Pakistan is urbanising at an alarming pace. A recent UN Population Fund (UNFPA) report highlights the issue iterating the startling fact that the present level of urbanisation in the country is the highest in South Asia. Among the provinces Sindh is the most and NWFP the least urbanised.
Sixty percent of Sindh's urban population resides in Karachi while 22 percent of the people in Punjab - the most populous province - live in Lahore, and the rest in five large cities. The impact of this rapid urbanisation, needless to say, is not very pleasant. It leads to an increasing pressure on our urban centres' resources such as housing, health facilities, educational institutions, transportation and other services and utilities.
Equally bad, a large number of those who come to the big cities in search of greener pastures are forced to live in slums, chasing dreams of a better life. Many others from affluent backgrounds, too, are attracted to big cities though they are pushed by different considerations like education, richer cultural experiences and modern life styles, etc.
But most of those who have been leaving their ancestral homes in the rural areas and heading for the big cities are economic migrants. Inequitable distribution of land is the main culprit in this phenomenon. As it is, bulk of our agricultural lands is still owned by a small number of feudal families, and an unstoppable process of inheritance related divisions and subdivisions has been rendering more and more small land holdings economically unviable.
According to an estimate, 80 percent of the farming community in this country is landless. These people work as sharecroppers, getting very little to subsist on. Increased mechanisation of agriculture has further reduced the chances for the landless poor to put in extra labour at the harvest time in exchange for food grains or other produce.
The issue of rural poverty must get the attention it deserves not just to ease the pressure on big cities but for its own sake. Right kind of policy and planning can help turn the problem into an opportunity for progress and development.
The government ought to be willing to take the necessary measures, at the top of which has to be a meaningful land reform aimed at an equitable redistribution. A lot has been said and written about the previous two land reform bids being mere eyewash; a new one must be substantive.
Other measures should include the following: Availability of loans to middle and small farmers on easy terms for the procurement of various inputs for which they take loans from money lenders against standing crops payable at the harvest time - a practice that consumes a large part of their earnings.
The much-talked about need for an impetus to agro-based industrial projects must be given practical shape. Aside from the traditional commodities, there is a huge amount of untapped potential in the non-traditional areas, particularly in milk products and fruit processing and packaging industries, which wait to be exploited.
Hopefully, our policy makers will pay heed to what the present report has to say - albeit indirectly - with regard to our crooked patterns of development, and take timely corrective action so that people do not feel compelled to leave their homes to go and live in unfamiliar, and often inhospitable, environments.
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