As expected the arguments about national debt and about printing of money will continue but the root cause will never be eliminated. The root cause emanates from the mind and the way we are organised. Seldom have we seen the Pakistani mind seriously involved in looking after the affairs of the poor. The only leader as PM I have seen who was worried about the poor was Shaheed Benazir Bhutto.
Every time the price of kitchen items went up, I knew that I was in deep trouble. She had that uncanny ability to understand the issues of the kitchen, which otherwise insensitive presidents/prime ministers have not bothered about, tomatoes going to Rs 120 per kilo and here she was forcing my hand and mind to think about the poor and their nourishment. It is hogwash to think that food security is important for what is more important is nutritional security.
The Planning Commission when it was the Planning Commission and not merely a commission of sorts (or kind) had carried out a study in which 70% of the children under the age of five were severely malnourished. How come we forgot the nutritional aspect and took on wheat as a means of food security. It was done very cleverly.
The US came up with a Public Law 480 [PL480] and under this law, sinister movements began. First, the Ayub government had to be brought in line and that was simple - simpleton minds can be brought in line with ego massage and with money in the kitty. Then a series of mind-boggling activities had to be brought in and that meant that the invasion of the country need not be made by and through military intervention. First the touts from within the system had to be found. Long-term requirements were to be made.
What was then managed was magnificently orchestrated? Students were picked up from agriculture universities and the World Bank was asked to provide loans for human resource development. Development came in the form of PhD degrees but human degradation came in other forms. The international research system was then so fixed that the US industry of chemicals was to be geared to the developing countries and the incentives given were such that the countries bought in to these worldly devious policies [a bag of urea cost then Rs 7 of fifty kilos]. Norman Borlaug was brought in to further US interests, ostensibly to meet the needs of the developing world, but actually to create a market for US wheat surpluses.
A consolidated group of agricultural research was created with a considerable amount of hype. These institutions over time, became ossified and non-creators. Long-term interests were furthered by McNamara and company in the WB by providing resources for wheat scientists' development under the garb of human resource development. How does one create a mafia? Create a large number (at one stage Punjab had 137 so-called wheat scientists) taken to the Mexico research centre time and again.
The boys that had been sent to the agricultural universities were ready to be accommodated there at rich pickings. The white man had to have some one as fag boys. The long-term would more than compensate for any cost incurred at that time. Since 1960, we have been importing wheat from wherever. The singleton policy has created havoc and our world class people are really midgets. They will waste resources. So will anything that is spoken of in agriculture or elsewhere as an integrated policy. We will talk some on integrated policies.
The marketing system has gone haywire and is no longer tenable with the rising transaction costs. The only way to contain food inflation is through a system of new institutional arrangements that put the farmers in direct contact with the consumer. It is possible to do so and at no cost to the government. But then I have paid my bills to the country and I will no longer suggest any solution till the information and data is somehow compensated. The other alternative is to live with the innuendoes and the meagre drought knowledge of the existing creatures in the system. That is the simple truth.
Inflation may be current in macroeconomic terms but I have repeatedly said that these interventions that are IMF-induced and WB carried are no longer tenable. They are fashionable and faddish but that is about all. Why has the US been allowed to run a debt of trillions so much so that if the new arrangements come in they will have to retire the debt by $2.5 billion in the next year or so? How is that going to be possible for not only the US but Italy, Greece, Portugal and other countries in Europe?
Living beyond one's means is one thing and articulating developing countries policies towards the demand structure of the West is another. It is time to rethink policies that are self-created and self-implemented. I do not have to be told by any one outside the system that we in Pakistan are corrupt. If we are, we have enough institutions to take care of the corrupt. That has to be done. It is an uphill task but it has to be done. It has to be done and it has to be understood that the system does not have to be protecting any one.
Inflation is not something that only the SBP will take care of and in conjunction with the Ministry of Finance. It has much wider connotation. All input systems that are expensive or that are no longer viable have to go and a system of cheap alternatives has to be brought in. Whether that is done in public policy as in direct confrontation with the mafia or as done by developing beachheads and when enough forces have been gathered to collectively hit the mafia.
The mafia plays on fear and as these are now operative every where, the government in public interest has to take action. That action requires a degree of eminence and not prominence. Designations and intrigue will not play up as the mini mafia in government is learning. Sooner or later the people who have gone to high positions with cheat domiciles will take the entire infrastructure down. Discretion has been raped by these people who think that they are no longer answerable. They will be for the crimes that are committed are of a serious nature in asmuchas they have misled trust reposed in them by the power structure.
So if nutritional structure is to take care of the malnutrition of the children then the emphasis has to shift. The poultry sector, the fertiliser sector, the comparative advantage that is based on government handouts to the formal sector. Want me to name names? I can do this for I have lived by the rural areas and by the spiritual laws that govern decency.
This country was for everyone but the institutions that we have furthered are not in the service of Pakistan. The other day some imbecile spoke of Intellectual property rights and some other spoke of meeting between intellectuals working from their drawingrooms.
Please take a whiff from the areas of Swat, of Malakand and of Kazakhela (I have not talked of NW and SW yet) where the past is being corrected. The past cannot be corrected simply by power structure, it has to be done by the policies articulated at different forums in Islamabad and then implemented by those that try and live all their lives in Islamabad. The land mafia, the land, well what can one say, is the basis of all corruption even now in this country.
Why? Because the knowledge factor has never been given its rightful place and it is difficult to do so spasmodically. We have gone so far in the reverse direction and multiple directions that corrections now require Herculean efforts. It is when the situation gets desperate that the individual takes the law in his own hands. In any case, the law may be obsolete but the lower courts' human resources are even more so. Life is no longer vertically organised but knowledge has to be horizontally applied. Get me. No Read some.
In East Pakistan, two sentences that were current in hopeless conditions were and 'ami ki korbo?' (What am I supposed to do, I am helpless) and the second was 'kono raqam cholchi?' (Anyhow passing time). Helpless and wasters of time we are. Start from there for any corrections.