 |
| ||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||
 | |||||||||||||||||||||
|
Issue 9 Vol I, February 15, 2006features Punjab,
an Opportunity Beacons WHEN freedom bells tinkled a little less than six decades ago, Punjab, the whole of Punjab of five rivers was soaked in gore and blood. The land when it woke to a new dawn of freedom lay devastated with a nearly million of its sons and daughters butchered by each other. Many times more were forced to flee across the artificial borders created by roguish imperialists in their last ditch effort to sow the seeds of hatred and due to chicanery politics of the two major political parties, the Congress and the Muslim league. Violation of women’s honour and maiming and killing of children showed that man was worst than the animal. Till 1947 history had not experienced such horror, such mass migration on communal lines and such slaughter. People with the same culture, same language and common inheritance and roots were separated because they happened to profess different religions. They had absolutely no role in this communal partition of the sub continent. The two Punjabs later suffered devastation due to successive wars and low cost insurgency and the untold misery what people live through when they are uprooted and culturally alienated by swords and guns. Pangs become unbearable. Both east and west Punjab have suffered in terms of economic progress, social cohesion and political clout. The generation that suffered this disaster is leaving us one by one on both sides of the border, but the memories of misery and mayhem do not. Now a different world is possible. Europe has healed many of its wounds of two deadly World Wars. A more cohesive and friendly European Union with open borders and open trade and movement is emerging from the ashes of the past wars and bloodshed. There is now a strong desire and also a movement for peace and understanding in the Indian sub continent despite some visible or invisible divisions at the political plane. The constituency of peace was never this large despite determined effort to prop up hatred and violence. People want relations to be blissful and live in prosperity rather suffer due to mutual exclusion. This explains why a Hindu Right wing party BJP and its leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee as Prime Minister that had played a corresponding divisive role before 1947, went to Lahore to sign a peace declaration and also why a solider turned President Pervez Musharraf travelled to Agra and who keeps making all the noises for peace. Now Congress and its Left partners and Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh who can not forget the holocaust even when he occupies the most coveted seat of power are no less committed to friendly relations and peace in the sub continent. Obviously they hope reap political dividends. There are plenty of ifs and buts on this current peace process. Experts in Delhi and Islamabad would tell us that this may be yet a pipe dream. But what would peace mean to people in the sub continent and particularly Punjab? Let us look at the dividends. Both the countries can reduce their heavy spending on defence, security and intelligence gathering networks. This is accepted by all. But what is perhaps less realised is the fact that two the Punjabs could gain immensely from peace. Pakistani Punjab is a dominant state claiming over 50 per cent of the population and had all along a dominant role , leading to industrial and agriculture development. There was more balanced growth as agriculture unlike Indian Punjab which contributed 40 per cent; it contributed only 27 per cent of the GDP. Rest came from industry and service sectors. Indian Punjab attained great heights in farm production till 1990s when so called reforms set in. it had the highest per capita income and with less than two per cent population and land area, it remained granary of the country contributing over 40 percent of the food grains for long time. In agriculture also, the two Punjabs have certain dissimilarities that can work to each others advantage. Indian Punjab has done wonders in wheat, rice, potatoes, maize and cotton production and Pakistani Punjab in cotton and basmati rice. Under the new trade regimes being worked out by WTO, the can work to each others advantage. Similar is the situation in agriculture research where Indian Punjab along with Haryana has done pioneering work. This accumulated knowledge can benefit Pakistani Punjab. It is in the area of unfettered trade and commerce where both can flourish and get the much needed push. Both are land locked and after the reforms in 1990s, Indian Punjab has been constantly been in falling not only in agriculture production with rate of growth touching less than two per cent but also in trade and industry. Goods like sewing machines and bicycles that are exported from Indian Punjab to Singapore and Dubai later and land in Lahore and Sahiwal and cost hell of money to Pakistani consumers as middlemen in Mumbai and Singapore make good money as commission. Similar Indian Punjab could profit from basmati rice and textiles. The list is endless and two states could trade what is not produced here but elsewhere. They could exchange technological know-how, cooperate in the fields of education and Pakistani farmers could expect a push in land reforms where Indian Punjab has done something. For Indian Punjab the route could be up to Central Asia. Lahore and Amritsar could be the gateways as soaring land prices in the two cities tell their own tale. Trade and tourism and cultural and media exchanges could lead to understanding and finally build a durable peace. In the two countries much of the space has been appropriated though repression and demonstration of force. Competitive militarism has been too costly a proposition and has resulted in denial of basic democratic rights like education, health and social welfare. Militarism and the fundamentalist mentalities thrive on fear and that in turn breeds hatred and violence, which both have suffered. The two countries have to come out of that syndrome. There is an urgent need to evolve collaborative relationship between the states and within the states and among the sub-systems and the communities in the larger emerging global settings. A wholesome approach to harness shared values, common culture to the benefit of the communities who have all along been denied their legitimate say, is the need of the times. It would indeed be another world where people have stake in peace and neither in war mongering nor in wars. | |||||||||||||||||||||
|
Bread and Science
