I have been involved in research and agriculture policy since my transfer from Planning in Punjab to the agriculture department and the phone call from the Chief Minister at 5am in the morning. Why not, was my reply but little did I realise that that would be the beginning of a life-long affair with agriculture. It was to have its ups and downs but on the whole a very exhilarating time in which many icons were demolished and many concepts put to rest. One of the main one was whether agriculture is a science.
In agriculture, there are as many as 50 odd variables and no science can handle such a number of variables. I do not like to give personal examples but then the evidence that is coming through at the moment needs to be explained. Every new and then all incoming governments ask me to take charge of agriculture either at the policy level or at the research level. Why is it that natters come to a head and I have had to leave the position? This has happened seven times. It has to do with the ivory tower leaders who have large ears and weak eyes and weaker imagination.
A cartel is always created by my not succumbing to the stupid requirements of the powerful be they be from the political or the tyrannical system. The last time that I was asked to go, I took with me bad company as three ministers changed and a secretary and an additional secretary had to go with me. On one occasion, the Principal Secretary to President Musharraf came out of the preliminary meeting of the cabinet (otherwise the kitchen cabinet - Musharraf was very keen to develop consensus before the cabinet meeting!!) to tell me that four ministers and the then naval chief were filling the ears of the President against me.
Intrigue is a salient feature of the governance of this country. A sitting secretary of the government asked why this was so? Its psychological import was brought home to him. If credit is to be given to any substantive work then the author of that work has to be eulogised and given credit. If the President was an empty vessel to be filled by such thought I was in no position to change the event - but to my friend the Principal Secretary I said I am honoured for after all it takes four ministers and a naval chief to take on a Federal Secretary. He murmured something like you never take anything seriously. A fellow colleague sitting next to me was concerned and said what will happen and I said that I would probably be bureaucratically guillotined.
The leadership position in agriculture has always been very ad hoc. It is treated as just another ministry and no effort is made to match the job requirement with the person's abilities or attitudes and values. For one, it is the largest private sector in the country and its value depends on the country's performance in the overall growth strategy. That Pakistan has failed to cash in on the product side of the commodities sector is also indicative of its inability to develop the value-added products in the sector. Between 1996 and 1998 as many as eight persons (give or take one) were inducted in the agriculture ministry and one of them was there for a couple of weeks. When the mental configuration is weak then all kinds of assorted activities come to the fore.
A federal secretary worth his salt has to fight many battles in agriculture and some of them have a very nebulous standing anyway. The power structure always is of the opinion that agriculture will somehow on its own steam develop and make the country self-sufficient. It does not happen that way.
The reasons for this are many. Agriculture has to break many icons if the country has to prosper. It has to get out of the stagnation of commodities. At the moment, only four crops take away as much as 93% of all resources. The world has moved on from food security and the private sector has to be given the confidence to deliver. This can be done. There is now enough private sector strength to handle this. This will also diversify the agriculture sector's portfolio.
The agriculture sector's portfolio is different from the other sectors in as much as it is based on not one product but multiple commodities and multiple approaches to the products and the manner of dealing with the requirements of the country. The players are not the few, as in industry, but the entire country and the complex nature of the requirements is indicated by the WTO non-agreement and so much so that the entire negotiations have been suspended. The agreement in WTO will never take place because of the nature of natural resources and the manner in which these resources impact on the other economies collectively and singularly. That is why there is difference(s) - serious ones in the common agriculture policy in the euro zone.
The lacking part is research and the issues here are the uncommon ones of the other sectors. Servility and a 'yes sir' attitude prevails. No one needs to worry about the work that is done. The imports can take care of that. No one needs worry about the farmers they have traditionally taken care of themselves and now there is no need for the environment and the degradation that is taking place.
The farmer is now fed up. I asked a group of villagers in the Potohar region as to whether there is anyway that poverty in the rural areas can be reduced, not eliminated. The answer was surprising in its implications. Yes you can, provided that the urbanisation was to stop and all the conversion of natural resources for the benefit of the rich is stopped forthwith. The evidence is visible in the areas surrounding large cities. The natural contours have been destroyed without realising what has been done.
The drainage of the Potohar has been systematically destroyed by greedy land developers (misnomer) and the creation of the land graft culture in the process. One of the top elites stated that he was sent a chauffeur-driven car by one the surprising part was that the chauffeur was a woman. I asked why that should surprise me but the next sentence is better not written.
So if agriculture research goes berserk what will happen to the consumer's welfare? The current position is that the transaction costs will have to be different. It is no longer possible to send tomatoes and onions from Sindh and Balochistan to other parts of the country because of the high cost of transportation. The promotion of site-specific consumer production is now to be done.
The issues are much graver than one can understand for a cereal growing farmer does not become a vegetable growing one and the sub-sectors enjoy their fixed abode and the shift will have to be done through a system of farmer training. Yet the research system has failed to identify this as a requirement. Why? They are busy in their servility and greed system. What can they take away from the system and what kinds of benefits/employments are possible for their sons/daughters and more so for their sons-in-law and daughters-in-law.
The research system is self-serving in as much as no effort was made to sift the research mind from the ordinary working mind in the bureaucracy. So the double jeopardy is poor leadership and the non-responsive researchers. The universities are churning out functional agriculturists that possess knowledge of the primitive kind with experiments that were done in the 18th century.
Fine! Try growth in agriculture with obsolete personal and obsolete knowledge; trying to get to Mars with a ramshackle transport. Life is going to be more difficult. There is no magic but hard work in the sector and the current lots of researchers are busy with siphoning off resources not augmenting them. The researcher in agriculture is a curious lot and more or like the copycat rather than the man giant that are required.
They are stuck in the large towns and the need may be to shift them to the camps in the rural areas without exception and made to work in the areas where the farmer so requires. At the moment they do not go from Karachi to the research station at the coastal belt - the distance of 15 minutes is too much and those in Islamabad prefer to go from their house in National Agriculture Research Council (NARC) to their offices in NARC a distance of two minutes walk for which they require a transport that costs the taxpayer anything like 2 million rupees. What's the hurry lad? Has anything come out of NARC this year or are they claiming on the basis of plagiarism? Are they then plagiarists? The jury has come back and the answer is in the affirmative.
What can be done? Find the leaders? Supercilious idiots can not and will not be able to do so. They have to date not been able to create a criterion for selection. Everyone thus feels in the system that they are their own masters. Indiscipline is running riot. The non-deserving is desirous irrespective of deserving the position(s) that they seek. The system does not have the homeostasis working where the body corrects itself internally. Neither is this an employment agency. Work schedules are tight - in time and space and in the context of the farmer more so.
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