Dr. S. S. Chhina

FOOD security is still a big challenge for the country Punjab having 1.5 percent of area is producing 20 percent of the wheat and 12 percent of rice. It is contributing 60 percent of wheat and 40 percent of rice in the national basket of food stocks. But agricultural production is continually declining since 1990, the more quantity and more of fertilizers, insecticides and pesticides are to be utilized every year to obtain the same level of output. 70 percent of total cultivated area is being used for wheat and rice crops only. Due to this cropping pattern the water table is declining every year, Causing a big problem for the environment of the state. The cost of installation and operation of tube wells is also increasing every year. The wheat and paddy drew more attention in agricultural research in 1960's. However, other crops were not given due importance in agricultural research and in support prices of the government.

The present cropping pattern which is mainly confined to two crops only and it is all due to the procurement and price policy of the government. This is the main cropping pattern in the agricultural field. The sowing and harvesting season of wheat and paddy has become very short, because of the minimization of agricultural work. There is a big rush of work in this short peak period. Then there is less work in the rest of the year. Many surveys have been conducted in Punjab, which show that able bodied person is remaining busy in agriculture only for 180 days in a year and that results in less of output and income and hence poor standard of living Maize, bajra, fruits milk and poultry products can be good substitutes of wheat and paddy to a large extent, provided these alternatives becomes equally paying. These alternatives involve more of work force and can be helpful to increase the working days in farming, leading to more of income, output and ultimately providing better standard of living. The Policy makers should observe that Self-employment and regular employment in organized sectors should be adopted as means to solve the problem of employment.

Almost 80 percent of the holdings are less than 5 acres, about 26 percent are marginal farmers with less than 2½ acres. These holdings are more affected by the under employment. These holdings are not using canal water as the duration of their irrigation turn is very short, as a result of which the nutrient rich canal water is not utilized and that becomes a further obstacle in the fertility of soil.

The participation of women in agricultural activities is very small and the new techniques are not pro women, that may help them to participate in agricultural and allied activities and they can contribute more in agricultural production and income. Most of the machines and techniques are more suitable to the farmers having their holdings above 10 acres. 80 percent of the farmers with holdings less than 5 acres should have suitable machines and techniques which might be cost effective.

Besides dairy, no other allied agricultural activities have been adopted by Punjab farmers. It had been observed, that honey, mushrooms, silk, fruit, vegetable products can be more paying and these new ventures can remove the problem of under employment provided the marketing facilities for such products are available at their very reach or on their farm house holds.

The export oriented agro-processing units can be started in all the areas of the state. Large scale units can be established in the co-operative sector, with participation of farmers and landless labours.

It had been observed that sugar mills are not functioning only, because of the shortage of sugarcane. Similar is the case of cotton, fruit and vegetable processing units. The contract farming, paying the reasonable prices and with assurance of the adequate supply of raw materials should be adopted.

About 5 percent of the cultivable land is being used for other purposes in every decade. The population is increasing with 1.7 percent per annum that does means 17 percent more food will be required after a decade. It needs further research in agriculture. Only 5.5 dollars are spent on agricultural research in India, where as this expenditure is 11.7 dollars in China and 705 dollars in USA. According to a UNDP estimate, India is spending only 0.8 percent of the G.D.P. on research & development, whereas China is spending 1.2 %, U.S.A.2.7 percent and Japan is spending 3 percent.

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The realism fallacy

Ishtiaq Ahmed

INDIA finds China a bigger threat than Pakistan and insists that it needs to arm itself to thwart perceived Chinese aggression, but Pakistan perceives a militarily stronger India a greater threat to its security than before. The Realism School of International Relations is premised on the assumption that states do not trust each other. They seek power and domination over others because they fear that if they are weak and vulnerable, other states will attack them.

Consequently, the art of survival is to be always vigilant and on the lookout for striking first. War can, however, be kept at bay or postponed through the maintenance of a “balance of power”, or from the advent of nuclear weapons, “balance of terror” between the most powerful states. Such peace is temporary. Therefore, states must always be preparing for war.

Such jargon is part of the everyday parlance that security analysts and experts employ to urge greater spending on defence to ward off attack. Not surprisingly, an arms race follows. As one side acquires better weapons, the other side must try to offset that advantage by aiming for better killing capacity and capability. As both or many states engage in such a competition, forming alliances amongst themselves against common enemies, the objective and subjective levels of insecurity go up, because the new weapons, the training and preparation that is invested in learning to use them incrementally provide a higher level of destructive power than before. In other words, more and better weapons do not lower the fear and anxiety of the enemy; they heighten it.

The India-Pakistan arms race represents such an equation; only it is not determined entirely by their notorious rivalry. India finds China a bigger threat than Pakistan and insists that it needs to arm itself to thwart perceived Chinese aggression, but Pakistan perceives a militarily stronger India a greater threat to its security than before. Since at least the 1990s Pakistan has sought its weapons from China. Previously it was the US from which Pakistan acquired its weapons by playing upon the former’s fear of Soviet military might.

