for its low levels of literacy, school enrolments, and gender-based discrimination. And, NWFP is known for a conventional patron-client system in which sardars tend to be the masters of many a destiny.
With corporate farming, it is the dominant class in NWFP that will be further strengthened. Making the dominant more so is a recipe for continued economic backwardness as it is known from history that the upper classes have not shared and have no tendency to share with the deprived input providers which is why they continue to be “upper” class. For, had there been equitable sharing the distinction would have obliterated.
This distinction is likely to get more pronounced with corporate farming aimed at rapid and major returns only to investors—foreign and local.
Economic development goals of equity, employment growth, and poverty reduction are likely to recede further as major impediments are created by way of further strengthening the ones who have thus far hindered development.