Ravages of rain in Sindh

While terror-stricken Karachi is having brief lull from the killing spree of poor and innocent people, Interior Sindh has been hit hardly by the merciless torrential monsoon rains causing colossal death, destruction and displacement of millions of people. Hardly people have recovered from the socks of last year flood, the current spell of rain have broken the economic back of people. They have lost crops, livestock, their homes have been destroyed and now they are living under open with no coming to their help.

According to reports of National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) 100 percent seasonal vegetable crop such as onion, tomato, chilies, etc, have been destroyed in addition to the 70 percent of cotton crop in Hyderabad, Mirpurkhas, Badin, Thatta, Nousheroferz, Nawabshah, Khairpur, Shikarpur, Khandhkot-Kashmore, Larkana and Dadu. Cotton is grown on 1.8 million acres in all the districts of the province.

In addition to wholesale destruction of vegetable and cotton crop, 50 percent of standing paddy crop which is cultivated on around 2 million acres in various part of the Sindh, including Larkana, Shikarpur, Qamber-Shahdadkot, Jacobabad, Kashmore-Kandhkot and Dadu districts has ravaged by the vagaries of rain. Damages and destruction is not confined to vegetables, cotton and paddy but sugarcane has bore the brunt of rain and floods. According to reports 70 percent of sugarcane, grown on 0.7 million acres in districts of Badin, Tando Mohammad Khan, Tando Allahyar, Matiari, Sanghar, Mirpurkhas and Hyderabad. Rain has caused destruction to orchards which spread over 125 million acres.

Rain and floods have also killed people, destroyed their homes and caused so many water-related diseases. According to reports, so far 86 people have killed as a result of roof falling and electrocution. In addition to two million people in rain-flood affected districts have displaced and forced to live either in tents or under open skies without proper hygiene and sanitations conditions resulting into outbreak of epidemics that have aggravated the miseries of the affected people as diarrhea, gastroenteritis, malaria and skin diseases are spreading rapidly. Reports further say 400,000 houses have been destroyed, 1600 people have been wiped out from the face of this earth and more than 10,000 domestic cattle, including cows, buffalos, sheep, goats, donkeys and hoses have been killed by lethal rain in the affected districts.

According to experts, the aggravation in the scale of destruction and devastation has been caused by breaches in the LBDO and RBDO due to their faulty designs and negligence on the part of irrigation department by not carrying out the desilting of canals, due to which breaches occurred, inundating the agriculture land and destroying standing vegetable, cotton, sugarcane and paddy crops. The performance of (Provincial Disaster Management Authority) is absolutely miserable to an extent that they are on the verge of begging from UN and international NGO’s on the plight of interior Sindh caused by floods, argued Fayyaz Hussain Abro President Pakistan International Peace and Human Rights, as quoted in Dawn (September 8). According to government source, in Badin alone 214,940 acres of eminence crops of grains, potatoes, cotton, sugarcane, vegetables etc has been destroyed and 3,710 villages have been flooded.

The question arises if things like these happening then what is the core responsibility of concerned authorities such as NDMA (National Disaster Management Authority) and PDMA (Provisional Disaster Management Authority): either they have to facilitate people or watching as spectator the wholesome destruction of crops and untold human miseries? It seems likes that the responsibilities of NDMA and PDMA has drowned with floods. Government of Sindh has declared 22 districts out of 23 as calamity hit areas and announced relief package of Rs 5 billion for flood-affected people but there is criticism that this amount is just peanut keeping in view the scale of disaster which is bound to induce inflation, price hike which will invariably add fuel to the fire of poverty already caused by IMF programs of structural adjustment.

Sindh has been facing such devastation since long and even last year rained and floods played more havoc. The reason is that people don’t have capacities to protect themselves against natural calamities, for state has not invested much in enhancing the capacities of people so that they can defend themselves against such calamities.  According to Amartya Sen, noble laureate in economics, natural calamities hit people when they are denied of their social, economic and political entitlements such as food, jobs, and access to technology, participation and right to education and Medicare.

If we analyze the situation in interior Sindh in the light of Sen’s entitlement approach, we will find that state has totally failed to empower people and ensure their legal entitlement to the productive assets – education, health faculties and technology. There are no industries and people have no entitlement to land to be distributed judiciously amongst poor peasants.

Apart from lack of entitlement, there are other factors contributing to the poverty of people. According to study of Dr. Manzoor Isran, working in SZABIST, structural adjustment programmes are responsible for creating poverty in the rural Sindh. According to him, since Pakistan is signatory to IMF programmes, under which government has been forced to withdraw subsidy from oil, gas, electricity, which have contributed to poverty.

According to him, it is state’s primary responsibility to initiate projects to create employment and thereby alleviate poverty and reduce income inequalities. Pakistan being signatory to IMF programmes is being asked for downsizing, which means laying off people from jobs. Further, IMF programmes restrict state investment in the industry and agriculture. It is one of the factor causing misery and mayhem.

Finally, I would strongly suggest that if government is serious to protect people from the injurious effects of the rains and floods, it has to take following measures.

• Investment in the creation of social infrastructure, that is, health education, health.
• Investment in industry in rural areas and thereby create employment.
• Improvement in governance and elimination of corruption
• Land reforms and distribution of land in landless peasants.
• Provide youth from rural areas with microfinance so that they open small and medium business.

I am sure if above cited measure are taken, it certainly it will minimize, if not eliminate poverty, from rural areas. 

-----------------

Wrote for Business Recorder

Sindh in the trap of poverty

Recently I had an opportunity to visit Interior Sindh, and was anguished to see the degree of deficit in development side. No wonder you will witness the roads, bridges, parks for recreation, colleges and universities but intercity roads are in total shambles. One of my colleague told me that since 1970’s, there has been no major development and each dictator from Zia to Musharraf patronized their few feudal who were loyal to them and put the development on the back burner.