In any case the existing chain of reactions dates from 1962 when the Sino-Indian border war took place. It is also true that even when Pakistan began to receive in the mid-1950s military aid from the US, it was not until the 1965 war between India and Pakistan that they seriously began to try to outdo each other in terms of a serious arms race between them.

One would have imagined that when both sides demonstrated their ability to explode nuclear devices in May 1998, a “rational level of mutually assured destruction” had been reached. Both were in a position to inflict massive injury and therefore did not need to keep on spending on arms and armaments. However, the Chinese factor complicated that situation. The recent Indian hike on defence spending has made Pakistan nervous and it will seek to balance that by cultivating Chinese military hardware.

In the past, realism-driven arms races have usually ended up in war — World War I and II are cases in point. Millions of human beings were slaughtered by vain politicians and even vainer military generals. Then, of course, the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union started as hardcore realists began to define the relationship between the two superpowers. A direct nuclear war never broke out between them although the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1961 nearly drove them over the precipice. It ended rather unexpectedly as the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991 under the deadweight of its sluggish command economy and a failed policy on consumer goods, coupled with the lack of political freedom.

Returning to the India-Pakistan standoff, it can be argued that it cannot go on interminably without dragging them into a war that neither will win but in which both will suffer unimaginable harm and damage, or, one of them will disintegrate because of overspending on weapons while unemployment and poverty aggravate. Even the latter outcome will gravely undermine the stability of the South Asian region. I would not venture speculating which of the two possibilities is more likely. Both need to be prevented from transpiring.

The rival liberal-internationalist school of international politics asserts that although states are the normal units of the international system, they stand to gain more from collective security. Professor Aswini K Ray (2004, Western Realism and International Relations: a Non-Western View, New Delhi: Foundation Books), formerly of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, has very forcefully argued that the Cold War could have been averted had the liberal-internationalists been able to define US foreign policy after the death of President Franklin D Roosevelt in April 1945. He argues that the system of collective security that the UN had heralded in should have been followed to solve the conflicts between the US and the Soviet Union.

In the context of South Asia the notion of collective security can be advanced in the form of regional security. It would mean strengthening the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). India and Pakistan could become the paramount powers sharing responsibility for peace and prosperity in this region. Very often such reflections are dismissed as idealism: who can think of regional security when terrorists go around blowing up people for as irrational reasons as the accident of wrong religious faith or sectarian affiliation? Who can negotiate with non-state entities that live in secrecy and that only seek to inflict pain and injury?

Indeed these are very legitimate concerns and neither India nor Pakistan is likely to lower its traditional security. However, the problems of water scarcity, global warming and overall environmental degradation pose such serious problems that no war can ever solve them. Only cooperation and solidarity among the nations of South Asia can help them find solutions to these problems. Unfortunately, Europe learnt the lessons of peace and solidarity only after millions of its people were consumed by wars.

Given the fact of nuclear weapons it may even be impossible for India and Pakistan to survive such a war and make a fresh new start based on peace and solidarity. A recent estimate suggests that India will wipe out Pakistan (120 million Pakistanis out of 170 million) in a nuclear war but only after it loses 500 million of its own people. Does that make any sense?

[Ishtiaq Ahmed is a Visiting Research Professor at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS) and the South Asian Studies Programme at the National University of Singapore. He is also a Professor of Political Science at Stockholm University. He has published extensively on South Asian politics. At ISAS, he is currently working on a book, Is Pakistan a Garrison State? He can be reached at isasia@nus.edu.sg Courtesy http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010\02\09\story_9-2-2010_pg3_2]

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IveChildren Stories: Palwinder’s Cinderella

Pearl Jasra

MEET Palwinder, eight years, beautifully dark as you can see, eldest of the three brothers. His father is a dihadidar, a daily wager. Palwinder is okay in studies and has been regularly coming for the last three years during which his other siblings also joined my seven year old little initiative.

Okay I shall come back to Palwinder, the little, beautifully black protagonist of this story.

You all have heard Cinderella’s story, which is one of my favorites. One day I was telling /narrating this story to my poor children and since I enact stories the children were quite mesmerized with the twists and turns in there and the magical atmosphere (you know all children love magic). Well it took me 2 hours meandering through Cinderella’s story and my children loved it all the way.

At the end of the story there was this ‘absolute silence’ and I was really happy with that, as it told me that they actually enjoyed it.

Story told, I wanted to ‘explore’ how much of it actually stayed with them and started asking question like “how many step sisters did she have, what were her sandals made of, how her step mother treated her?” etc etc etc.

Come Palwinder’s turn. Since it was an extremely cold day with fog hanging out there, some of it rubbing itself against the window panes Palwinder had his hands in his pockets.

“So Palwinder ji tell me name of the girl in this story (ki naam siga os kudi da jehdi kahani tusi suni)?
…a brief silence…flicker of a smile that turned into faint flame in his eyes, he answered, “sunderella”!!

(Well Palwinder in his own beautifully mysterious ways gave all of us a meaningful Hindi version of Cinderella. Guess you all will also find SUNDERELLA a very appropriate Indian name for Cinderella).
I am sure Cinderella also would have liked it.

Thank you Palwinder

Pearl

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