Points to Ponder January 2023!
Haal Ahwal covers various areas in context to agriculture production.
The various news items in the first month of the year do not bear good tidings! The devastating monsoon and riverine floods that hit Pakistan last year, especially Sindh, continue to devastate agricultural production; a prime example is cotton production which in 2022 saw a massive shortfall of 37.23 percent. In addition, severe frost in January has also impacted major potato-growing districts. Another manifestation is the encroaching sea water in agriculture areas, devastating farmers’ lands and livelihood.
A critical learning from the floods was the stark lack of water drainage mechanism that affected millions of rural communities. Natural drainage systems have been encroached that further exacerbated the impacts of flooding last year. Different remedies are being provided including highly sophisticated technologies proposed and implemented by the World Bank and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO); however, there is no mention of the feudal power base which was a major obstacle to drainage of flood water drainage. Another major aspect of water shortage includes the water-sharing agreement between India and Pakistan, where India now wants to change the old agreements by barring third-party intervention in the process. As water scarcity issues mount, the acrimonious relationship between India and Pakistan will certainly spillover on water-sharing agreements. Another appalling impact has been on Indus Delta; thousands of fishermen have given up their livelihood as less fresh water flow means no fish, nor farming.
On one hand there is continuous destruction caused by climate crisis, while on the other, there is also a galloping economic crisis. Though both have been caused by promoting and implementing neoliberal policies, our state continues to encourage market-oriented programs and schemes. Hence, there is little hope for overcoming the many forms of catastrophe facing the country. In this vein, a critical area is of course agricultural land: the World Bank has provided assistance in digital land record maintenance. Given the free market doctrine of the Bank, this initiative is deadly for small and landless farmers. There is no move towards land distribution in favor of peasants but diligent digital record keeping will of course help in intensifying corporate capture of land. It will be far easier for finding out land ownership patterns, using different methods of coaxing and coercion against debt-ridden farmers to give up land, and further collaboration between feudal landlords and corporations to develop mutually beneficial profit-oriented schemes. Instead of helping small farmers in production, various measures will clearly intensify their economic burden. To name only a few is the continuous increase in the cost of fertilizers, as well proposals to levy general sales tax on the item.
There have been extremely worrisome projections for food scarcity: a high level of food insecurity experienced by nearly 6 million people between July and August 2022 was projected to increase to 8.5 million people by end of December, 2022. The government’s response to the intense climate related decline in wheat production is introduction of agro-chemical corporate-based policies promoting zinc-enriched bio-fortified wheat production.
The economic crisis has reached such heights that the government did not have the dollars to pay trader for imports. The shortage of raw material imports were also a cause for many industrial units to close down, temporarily. Large-scale manufacturing output shrank 3.58 percent in the period July-November 2022, when compared with the same period the year before. And even with such intense hardship for the nation, especially the working class, the IMF prepared two draft ordinances to impose PKR 200 billion in new taxes, days after the government accepted IMF conditionalities to resume a stalled loan program.
The situation of labor is in any way highly precarious, where in Sindh more than 600,000 men, women and children part of Scheduled castes are suffering forced labor by landowners. Apart from the agriculture sector, fisher folk in Baluchistan have also been facing exploitation and have been demanding to be identified as labor, which was finally approved by the Balochistan government.
Sugarcane farmers also face exploitation from sugar mill owners; the Sindh government had approved PKR 302/40 kg but farmers were not getting more than PKR 250/40kg. In spite of protests, the Sindh cane commissioner was not paying heed to this injustice.
Another area of grave concern is cotton. Pakistan has been using more and more transgenic cotton seeds; and now after many years of this highly dangerous experiment its being reported that this biotech cotton seed is not appropriate for sub-tropical climate of the country. The impact on our textile industry is devastating, with about 150 textile mills having been closed, with more than 2 million people’s employment has been wiped out.
Allowing transgenic products in the country is indeed a dangerous game, which the devastation of our cotton production has already shown. In face of such terrible lessons, and in spite of the Minister for Food Security Tariq Basheer Cheema’s endeavors to stop import of genetically modified soyabean as poultry feed were waived and more than 6,000 tons of Canola and 7,000 tons of soya bean seeds were offloaded at Karachi port and used across the country.
There is absolute indifference to the suffering of the working class; as many as 18 people including 16 children died in the Kemari area due to presence of toxic gases emitting from factories that were operating in residential areas.
The international news provides an equally distressing economic picture. According to the FAO food price index was up 14.3% from 2021, and the highest since records were initiated in 1990. Unemployment rates and job losses were reported from different regions, with the Arab region registered the world’s highest unemployment rate in 2022. The UN labor agency predicted that there would be a slight increase in unemployed people to 208 million people in 2023, with global unemployment rate of 5.8 percent or 16 million people. The cost-of-living crisis will be the biggest global risk for the next two years.
Climate crisis also had devastating impacts in the Asia Pacific region, with 74.4 percent of disaster events, and 88.4 percent of total deaths, globally. Finally, according to the Red Cross, all countries remain ‘dangerously unprepared’ for the next pandemic.
To download the complete publication: https://rootsforequity.noblogs.org/files/2023/06/Haal-Ahwal-January-Final.pdf