The Rural
Rustics of Indo-Pak.: Will Life Ever Change for
Them?
By Mohammad Ashraf
Chaudhry
Pittsburg, CA
Ten-year-old Vinod worked for two years in a carpet
factory in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
“I used to work for 12 to 14 hours in a
day on the loom. I was not paid a single penny
for a year. A week after joining, I was hung upside
down for a minor fault…” According
to the Indian Government some 12.6 million children
between five and fourteen are in full-time employment.
The UN’s ILO, however, estimates these work
children to be 44 million, and an unofficial figure
of such children is as high as 100 million.
The picture on this side of the border is not
very rosy either. On a sweltering morning in a
Punjab village of Wasanpura, in Pakistan a carpet
master, Sadique, is busy in explaining a 30 year
old brick-layer, Mirza, the untold advantages
his son, Nadeem, would enjoy as an apprentice
weaver. “Nadeem is bright and ambitious;
he will learn far more practical skills in six
months than he would in six years of school…
one day your son will be thankful for the opportunity
you consented to be given to him and Allah would
bless you for looking after your son so well.”
A National Survey of Child Labor, 1996 numbered
such children as Nadeems falling in the age groups
of 5-14 as 40 million; out of which some 3.3 million
(8.3%) were found economically active. The study
further discovered that rural areas provided 8
times more child labor than the urban areas, and
some 70% of them worked more than 35 hours a week,
and a good number worked as much as 56 hours a
week.
Eleven million children between the ages of 4-14
keep the country’s factories running by
working in harsh and squalid conditions. Like
India, Pakistan also passed laws limiting child
labor and indentured servitude, but such laws
remained universally ignored and the practice
continues. What starts as a little work about
the house, a little extra money for the ever-needy
family, it ends up as a formal introduction into
adult responsibilities; and it adds up to declaring
Pakistan “among the most illiterate countries
within South Asia”, says South Asian Institute’s
Report, 1998.
In India the gender radio is 99 men to every 101
women; in Pakistan it is 105.7 men to every 100
women. The result is obvious: an average size
of household in India is 5.1; in Pakistan it is
7.1; the population growth at 3.1% readily nullifies
whatever little socio-economic investment is made
in Pakistan. In the rural areas, 90% women work
in the fields and yet are not considered equal.
They get beaten; are discriminated; are humbled
and are killed, all in the name of honor and male
chauvinism. In the year 2000, 286 women got murdered
in the name of honor, karo kari, by the male family
members. In the shade of such laws as Qasas, upon
compromise with the victims’ family, the
assassin’s family ends up paying in the
form of money, land and of course women. 60% of
the total illiterate of 76 million are women.
A good number to the tune of 135,000 die in childbirth
each year. Animals and beasts of burden attract
better care than women in our villages. And this
is true on both sides of the border.
Women, sometimes in a feudal set-up are forced
to marry the Qur’an, a practice in Sindh,
in which they are convinced to live a nun’s
life. The landlords who pride themselves for having
more than one wife, and many out of wedlock, enforce
this practice on their daughters and sisters because
to them keeping the land in the family takes precedence
over any other consideration.
The rural life in Pakistan remains tightly insulated
against all the changes: social, economic and
moral, that are taking place in the urban areas
due to the advancement of technologies. The Indian
farmers, however, are waking up. They rejected
the BJP government because the economic revolution
that had transformed the urban life at an astonishing
pace had failed to brush sides with these rural
rustics. The story is different in Pakistan. Here
the latest technological gadgets and appliances,
like the satellite televisions, dish networks,
computer websites, and cellular phones, instead
of blowing in their ears a clarion call of awareness,
have selectively begun distorting the patterns
of social and cultural life of these rustics.
TV Satellites and mobile phones, frigidaires,
movie channels; Yamahas and Hondas; all have stormed
the villages.
