It’s a great pride for Pakistan that a 17-year old girl from Swat has become the youngest-ever in the world and only the second Pakistani Nobel Peace prize winner.
Malala Yousafzai, since her childhood years, has inspired the world owing to her love and passion towards education in a region where it was a norm to not send girls to schools. Even many among those who wanted education did not have the access.
Malala miraculously survived a point black range shooting in 2012 and has since gracefully committed herself even more to education activism. Now there are great expectations on those fragile shoulders, that she will make a huge social impact.
Pakistan needs Malala, its hero. According to the latest Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey, about 40 percent of Pakistan’s population is below 15 years of age – that means there’re roughly 80 million under-fifteens in Pakistan. It is estimated that up to 20 million kids are out of school in the country. Malala is an education activist with strong local roots, and she can be an immense force of good in nudging government and civil society towards total enrolment.
Pakistan can make social gain from Malala’s heroism in various ways. There is immense spotlight on Pakistan right now, due to her grit and compassion, which can be helpful to the country in a diplomatic context to formulate and present a futuristic position on issues like extremism and human rights.
Being a girl, Malala enjoys direct emotional entrée to millions of disadvantaged girls in Pakistan. Malala gives them and their mothers the voice for education and women rights. “One child, one teacher, one book & one pen can change the world,” said Malala at her UN speech last year. Put simply, Malala touches a cord with the females and that can be a start of basic empowerment for some of them.
If security improves in Pakistan, here is hoping she would come back soon and be a force for social change for millions of girls and boys that are out of school. But domestic environment, her responsibilities as a global activist and even her own academic schedule may hold her back for some time from returning to her soil.
Her winning Nobel Prize should be welcomed in Pakistan where good news is becoming rare. Ironically, many ‘so called’ educated in Pakistan, especially those on social media, are seen taking her achievement with a pinch of salt. They’re, unfortunately, in plain denial to acknowledge the potential gains in educating kids and eradicating extremism, which can be achieved from the symbolic glory of a little girl.
Pakistan is already guilty of ostracizing its first Nobel laureate. Let’s hope we don’t repeat history. Let Malala’s achievement unite this country, not divide it.
Recall that Malala was shot by militants for raising voice for girls’ education in Swat. The tide is now turning in the country against militants, who are on a back foot after the launch of full-scale military operation in North Waziristan and targeted operations in cities. Malala stands tall but militants are now subdued. That should rally public support for ending religious extremism in society.
Malala has jointly shared the peace prize with an Indian, a 60-years old Indian child rights activist –Kailash Satyarthi. The timings of the award announcement coincided with the border military tension between the two arch rivals. Indian premier has used strong words against Pakistan on firing by Indian troops on the border while at home the government is giving a silent but measured response. The two peace ambassadors, one from each side of the border, can pave way for initiating peace negotiation amongst two countries. They both decided to invite the two prime ministers in Oslo on 10th December and to plea for peace in the region.
The need of educating children and deprivation of their basic rights in India is no different than of Pakistan. The mission of joint Nobel Peace Prize winners is that every kid in the region shall go to school and get the quality education. Let’s join hands with these courageous activists to shape up a better society in the region!
Land reforms and agri-lending
Another point of contention in the land reform debate is whether land reforms (in the context of their limited implementation and cumbersome impact analysis) have gone on to improve formal agriculture lending for smallholders. But that is a more difficult question to answer compared to the impact on literacy (explored in “Land reforms and literacy,” published on October 3, 2014 in this space).
Some researches indicate a positive relationship between landholding size and chances of acquiring formal credit. By the same logic, smallholders would have lesser chances of formal credit, thus resorting to informal credit.
The Pakistan Agriculture Census (2010) data show that about 90 percent of farm owners in Pakistan had below-subsistence holdings (up to 12.5 acres in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa; up to 16 acres in Sindh). This smallholder group collectively owned 42 percent of the farming area but individually they would have a hard time finding formal credit.
But on the positive side, formal agri-lending data (from the State Bank of Pakistan) show that within farm credit, subsistence holding has more than 50 percent share. Similarly, ZTBL, the specialized agri-finance institution, has for years shown that bulk of its loans go to small farmers (classified as up to 25 acres by ZTBL).
However, the scale of formal lending seems woefully small. ZTBL reported in its 2012 annual report that they served 0.4 million borrowers. However, that represents just 5 percent of nearly 8 million farm owners with below 25-acre holdings in 2010.
More specifically, SBP data show that agriculture “crops” accounted for about 10 percent of GDP (at current market prices) but “growing of crops” only had 1.7 percent share in the economy’s total outstanding credit/loans and a 6.4 percent share in loans to private sector business as of August 2014.
It seems that there is unmet credit demand, which is most likely plugged by informal lenders, family and friends. However, it also seems that formal agri-credit access, as low as it currently is, may have improved. After all, agri-lending has been among top priorities for successive governments in the post-reform period. Disbursements are also growing and ambitious targets are being assigned to banks. But conclusive evidence is awaited.
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