Housing, water, industrialisation - targets of popular misconceptions

[Paul2]

Hello dear forum users, I haven't wrote in a while. Today, I want to spent my evening writing about things concerning development about which the popular opinion in Pakistan is more often wrong than correct.

• Misconception 1 - highrise development is too taxing on infrastructure
• Misconception 2 - there is no way to deal with water crisis without dams
  
• Misconception 3 - continued subsidies to agriculture are needed for economic development

Highrise development is too taxing on infrastructure
SJP Nisar argued the ban on building houses taller than 2 storeys in Karachi because "there is no more water in the city, and infrastructure cannot cope." This premise is patently incorrect - highrise buildings require less of infrastructure resources per occupant. Yes, a highrises need more beefy linkups to infrastructure, the total spent and losses are dramatically minimised in comparison to linking up few hundreds landed properties.

It is a matter of simple math to find out that virtually any apartment is more economically to build than an average detached house. The new national hosing scheme that was announced by the government should look at building apartments simply because they cost less to build. Moreover, you have to add social aspects into calculations - dense neighbourhoods make more local business, allow housing more people closer to centres of economic activity, and allow more area be covered by social infrastructure that in a sprawl.

There is no way to deal with water crisis without dams
That's not true. Pakistan's densely populated areas are in fact well more endowed with water than some equatorial countries. It's just fantastically mismanaged: the public statistics available to me tells that %90+ of water in Pakistan is used in agriculture that uses exceptionally wasteful open canal irrigation. If Pakistan can simply cull the use of open unlined canals, the issue can be considered solved for at least a decade.

Waterways supplying water for human use must be put into pipes to cut down on energy and water waste in transportation, and prevent contamination from agricultural runoff. Water supply to agriculture needs to be put onto oversight. Pakistan needs to cut off water to water wasters in agriculture, seriously, just for the reason that water allocation of a single water waster will be able to supply field of multiple more productive farmers. Drip irrigation should be the end goal, but just having people to line their canals, or transfer to overhead irrigation will be enough to reduce water use by half or more.

Continued subsidies to agriculture are needed for economic development
Agriculture products are an inherently lower added value goods than products of the industry, there can not be any second thought on that. Only countries uniquely endowed with any input for the agriculture that allows them to produce an agriculture product at least twice cheaper than a competitor can consider becoming a major agriculture exporter, otherwise its production will run at loss!

I've been continuously advocating for Pakistan to switch from agricultural economy towards industry. Pakistan has no chance to compete internationally with any of its major agricultural export: cotton - how you are going to compete with Uzbekistan that effectively uses slave labour on its fields for free?; wheat - wheat is an exceptionally undemanding culture. The only thing you need to grow it is land and Russia has more land than you can count; sugar cane - you can't compete in cultivating this extremely water thirsty crop with countries that are awash with water.

Agriculture locks down giant amount of domestic capital, and human resources that can potentially go towards production of higher value good, and building of factories. The rest of the world has long seen no economic value in producing food to eat it yourself - that simply does not result in a net surplus of any kind by the very definition.

 

[313ghazi]

I agree with some of your points, particularly about water management. Our water management is incredibly poor. Apart from the agricultural side of things, we have a poor distribution network, next to no water recycling and waste management and we let industry unashamedly poison the water. All these things need to be cut down too.

Your point about high-rise buildings is true. The big cities will need to go up skywards, but this is not something we're culturally used to. Who wants to live on an apartment on the 20th floor where you can cannot access a garden, or courtyard? This is a challenge for the people designing our buildings and cities to make highrises perhaps with floating gardens or with communal courtyards that people can use confortably. In part there will also be a cultural change. A kid who grew up in an apartment won't have a problem raising his family in one - but someone like me would lose their mind.

This isn't the only way to go though. We have a lot of land which is arid and is no use for farming - we should build more cities and towns, spread the population out a little rather than focus on mega cities. Karachi is 20 million people, increasing that by 50% won't help anyone. Instead we need to build more coastal cities or cities 50-100km away from Karachi and divert new industry and people to there too. Meanwhile the management of Karachi and it's urban sprawl will require a large infrastructure re-build and replacing slums/shanties or older parts of town with modern apartments in the future.

Finally agriculture - this is one were we probably disagree but not entirely. Right now agriculture is so big as part of the Pakistani economy for 3 reasons.

Firstly because a significant part of it is subsidence farming. We have low industry so a lot of people have low income and need the food they grow to survive.

Secondly there is a large "wadera" (feudal) culture in some parts. Those people own the land in areas where there is no other economic opportunity. The only option is to work for the lord. The feudal lord then takes the crops and sells that either export or locally. The workers don't even get a proper salary. Unfortunately these people are trapped because many of our government officials are these fuedal lords or linked to them.

Thirdly, in the absence of proper industrialsation and a population not skilled in much else, it's easy for people of wealth to buy land, setup farms, and export the produce.

I agree with you that Pakistan should industrialise and reduce it's reliance on agriculture. I do not think we should abandon agriculture. My reasons are below.

1. Food security. If we rely on others for food, we are at the mercy of the markets, and are particularly vulnerable to political influence and the fear of sanctions from other nations who produce food or are allied to big food producers. Right now the whole world can say what it likes, but nobody in Pakistan should go hungry as we grow enough to feed ourselves.