The exposure to the global world, though sudden,
has dismally fail ed to bring in them any positive
or healthy change in their lives; such as a sense
of awareness that they are human beings and have
human and civic rights, such as the rights of
getting education, healthcare and pure drinking
water; of having access to better seeds, to latest
tools, to unadulterated pesticides, to latest
methods of farming and storage; to conserving
water; to improving the hygienic conditions; to
staying well informed about the weather; to getting
the best returns for their produce by staying
informed about the market rates; to getting loans
with minimum documentation; and above all to liberating
themselves from the shackles of the middlemen,
popularly known as commission agents.
India’s Congress government has learnt faster
than expected from the failures of the BJP government.
It is connecting itself with the teeming millions
living in the villages. In the past India was
just teaching them to talk; now it is talking
to them to walk. The results have begun discernible.
James Wolfensohn, the president of the World Bank,
defends India like no Indian would do. “We
have a high degree of confidence in India. After
all we have done $59 billion worth of lending
in more than 400 projects in this country. The
purpose of the World Bank is to fight poverty
with passion”. On the contrary, Pakistan
gets a mixed message, which is that no doubt its
economy is improving, but Pakistan still needs
to take radical steps to eradicate poverty. To
a question that India’s economic performance
is poised to frustrate both optimists and pessimists,
the World Ba nk president assumes the mantle of
Manmohan Singh himself while defending,. “You
don’t have one India… there are several
Indias, or at least two. One is the ‘GO-GO’
India that is growing at 8 percent a year. The
other is mostly rural India, which is growing
at 2-3 percent or less. This India has 6,00,000
villages, in which some 700 million very diverse
people live”
The World Bank president is right. What is true
of India is equally true of Pakistan. There are
clearly two Pakistans now, one for the very rich
and privileged, and the other for the teeming
millions. Pakistan in the last fiscal year has
demonstrated an economic growth of 6.4%, which
exceeded the government’s target of 5.3%.
This growth was mainly led by the export-led manufacturing
sector, which grew 17%. While the industrial growth
in Pakistan surged satisfactorily, the agriculture
growth dipped. Drought, costly oil and a weak
currency, as would predict Far Eastern Economic
Review of October, 2004, could further erode its
growth. In other words, rural Pakistan did not
see any economic growth and remained locked in
a 2.1% growth cycle. Despite the best efforts
of PM Shaukat Aziz, the new awakening that the
real cons umers live where the real people produce,
i.e. in the villages is not catching up any strength
in Pakistan. In India, the urban industrial tycoons
have been thoroughly mesmerized by this idea,
and Adi Godrej is right when he says, “Rural
India is not sleeping any longer. We were”.
The tale of two salesmen of a shoe company as
elucidated in India Today of December, 04, beautifully
proves the point.
A shoe company sent two salesmen to Africa. They
found most people in the Dark Continent walking
barefoot. The first salesman reported to the company,
“Stop the shipments, no one wears shoes
here”. The second salesman wired, “Double
the shipment, nobody wears shoes here. Corporate
India is waking up to this second salesman’s
marketing folklore, says Rohit Saran of India
Today in his beautiful article, “Call of
the Countryside”. Pakistanis tycoons are
busy in thumping the desks in the parliament,
or are mired in the idea that true democracy would
dawn in the country when President Musharraf duffs
his uniform.
The world outside is trumpeting such heart-renting
beats as: Stephen Cohen in his latest book ‘The
idea of Pakistan’ and S. Prasannarajan in
his comments on the book surmise: Pakistan is
a state that was born to flounder; it was based
on an idea that failed; in Pakistan every ruler’s
success…is written in the state’s
failure. The book is a detailed biography of a
state let down by men as well as history, with
every act of salvation ending as betrayal…
despite high defense spending for years and two
major wars, Pakistan is less secure today than
it was fifty years ago…And what unites the
corrupt democrat and the patriotic dictator is
the idea of the enemy… the more the idea
of Pakistan gets botched by its generals and politicians
the more it needs a nationally mobilizing, emotionally
unifying bogeyman, and it has got one in India…
the Idea of Pakistan is the dar kest paradox of
the times…the extremists in green are virtually
indistinguishable from those in saffron…”
But why would Qazi Hussain, Hafiz Hussain, Fazl-ur-Rahman
and other leaders in the opposition read such
writings because for them all that does not resonate
with their mantra is trash.
