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Floods and the price of commodities

The floods are upon us again and the rural areas have again taken a hit as the production system has been adversely affected. What is to be done in the short-term and what is possible in the long-term. The short-term production system can be internally geared in such areas as are free from floods and the productive base enhanced. There are enough personnel with the government who have been educated at taxpayers’ expense and these need to camp out in the villages and begin augmenting the production base.

The winter vegetables can easily be sown and the intuitive abilities are brought in to play so far as autumn vegetables are concerned. My own intuition is that it is possible to find niche vegetable areas where one can grow vegetables that are otherwise not tolerant to frost and freeze. So far the agriculture community does not understand the difference between the two and neither am I going to do it for them. Smug as they are, they must camp out in the rural areas to pass their wisdom to the farmers; instead of being holed up in comfortable research farms playing semi-god, intriguing and infighting and telling others what to do. Prices are likely to register a rise for many reasons but some of them are: 1. Loss of and damage due to floods to the areas where vegetables were sown. 2. Increased cost of transportation which has registered an unprecedented increase because of oil prices. 3. Increased cost due to the increase in commissions to the commission agents (anything between 12% to 24%). 4. Breakdown of infrastructure. 5. Increased risk because of breakdown of law and order. 6. Rising labour costs that have escalated from Rs 250 per day to Rs 550 per day. These are difficult-to-handle issues and no government that does not have imaginative players will be able to handle these matters. Some of these listed issues in the last paragraph would mean different interventions besides the requirement of excellent human resources that are credible and able to deliver.

Unfortunately, degrees do not deliver, especially when these degrees do not develop any degree of ethical norms. One wishes that ethical norms are furthered by these higher educational degrees but the fact remains that that is not the case. Of late, some of the economists have started talking of the behavioural aspects of economics and the economists current and relevant are Gary Becker’s rotten kid theory and Coase’s adverse human behaviour. Robert Frank in economics of vice and virtue is another economist given to the animal behaviour of powerful policymakers. Economics then seems to be a blend of theory, intuition, real world puzzles and ingenious though bizarre solutions. Pakistan can go on the IMF dole for as many years as it possibly can but the answer lies in bizarre solutions and bizarre solutions will invoke the National Accountability Bureau. So why should any one take a risky solution.

The world of the poor can go to hell as men of courage and goodwill are seen as the missing element. Economists now should realise that they do not have to predict what I call dead shadows predicated by GDP and quantum analysis. However, there is requirement for the understanding of behaviour of the Pakistani personality. Would that have been the situation in Pakistan where all kinds of oxymoron’s with high PhD degrees but no understanding of human behaviour and they came and messed us all up to our present predicaments. Hit men from the west and not tuned to Pakistan at all. What is the big idea-starting from Shoaib the FM during the time of Ayub (before that my memory fails me). What will these imports do for us? They are culturally not there. So how do these affect the flood situation and a basis for managing the run-off rainwater? The floods were the result of run-off rainwater and was in no way due to the rivers over flowing their banks. The engineers think otherwise. They want dams so give it to them and ask them to be ready to pay the price to IMF for the debt that they would incur. These dams are not an addition to the water already there but a replacement of the water lost in Tarbela because of Wapda’s stupidity. I would suggest that these engineers be asked to sign a bid bond because their thinking is perverted towards engineering solutions. The bid bond should state how much time they will take as also the cost and the impact in terms of productivity. They will never agree to this. As Pakistan has never been a rational country and the irrationality shows in every sphere. We are well organised to defend these irrationalities and even justify them as properly rational. We are our own band masters announcing ourselves to be what we want to be.

The systematic demolition of rational thought was brought about by the various tyrannical powers. Shaheed Bhutto wanted the entire files to come to him and he would study them before he came to a decision. Not so the military juntas. They wanted presentations so they could read with their ears and not with their own eyes. These juntas conquered Pakistan many times over. Where will the cost go? The land productivity has already taken a hit and with floods what little was being produced has been devastated. So where do we go from here. If the vegetable prices are at an all-time high the pulses are not negotiable any more by the poor. There has been a greater movement at eliminating the poor from the roadside. It is easy to do so for the only means of livelihoods that the self-employed have is a hawker and chabri wala. The urban elites have managed to eliminate them. My view is that the Rs 20 per kilo escalation that had always taken place across the commodity markets (fruits and vegetables) whenever there was instability will now be more than what was previously there. When wheat and commodities are inflation-prone then everything has to increase not in the same proportion but by a much larger amount. Pakistan’s economic situation does not hinge on macroeconomics. These fancy deals ever commented upon by Western educated oxies only please the formal sector and the political and military elite not the ground realities with which the poor are entangled. Let me be clear. The roadside vendor and the beggar near the traffic lights also have stake in this country. The farmer has been framed by the industrialist sector who make such profits that they can shop at Centaraus and at Metro. Shopping under the one roof as the rich would say. Musharraf removed these roadside vendors from the Chak Shahzad road and where is the roadside vendor, still struggling but relatively free. There were two operations carried out by CDA recently where the police were set upon the fish mongers that had been selling fish there (police must have had a field day eating free fish secured under duress from these fish vendors and taking away what little assets they had). The other was in Bhara Kau where the vegetable vendors were removed as they were an ugly sight and people going to Murree were not happy with what was seen on the roadside. Yes the poor are ugly. We have so many slaves in our community who do nothing but echo their master’s wishes and in doing so go beyond the call of duty. Repression starts here. Where and how will we become wiser – not by economics but by dealing with the dangers of playing with resources that matter most – the humans. The words I hear may best be summed up in one of the analects of Confucius and I quote ‘The gentleman agrees with others without being an echo. The small man chooses without being in agreement’. Are we gentlemen or small men?

Dr Zafar Altaf, "Floods and the price of commodities," Business recorder. 2013-09-14.
Keywords: Social science , Social issues , Social needs , Social rights , Social system , Social development , Floods , Production system , Economic-Pakistan , Agriculture , Inflation , IMF , Pakistan