Planning for Rainy Years
Agriculture and land resources formed the major production factors in the US before the American Civil War. Though there has been a gradual reversal of roles thereafter, the predominant industrial base of the NORTH ground the vast agriculture strength of the SOUTH into ultimate submission in a war of attrition. What was true of the USA in a domestic quarrel more than a century ago has become true on a global scale as the industrial NORTH draws the largely agricultural SOUTH deeper into debt and financial apocalypse. As a symbolic manifestation of how things were meant to be, the American Civil War proved a definite point. The economy in the US is now firmly dominated by industry though US agriculture products continue to set the pace in the world market even today. Whatever may be the ills of the US economy, a combination of industry and agriculture makes it the giant locomotive that acts as a yoke for most of the economies of the rest of the world. So sensitive has the world become to any hiccups in the US economy that friend and foe alike ardently desire that no devastation a la 1929 overcomes it. Critics and cynics abound in plenty, all disparaging the US in many ways, particularly decrying many perceived ills of the economic sector, but all of them have a vested interest in the continuing good health of the US economy. The repeated crop failures in the Communist world make the COMECON countries particularly vulnerable in the ultimate irony of life in today’s times.
The present bane of the Third World is the ever-reducing arable land against the burgeoning increase of population. Countries having vast population cannot hope to keep the GNP up with the birth rate, in essence creating negative growth in real terms. Third World leadership is under the greatest of pressures because of this inherent handicap and more often than not are fighting a losing battle along with other complications such as natural or man-made disasters. This is further compounded not only by poor leadership at various levels but by inefficiency and corruption in the public corporate sector. It has become so atrocious that even the media fails to exercise any check, there is simply no accountability. In such a situation, the importance of complete freedom of enterprise needs to be emphasised again and again. Whereas free enterprise is one of the fundamental premises of any democracy, the present economic polarisation in the world between the vast majority of have-nots and the miniscule number of haves requires that the state ensure some control over the redistribution of wealth and protects the poor from economic exploitation. This is in keeping with the socialist tenor of our religion as enunciated by our Prophet, Peace Be Upon Him, more than thirteen centuries ago.
The tragedy is that far from keeping a check on the avaricious rich and providing protection to the poor, the system has been subverted by an unscrupulous minority who are mostly supposed to be servants of the people but have become the Masters of the Earth. This minority comprising less than 1% of the population controls 90% of the country’s wealth, leaving the rest 99% to share the balance of 10% assets. In a country like Pakistan, most of the assets are in the form of real estate which is immovable in the real sense and thereafter in hard cash, securities, industries, etc. Most of the wealth is held outside the country in safe havens and cannot even be a subject of accountability. Third World economies barely have a chance in such adversely controlled circumstances. This cannot always be true because at times total rule has spelt economic boon like in Taiwan and South Korea, to a lesser extent in Singapore. The leadership in such countries may have been dictatorial but has generally opened their economies with a singularly vigorous and patriotic fervour, achieving heights unimaginable less than two decades ago. Driven by paradoxes running to extremes, Third World nations need to have free enterprise tempered by the necessity of protecting the have-nots from being exploited, the have-nots mostly comprising a vast majority of the illiterate poor and a not so illiterate but significant members of the impoverished middle class. The motivation for tempering as a means of protection becomes instead an exercise in tampering with the process and the innate evil in a minority of the bureaucracy entrusted with this task subverts this necessity into a worse form of exploitation for the hapless population. State control for the good and on behalf of the populace is turned into benefit for the privileged few. Thus is preventive medicine turned into a slow cancer that not only eats away the economic freedom of the masses but takes away the dynamic purpose and momentum in the economy causing it to slide and grind to a halt, leading ultimately to a recession and even to a depression. The anarchic forces that would be let loose in such a situation is too horrendous to contemplate.
The world economy is in a state of flux at the moment with all pointers leading to a recession followed by a depression. Dr. Ravi Batra has gone so far as to indicate 1990 or even late 1989. In circumstances such as these, Pakistan is bound to be affected, black economy notwithstanding. We should plan for the worst beginning now, down to the basic import essentials necessary in order to avoid the worst of the depression from affecting us not only economically but causing an irreversible social upheaval.
The first thing to do is to draw up a list of essential imports like crude oil, edible oil, defence material, raw material for our basic industries, etc. At the same time we can evaluate the quantum of export surpluses like rice, cotton etc. and try to set up Special Trading Agreements with like-minded countries for the volumes necessary to equate the imports. We might as well shrug off our penchant for luxury goods as non-essential to our basic survival. We should go down to Abraham Maslow’s lowest level in the hierarchy of needs, that of physical well-being and then the next level of safety and security. These two basic levels will see us keep our social affiliation, whereas Pakistan has a strong agriculture base. Over the years we have had considerable expansion of industry and a reasonable mix is present in our economy, not satisfactory by far but good enough in the circumstances. Further development must be concentrated on the acquisition of technology or such items as may be essential for warding off widespread hunger and starvation. Dark clouds loom ahead and we must be prepared to face the circumstances by planning ahead. There is no joy in the fact that the rest of the world will be in the same quandary, but rather despair that the normal sources of succour will be closed to us for the next few years. In adverse circumstances, the sensitivity threshold of our leaders become even more important. Good policies create satisfied masses but not motivation. Motivation comes from challenging work, recognition and the opportunity for increased responsibility and has no level for satisfaction except for ever increasing heights. What we need at this juncture is compromise on broad political issues, sound economic policies and a state mechanism to honestly implement the same. We have seen economic apocalypse in other countries create a new breed of poverty, the impoverished refugees with nowhere to go. Our leaders owe it to our people to subject their sensitivity levels to concern and consensus to avoid anarchy which otherwise beckons us in the 90’s.
As the President may have said to Imran in successfully coercing him to return from retirement, “sometimes we have to rise above ourselves for the good of the country.”
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