Editorial in the Pakistan Observer India to feed Pakistanis!
THE Government has allowed duty free import of five essential food items including meat/live animals, potatoes, tomatoes, onion and garlic from India to overcome their shortage in the country. The decision was taken at a meeting of the Price Control Committee chaired by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz in Islamabad on Tuesday.
The decision to import edible items from India is being officially projected as a measure to obviate their deficiency at home, but it apparently represents a subtle step towards realization of the grand design of the two countries' economic integration that India has been desperately clamouring for decades. It has always been India's ardent desire to promote trade with Pakistan at the cost of the Kashmir issue and Islamabad has seemingly opted to fall into the Indian trap. Till recently, Pakistan had consistently followed the policy of pursuing settlement of the Kashmir dispute as a prelude to resumption of trade and economic ties between the two countries. But it's being bypassed now on the pretext of meeting the shortage of these edible items. It certainly doesn't need Aristotle's wisdom to understand where it will lead to ultimately. It is certainly shameful that Pakistan cannot even produce sufficient quantity of potatoes, tomatoes, garlic, poultry and meat in the country to meet domestic needs of these items. It's really unfortunate that Pakistan lacks proper planning for production of various crops to meet the local needs. If autarky in wheat production is achieved, there will be shortage in other crops as is being observed this year. We have imported wheat and sugar during the current year. It's time that agriculture sector is organized on a well-planned footing in order to ensure production of various crops in keeping with the domestic requirements. The situation at hand presents an unwarranted scenario due to the failure of the Planning Department, farming community and the Agriculture Ministry to comprehend the domestic consumption of these items and to take steps for their production in required quantity. We do not deem it appropriate to resort to imports of even meat and vegetables from India to meet their shortage, rather than planning and striving to produce them within the country to cater for the needs of the people. It's hoped that Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz will take note of this failure and take necessary steps to avoid recurrence of such a situation in future years.
Posted by: john ||
05/05/2005 4:25:49 PM ||
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Itâs time that agriculture sector is organized on a well-planned footing ...
Um, you might want to check out how well that "planning" thing worked in the Soviet Union.
#4
''We do not deem it appropriate to resort to imports of even meat and vegetables from India to meet their shortage''
Presumably it would be appropriate for the Pakistani people to go hungry instead?
Posted by: john ||
05/05/2005 20:09 Comments ||
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#5
As I read it, this is a serious attack on Musharraf's leadership and administration which not only failed to plan and execute correct agricultural policy, it also fell into the trap the Indians have planned for a long time (and which other regimes avoided).
Note also the subtle theme that international trade relations are inherently to be avoided if possible, rather than being a sign of a mature and dynamic economy. Islamicism at work in this editorial, folks.
Posted by: too true ||
05/05/2005 20:24 Comments ||
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May 5, 2005; In the last week, Islamic terrorist leaders in Algeria, Palestine, Iraq and Pakistan were captured. Terrorists need leadership to be effective. Take away the leadership and the deadly terrorists become a lot of angry, noisy, but largely harmless, young men. Israel demonstrated this last year, when they killed dozens of terrorist leaders, and saw the number of terrorist attacks dwindle as the number of dead terrorist leaders increased. The terrorist groups cried foul, accusing Israel of "murder" because they identified specific terrorist leaders, and then killed them (or captured them, when that was possible.) The terrorists, of course, would have preferred that the Israelis kill lots of civilians while going after terrorist leaders. To them, it was "murder" to just attack the guy who planned the murder of Israeli civilians, and then supervised those killings.
The Israelis did it by expanding their informer network in the Palestinian areas, and they did this because they have a lot of police and security agents who speak Arabic. Israel also has a force of police commandos, composed of men whose ancestors came from Arab countries, and can pass for Arabs. These commandoes can move, openly and undetected, through Arab neighborhoods, to collect information, or make arrests. While some of the informants cooperated because they wanted to stop the violence, in many cases bribes and blackmail were used to get cooperation, and information. What was unique here was that Israel was obtaining information from a hostile population. In Algeria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the informants came forward because they had become disillusioned with, or hostile towards, the terrorist groups. In all of those countries, the Islamic terrorists had made themselves unpopular by killing Moslem civilians.
This is a pattern that has repeated itself time and again over the last few generations. While terrorist groups can last 10-20 years before fading away, if they kill enough of the people they depend on for support, the terrorists will disappear a lot quicker. What usually happens is that the government protects its own people and facilities well enough that more and more of the terrorist attacks kill innocent civilians. The media makes much of this, the terrorists have no adequate response. Civilians begin to provide information about where the terrorists are, and it goes downhill from there. This happened in Egypt in the 1990s, and is happening now in Iraq.
Al Qaeda is particularly vulnerable because it preaches hate not just against non-Moslems ("infidels"), but also against Moslems who do not agree with the mainline Sunni brand of Islam. Thus in Afghanistan, the Taliban, and their al Qaeda allies, persecuted Shia Moslems. In Iraq, Saddam tolerated, and sometimes encouraged, hard line Sunni leaders who preached the use of violence against Shias, just because they were Shias. In Afghanistan, the fanaticism of al Qaeda and Taliban turned most of the population against them. This was an interesting example of how terrorists self-destruct even when they achieve their goal and take over a country.
By definition, a terrorist terrorizes. That isn't hard to do in an age of mass media, mass media always hungry for scary headlines and stories of impending doom. But as a long term operation, terrorist groups are a lost cause. The news of their indiscriminate murder travels fast too, and dries up that minimal amount of grass roots support they need to survive, and put together their next attacks. While it's hard to tell who is winning in a war against terrorists, when a lot of the terrorist leaders are getting killed or arrested, the bad guys are not doing very well.
Posted by: Steve ||
05/05/2005 11:10:04 AM ||
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#2
While it's hard to tell who is winning in a war against terrorists, when a lot of the terrorist leaders are getting killed or arrested, the bad guys are not doing very well.
Of course, that's not the impression that one would get if attention is paid to the what the MSM says.
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The decision to import edible items from India is being officially projected as a measure to obviate their deficiency at home, but it apparently represents a subtle step towards realization of the grand design of the two countries' economic integration that India has been desperately clamouring for decades. It has always been India's ardent desire to promote trade with Pakistan at the cost of the Kashmir issue and Islamabad has seemingly opted to fall into the Indian trap. Till recently, Pakistan had consistently followed the policy of pursuing settlement of the Kashmir dispute as a prelude to resumption of trade and economic ties between the two countries. But it's being bypassed now on the pretext of meeting the shortage of these edible items. It certainly doesn't need Aristotle's wisdom to understand where it will lead to ultimately. It is certainly shameful that Pakistan cannot even produce sufficient quantity of potatoes, tomatoes, garlic, poultry and meat in the country to meet domestic needs of these items. It's really unfortunate that Pakistan lacks proper planning for production of various crops to meet the local needs. If autarky in wheat production is achieved, there will be shortage in other crops as is being observed this year. We have imported wheat and sugar during the current year. It's time that agriculture sector is organized on a well-planned footing in order to ensure production of various crops in keeping with the domestic requirements. The situation at hand presents an unwarranted scenario due to the failure of the Planning Department, farming community and the Agriculture Ministry to comprehend the domestic consumption of these items and to take steps for their production in required quantity. We do not deem it appropriate to resort to imports of even meat and vegetables from India to meet their shortage, rather than planning and striving to produce them within the country to cater for the needs of the people. It's hoped that Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz will take note of this failure and take necessary steps to avoid recurrence of such a situation in future years.