Indian agriculture is in deep crisis and should be cause of concern. At least two third of people still depend upon agriculture income to survive. Farm produce is not keeping pace with the growth rate of rest of the economy. Its share of gross domestic product [GDP] has declined from 55 per cent in 1950 to a bare 20 per cent in 2004. It should have been a sign of progress, if two third of Indians were not dependent on agriculture. And tragically, reforms that began 1991 have pushed agriculture growth to bare two per cent of so. Something wrong has certainly happened as we find in government surveys in June 2005 that one in two farm household is under debt and unlike what urbanites think that the farmers are indebt as they borrow on wasteful expenditure, this National Sample Survey found only ten percent borrowing related to social needs. Farmers are unhappy with farming and one out of four was ready to leave this drudgery. Nature’s bounty knows no bounds. India, the land of many seasons, rain and sunshine is blessed with and a vast fertile diverse land mass. It possesses 20 per cent of the world’s best irrigated land, besides 108 million hectares of un- irrigated land. . There is an average 1,000 mm rainfall every year. We have 20 per cent of the world’s population and 1,250 million cattle heads. We have no dearth of hardy peasants and working sections. Is this not a fantastic and a sure recipe for a prosperous nation, basking under plenty of equitable wealth? Sadly, India still remains a poor country with all the abundance or like that old adage in economic text books: India is a rich country inhabited by poor people. We have everyone pontificating as to why this situation prevails. And as it happens the more the government experts talk about it, worse becomes the situation. Look at the green revolution. While it made the country self sufficient in food grains yet, an unimaginative mechanization and use of chemicals pauperised millions of small and marginal farmers. Farmers are being driven to suicides all over the country, particularly where green revolution was introduced in late sixties. All this time our policy planners and the government waited for the revolution to reach a plateau and turn lands barren and water brackish. If anyone has doubts, he could travel to Faridkot, Mukatsar or Bhathinda and Mansa districts and find out the rickety children and boney old people to measure the impact of the polluted underground water and saline lands. Out of 118 community development blocks, groundwater in 62 blocks (52.54 per cent) are over exploited, eight blocks are already dark areas indicating no groundwater. Farmers who use bore wells have been increasing the depth of the well by an average of half-a-metre every year. Excessive use of water for paddy and chemicals and pesticides and insecticides for crops has done the job. Out of over 12,000 villages, 2,000 suffer this drinkable polluted water and another nearly 2,000 do not have piped water supply. Kandi areas suffer the worst. This is the land of Panj Darya or at least of two and half rivers. And, out great gurus sang “Pawan Guru, Pani Pita, Mata Dharat Mahut.” Now both land and water are poisoned and polluted. Farmers in Punjab like their counterparts in Haryana and many other states have abandoned their traditional cropping practices and adopted wheat-rice cropping method as the market mechanism devised through procurement at a support price became more attractive. The demand for water has increased over the years and this has led to water scarcity. This is getting further aggravated by the problem of water pollution and contamination. Not only Punjab, the entire country is facing a freshwater crisis in varying degrees mainly due to inappropriate management of water resources and environmental degradation. Consequently millions of people are being deprived of safe drinking water. The number of wells drilled for irrigation for food and cash crops have rapidly and haphazardly increased. India's fast rising population and urbanisation has also increased the domestic need for water. The water requirement for the industry has also increased. This is pushing the groundwater table lower. The quality of groundwater is getting severely affected because of the widespread pollution of surface water. Discharge of untreated waste water through bores and from unscientific disposal of solid wastes is also contaminating the groundwater. As it happens crisis often leads to blame game. And here it is much easier to blame science and experts. New seeds, technology and other infrastructure had a vital role to play. But the failure is largely at the political plane. What is our government thinking? The Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh has called a second Green Revolution that would have a special focus on dry land agriculture and address the needs of small and marginal farmers. Addressing the scientists at the Science Congress at Hyderabad, he candidly admitted that the technologies and strategies unleashed by the first green revolution have run their course. "Two criticisms of the first green revolution have been: one, that it did not benefit dry land agriculture, and two, that it was not scale neutral and had benefited large farms and big farmers only. While evidence showed that this was not always the case, we must ensure that the second green revolution technologies have a special focus on dry land agriculture and do benefit small and marginal farmers." He urged that it should also cover non-food crops, horticulture and new plant varieties. Therefore there was an urgent need for a second green revolution. The new technologies that the scientists develop should be economically affordable and relevant to small and marginal farmers. These are all noble sentiments The Prime Minister also advised the scientific community to work towards developing technologies that were labour using and at the same time efficient in both farm and non-farm business, considering that even as the share of agriculture in national income was falling rapidly, the share of population dependent on agriculture is not declining as rapidly, leading to rural distress and enforced migration from rural to urban areas. The aim should be to develop technologies both in agriculture and rural manufacturing so that jobs could be created closer home for those who live in villages. "My vision of rural India is of a modern agrarian, industrial and services economy co-existing side by side, where people can live in well-equipped villages and commute easily to work, be it on the farm or in the non-farm economy. There is much that modern science and technology can do to realise this vision." The leaned professor has indeed an ideal. But this has been stated umpteen times by his predecessors with little or no success. Every political leader has a wish list. No poverty. No unemployment. Clean cities and villages. Urban rural balance. Balanced development. Good education and good health. And, tragically our economist prime minister is looking towards the scientists to bail out the country. There is no denying that science plays a vital role. But it is a fundamentalist approach to seek political, social and economic solutions from science. He has to look for solution in political and economic areas and bring change in policies. Technology is not a substitute for bold pro people politics. Interestingly at that very Science Congress, Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen was making a bold suggestion to usher in land reform, particularly in states like Bihar, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh. "Our vision of India cannot be one that is half California and half sub-Saharan Africa. The country could draw lessons from the second phase of land reforms initiated in China, which helped the country achieve extraordinarily rapid expansion over the past two decades.” He suggested. Excessive dependence on technology could be dangerous as Punjab and other areas have experienced. It could degrade the environment and make land barren and water polluted. |
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
SOUTH ASIA POST INC. |
|||||||||||||||||||||
P