Majority of people are still living in shabby conditions and are deprived of basic amenities of life for instance, proper housing, sanitation, Medicare and availability of drinkable water. The underdevelopment and deprivation people are facing is not new but have been piling up since long and ironically no government, democratic or dictatorship has done anything substantial to alleviate the sufferings of people. Every year budget is announced for the social and economic development but the flip side is that, we don’t see any collision on the ground in terms of change in life style and livelihoods of people; it looks people are still living in medieval era.

What perturbed to my mind was the level and scale of poverty people are living in and perhaps the poverty has further been augmented by the floods of last years. Still people are reeling around the pains caused by torrential rains. The reason for this situation is soaring volume of unemployment. Perhaps John Maynard Keynes (An economist) had rightly said that the key function of state is to create employment, and for that he opined that it is good if private sector comes forward to invest in the industry but if private sector is not coming forth to invest for any reason then it is state responsibility to invest in the Industry in order to create employment. But here, Sindh government, which is being led by PPP has totally failed and the soaring unemployment has given rise to crime such as kidnapping for ransom, tribal conflicts and other social evils that are affecting the transition of society from traditional to modern one and pushing it under the rug of feudalism.

Here the role of feudal reminds of Mancur Olson (American economist an social scientist) story of "Roving Bandits and Stationary Bandits". Feudal are working like roving bandits plundering and stealing the vital resources of Sindh which otherwise can be used for alleviating mass poverty through the generation of employment by investing and establishing industry.

It hurts when to see the plight of Sindh. It is being ravaged by the tyranny of terrorism and poverty, despite being rich province in natural resources. It has large reserves of oil and gas and coal. It has ports and Karachi as commercial hub of Pakistan, contributing almost 68% to national revenue generation but ironically the lower parts of lie in shamble economic conditions, with no industrial base though there are some districts which have industrial zones to be developed by the district government but due to worsening law and order situation in the province no investor is ready to invest and establish industries.

In addition to that Sindh is oil and gas rich province – it produces 71% gas and 61% oil, and altogether it produces almost 72% of total oil and gas production of Pakistan. The daily production of oil and gas in Sindh is about 67,140 barrels and 3.99 billion cubic feet respectively. Yet economically it is still one of the backward provinces, with soaring poverty, high rate of unemployment and widening inequalities between rural and urban Sindh.

A New York Times book review of a titled “A New Deal in Pakistan” by William Dalrymple says the following about Sindh: “.. in fact, it is one of the most backward areas in all of Asia. Whatever index of development you choose to dwell on-literacy, health care provision, daily income, or numbers living below the poverty line-rural Sindh comes bumping along close to the bottom”.

When oil and gas was explored, it was believed that poverty will be history and Sindh will be rich like Dubai. But so far it has mere remained pipe dream due to unethical policies of oil companies, trampling down their social responsibilities towards society. According to CSR principles, oil companies have to spend 1% of their earnings on the development of the local areas to establish schools and hospital and building roads but nothing of the sort is happening and people are dependent on Zakat and Rs 1000.00 given to poor families under Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP).

According to research archives of Participatory Development Imitative (PDI), oil companies are supposed to give production bonus to be spent on the development of the area. But instead production bonus was given to federal government. PDI took initiative to talk to Sindh government which was quite negligent of production bonus. Finally, after long advocacy and struggle Rs 2.5 billion were given to Sindh government and surprisingly that money is still lying in the coffers of Sindh government, not being spent on the socioeconomic development of oil producing districts? For example, Look at the plight of Badin districts, one of the major oil producing districts almost produces 60% of oil but its socioeconomic plight is alarming. It ranks at number 90 in the Human Development Index of 106 districts of Pakistan.

In addition to oil and gas, Sindh is home to one of the large reserves of coal, proverbially known as ‘Black Gold. According to different studies, the reserves of coal are estimated at 850 trillion cubic feet (TFC) of gas, about 30 times higher than Pakistan’s proven gas reserves of 28 TCF. Further studies show, if all the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia and Iran put together these are approximately 375 billion barrels. But a single Thar coal reserve is about 850 trillion TCF, which is more than combined oil reserves of Saudi Arabia and Iran.

According to some studies, these reserves of coal worth $25 trillion cannot only cater the electricity requirements of the country for next 100 years but also can save almost $4 billion in soaring import bill of oil.

According to experts, just 2% usage of Thar coal can produce 20,000 mega watts of electricity for next 40 years, without any single second of load shedding.

These experts opine that the coal power generation would cost Pakistan Rs 5.67 per unit while power generated by independent power producers cost Rs 9.27. These experts are of the view that the development of Thar coal just requires initial investment of Rs 420 billion. The good and inspiring thing is that at the moment work on the development of Thar coal is going on under the supervision of Pakistan’s imminent nuclear Samar Mubarak-Mand.

As matter of fact, the development of all these vital resources of Sindh needs good and democratic governance which Benazir Bhutto widely talked about in her book Reconciliation: Islam , Democracy and the West” published posthumously. She considered democratic governance central to sustainable development, strengthening of democracy and democratic institutions. And in fact, democracy is about enhancing people capacities and giving them choices. To achieve this goal, there is need for proper planning which requires government to give first priority to the improvement of law and order situation, encouraging people to open up business and for that they should be provided with loans easily. Youth, especially business graduates should be encouraged to open up business; new training centers should be opened in order to meet out the needs of skilled labor which is a key to the whole process of development.

-----------------------
Published in Business Review, Dawn