2. We are and can be competitive on the food market, especially if we industrialise our farming. Pakistan has the geography to produce a lot of cash crops including nuts, fruits, olives, safron, herbs and spices . If our farms are setup to be industrial farms we can produce cash crops and to a higher standard, making use of the export market. Agriculture can be lower percentage of the overall economic base, but actually produce a lot more money.

 

[Paul2]

I agree with some of your points, particularly about water management. Our water management is incredibly poor. Apart from the agricultural side of things, we have a poor distribution network, next to no water recycling and waste management and we let industry unashamedly poison the water. All these things need to be cut down too.

Your point about high-rise buildings is true. The big cities will need to go up skywards, but this is not something we're culturally used to. Who wants to live on an apartment on the 20th floor where you can cannot access a garden, or courtyard? This is a challenge for the people designing our buildings and cities to make highrises perhaps with floating gardens or with communal courtyards that people can use confortably. In part there will also be a cultural change. A kid who grew up in an apartment won't have a problem raising his family in one - but someone like me would lose their mind.

This isn't the only way to go though. We have a lot of land which is arid and is no use for farming - we should build more cities and towns, spread the population out a little rather than focus on mega cities. Karachi is 20 million people, increasing that by 50% won't help anyone. Instead we need to build more coastal cities or cities 50-100km away from Karachi and divert new industry and people to there too. Meanwhile the management of Karachi and it's urban sprawl will require a large infrastructure re-build and replacing slums/shanties or older parts of town with modern apartments in the future.

Finally agriculture - this is one were we probably disagree but not entirely. Right now agriculture is so big as part of the Pakistani economy for 3 reasons.

Firstly because a significant part of it is subsidence farming. We have low industry so a lot of people have low income and need the food they grow to survive.

Secondly there is a large "wadera" (feudal) culture in some parts. Those people own the land in areas where there is no other economic opportunity. The only option is to work for the lord. The feudal lord then takes the crops and sells that either export or locally. The workers don't even get a proper salary. Unfortunately these people are trapped because many of our government officials are these fuedal lords or linked to them.

Thirdly, in the absence of proper industrialsation and a population not skilled in much else, it's easy for people of wealth to buy land, setup farms, and export the produce.

I agree with you that Pakistan should industrialise and reduce it's reliance on agriculture. I do not think we should abandon agriculture. My reasons are below.

1. Food security. If we rely on others for food, we are at the mercy of the markets, and are particularly vulnerable to political influence and the fear of sanctions from other nations who produce food or are allied to big food producers. Right now the whole world can say what it likes, but nobody in Pakistan should go hungry as we grow enough to feed ourselves.

2. We are and can be competitive on the food market, especially if we industrialise our farming. Pakistan has the geography to produce a lot of cash crops including nuts, fruits, olives, safron, herbs and spices . If our farms are setup to be industrial farms we can produce cash crops and to a higher standard, making use of the export market. Agriculture can be lower percentage of the overall economic base, but actually produce a lot more money.

On the point of agriculture, the concern of food security is understandable, but you can't eat sugarcane or cotton. On topic of feudal culture...

I'll tell you what happened in China during early nineties, the peak of the reform era. Most of China was a very clan-segregationist society with privileged landlord class continuing to exist through even harshest years of Maoist repressions. Yes, landlord clans had no formal possession of land by nineties, but they still wielded a mafia-like influence over rural areas, where the most of population lived. They were at the root of backward social tendencies, holding back the society, finding every opportunity to drag people down into some rent-seeking social arrangement with only goal of continuing their idle lifestyles, and maintaining their social position: food-for-work, seed-stock monopolisation, protection racket, loan sharking, sales of brides, plain slavery. Pretty much like those tribal lords you deal with in Pakistan's less developed areas, or hereditary zameendars in Punjab.

Those landlord clans were swept by the tide of social change that came with industry growing up in the south, around Shenzhen. Work in a factory was poorly paid, but still 100 times better that indentured servitude to landlord clan mafias, and hopeless life in dying villages. It kickstarted the real labour market, making human labour equitable. More importantly, this provided the first new alternative to the old way of life and old value system, completely changing the nation's social fabric in a single generation. Nobody gave a **** about landlords, giving "tributes" to them, their parallel tax system, their opinion on someones marriage, or getting deeds for business from them. Labour market did what Mao and decades of revolutionary terror were unable to do. The only thing a young person needed to make that change was to get a ticket to Shenzhen, and get the first factory job they stumble upon.

To a repressed landless youth from rural areas it provided their first way out of the unending hell they had in their villages. It was their ticket out from medieval ages to modernity. With those poor factory jobs they got, they were able to attend evening schools, get vocational education, afford basic medical care, and socialise with peers - all things you need to not waste away as a person. It was their first opportunity to see with their own eyes how different a life can be in that "modern world," and that further motivated youth pursuing life in that brand new modern society that was created in the south of China.

It is opening the eyes of people what Pakistan needs now. I understand a great, great lot of people in Pakistan simply keep complaining about poverty, but have no idea what is the "way out" for them personally.