e-Choupal is the proverbial genii of the Indian
magic lamp that has begun changing the rural India
overnight. e.Choupal is a website, and Sanchalak
is the name given to a conductor who operates
it in a village. All major companies are getting
connected through it. Sivakumar had initially
requested Rs.50 lakh to test the idea among Soya
farmers in Madhya Pradesh. Deveshwar gladly granted
him Rs. 10 crore. Now this ITC’s e.Choupal
network has reached 3.1 million farmers, and is
expanding into 30 new villages a day. Partnering
with 37 other companies, NGO’s and state
governments, this new ecosystem has succeeded
in establishing a direct link between what consumers
eat and what farmers grow. Farmers get at their
doorsteps the best possible seeds, pesticides
and fertilizers at the most competitive prices.
And when the crop is ready, the e.chopal helps
the farmer to find the best buyer. The idea has
worked so well, with no cost to the farmers, that
the investment of Rs.12 has blossomed into a company
of Rs.12,000 crore. On the Pakistani side no such
innovative and result-oriented use of websites
related to the farmers has made any news so far.
Virendra Singh in UP, became an e.Choupal sanchalak
(conductor). He says the change he saw in farmers’
outlook in the past two years he hadn’t
seen in a lifetime. Subbaraju owned a 20-acre
shrimp farm . Aqua-choupal has greatly helped
him and others in improving prawn breeding in
the area. Farmers now know the correct time and
price to sell prawns in the village itself. Pepsi
has gone a big way by investing in juices of tomato
to Tropicana; legendary Tata’s Kisan Sansar
in alliance with ICICI Bank and HLL is offering
deals to farmers, providing them the best seeds,
pesticides and other inputs, mostly funded through
loans from ICICI Bank and on the ripening of the
crop, HLL itself buying it. Rural Malls, the kind
we see in the cities, are making appearance all
over India where farmers can get served from seed
research to medicinal plants; from food processing
to fruit exports. Agribusiness in India is blooming.
The Bharti’s have gone in FieldFresh Foods;
EID Parry is actively involved in providing quality
advisory services, finance facilities and other
occupational information through village information
kiosks. Reliance of the famous Ambanis has taken
the initiative in cultivating herbal plants; DCM
Shriram is busy in establishing Village Malls,
six acres large, designed to cater to farmers’
needs by storing some 400 categories of products
like stock feeds, seeds, fertilizers, veterinary
medicines and farm implements. Shubh Labh Mahindra
is sowing ideas and is reaping success. His 36
outlets are helping farmers to have easy access
to loans.
Can we in Pakistan claim that we too have set
up any models based on the patterns of an e.Choupal
and Sanchalak? Not that I know one. What happened
to our Saigols, Nishats, Crescents, Dewans; Chiniotis;
Dawoods, Monnoos; Farooqias; Bawanys; Chaudhrys;
Manshas; Tawakkals; Sitaras; Colony’s; Hashwanis;
Al Karams; Guls and Ittefaqs? The nation saw them
taking big bites that they could not chew later,
and ultimately defaulted on money that never belonged
to them. They can see their counterparts in India
investing heavily in the villages because it is
in the farmers’ well being that they have
discovered their own economic wellness enshrined.
There is hell of business beyond chemical plants;
sugar mills; cotton and cement factories and tanneries.
PM Shaukat Aziz should distance himself from such
misadventures as the construction of 60-storey
towers in Karachi and hundreds of villas in Lahore.
As in India, we should exploit the new technologies
for the uplift of the countryside, rather than
use them for watching Indian movies or for chatting
with friends.
There is lot of wisdom in the saying that you
can bring the rich to the level of the poor overnight
(nationalization did that) but it takes a lifetime
to lift the poor to the level of the rich. India
has taken the step in that direction; Pakistan
is busy in convincing the world that the increase
in the number of very rich is by logic a simultaneous
decrease in the number of the poor. Wrong: it
has to start with the poor, and a majority of
them live in the countryside.
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