'My aim in life' as Descartes put it 'is not to teach the method that everyone ought to follow in order to conduct his reason well, but solely to reveal how I have tried to conduct my own.' As I came so I left but having tried and failed to change the culture of the organisation that ought to be in the welfare of this country and that unfortunately has delivered very little, for its clientele, the farmers and the macroeconomic structure.
Its genesis was unfortunately in the worst of times and its very foundations were based on the caste system of Punjab. I have written on this subject quite extensively but the players that were recruited by the first Chairman were based on the caste system. Was it done on purpose or was it done unintentionally?
The evidence does not have to be sifted but is available and it was based on two very prime personal requirements - first the near and dear relatives, and the second the caste system. Then it was the turn of the power structure in the federation which was safeguarded through all kinds of gimmicks. The benefits were petty but the fallout of those benefits are being enjoyed even now. What does it matter if the culture is vitiated and the personal long-term gains are available?
The power structure had another angle to it. Tyrannical powers of the then President had to be carried out and the servility factor and the senility factor areas were born. Since the work ethics was what it was a degree of snitching took place? Snitching is a decent word for backbiting and the current minister was heard saying that these PhDs seem to be only good at talking against each other. They have nothing better for when there are no ideas, then the best way to keep any one down is by the system of backbiting. Unconsciously, the ego takes on a defence posture and settles the outcome for the person incapable of working.
The research journey is difficult but necessary and cannot be carried out by those who are selfish and self-oriented. It requires a great degree of unselfish behaviour. The research uncertainties have been furthered by the political uncertainties, for ministers cannot be allowed to interfere as the last one did. The degree of introspection required may be necessary and the basis for transformation necessary for carrying out ideas into workable actions is not everyone's forte.
It certainly was not the forte of the research organisations or the agriculture universities as they followed the copycat pattern of the west and brought in technologies that were discarded in the early 1930s. Their intellectual abilities were never stretched and they were never in the intellectual game. Their agricultural university education was, to say the least, ridiculous and mired in obsolete thinking. Notes were dictated and that was it.
Besides not having any skills in transforming an economic opportunity from research, they were never in the leadership role. The fact is now accepted internationally. Dissection of the anatomy of the universities will be done subsequently. Suffice it to say that the world of the agriculturist is full of lopsided activities. The lethal combination of a lopsided personality and a lopsided intellectual balance can be and is detrimental to the country.
Research organisations have been so fixed and rigid that for them to understand the new requirement is almost impossible. Can the researcher really think that he can convert the system to value creation unless he understands the market requirement of value added? The social sciences division has been working on value chain but that is a lot of hot air.
The west is a past master at prevarication and shifting of focus is done constantly. One remembers that a foreign country gave this research organisation a luxury car and some trips out of the country in return for barley seed collection from the seacoast. That was salt-tolerant seed. It is now available for the country at exorbitant price and the rest of the developing world is to suffer because of the country's poor understanding. That is one reason why when it came to having a centralised biodiversity bank, one opposed it.
This was to be in one of the Scandinavian nations. That is the only strength that the Third World has at the moment and the first world wants to take it away. It is such a selfish place. The values and attitudes that the first world so generously accuses the Third World need to be looked at differently by the Third World.
The Pakistan Agriculture Research Council has never lived up to its expectations. It is incapable of understanding explicit knowledge recipes, what to speak of implicit knowledge recipes, and they are busy at dismantling the new culture that was sought to be brought in.
All this will result in getting nothing out of research. It is replete with freeloaders and the PAs have managed to get their children and their grandchildren in to the organisation as if there is no other individual worthy of coming in to this place. The potent combination comes through when the explicit and the tacit combination join hands. The relative situation is well-illustrated by the 245 that have been appointed at Karachi by the second last chairman. It includes dicey characters and the place has been converted into a den of easy virtue.
The intellectual assets of the organisation, already extremely thin, have now more or less vanished. Even the PhDs have become ornamental pieces. The 'sonay pay sohaga' comes from the fact that a diluted version of the former CSP, a flight attendant, is supervising the entire matter from the ministry and the person guiding him is none other than the senile and sinecure jobholder, the one who would not even get a janitorial job in the US. Hail brothers well-met.
You scratch my back I will scratch your back. There is a growing mismatch between the doers and the non-doers. This mismatch gap is likely to increase because the time the scoundrels have is much more. They have nothing to do and nothing to lose except their dignity, which by the way is already nonfunctional.
The requirement is for new insights and that means that some one will have to burn the midnight oil. For who, given the current structure, is capable of new insights, models, measures, and metaphors not to speak of workable solutions to the farmer's problems. Can any one then capitalise on the new realities? The fresh ways of seeing things from different perspectives, perspective that do not embrace the past but the future ways of clutching at possibilities, based on the present. The trick is to ask questions and then to seek different paradigm shifts in solutions. It is in this eventuality that Pakistan's salvation lies.
Even the intelligence quotients have changed and these will be bound together by three types of IQs, viz rational intelligence, emotional intelligence and spiritual synapse intelligence. All these have to be geared to foster and nurture creativity in imagination so that the long-lasting meaning to life of the farmers is created. How can rapid learning take place when the entire lot is fossilised and the living are dead? These creatures of wonder at the research centre are from the graveyard. They would be better off if they were horizontal. If they cannot live in the current spaces then how can they develop new spaces? They are afraid of the unborn scientist and will cover him with any kind of power block and would be willing to rub their nose in the dust.
Science is site-specific and person-specific. There are no shortcuts to science and before you really understand the concept of science, some one will have to give then the philosophy under which the new system will have to operate. The person becomes important and the inevitability to counter his ego will arise. But that then creates new ventures and new avenues and there is nothing to be afraid of in such situations.
Individuals and organisations must blend together and remix knowledge in innovative ways. This demands a new dimension in leadership - the entrepreneurial knowledge leader. He will be heavy on the ignorant. But then that is what leadership is about. Finally the days of mutated knowledge are over. It is up to us to play the game as we want to play it. That is hard work. The ossified organisations have to beat the hell out of here.