Fixing people's brains and jobs in 100 days

Najma Sadeque

Almost everything on our new prime minister's laundry list of reforms has been long needed, long overdue, a most welcome relief, and deserves not just three but a thousand cheers. So much within a mere hundred days will be a feat indeed, and even if a few of the items over-run the deadline by a few days, weeks, or months, it would be understandable. Just going through the list is revealing of how very many - too many -- and excessive have been the wrongs heaped on the Pakistani people for too long.

But the mostly-good laundry list also has some problematic items on it, while certain vital matters seem to have been conveniently forgotten if not studiously avoided. While the list encompasses a lot of good intentions, they obviously have not been well thought through yet - which is surprising, that the many-decades long struggle for democracy should have had basic demands and plans framed on paper and ready at a moment's notice called for.

Take the idea of setting up an Employment Commission, which is very elitist in concept. A National Employment Scheme to be started in half the districts of all provinces under which one person from every poor family would be provided a job may have intended to be thoughtful, but it sounds more condescending than practical. Who will be the one person in every poor family to get the promised job?

If Pakistan's entrenched male-oriented society is anything to judge by, it will probably be the man in the family, even if he is so unqualified or incompetent or unlucky to have never been able to hold a job. And if he is a drug addict ( a common phenomenon in the urban areas) or otherwise lazy and accustomed to living off the menial labour services of his female family members (as is routine in the rural areas), he will probably nominate another male -- a son or brother to be given the job for an under-the-table price (as has been historically done in municipalities).

Nor does the government clarify that the job recipient could be a woman or a man - whoever is more competent or deserving or both. How can it be guaranteed that he will have the skills demanded by specific jobs that come up on offer? Or will he be appointed first and trained later, even if he doesn't fit by way of intelligence or any other requirement?

The employment commission is to be set up "to plan for the creation of employment opportunities in the private and public sectors". How exactly can a committee achieve "employment opportunities" for the entire unemployed poor of our country when the public and private sectors have not been able to, to date (not necessarily for any fault of their own) and when they generally require varying degrees of literacy or higher education and training to fulfil job requirements, while the poor in question have had no education or only of the poorest and unusable standards.

The only way to make this possible seems to be to make it compulsory for every company above a given minimum size to employ at least one such poor person in any capacity the company can fit him into. And if the employee is found to be completely lacking, then to train him for the job, maybe as an apprentice, up to a given maximum period of time - a year or two - before they are entitled to throw him out. What does the committee do with him next?

Even less of an intelligent idea is the Literacy and Health Corporation "to provide employment to young people for two years after graduation." Is this Literacy and Health Corporation supposed to be an incentive or something with a genuine career path? Since when does our graduation degree - barring a few institutions -- come with a lot of knowledge learned? How does one put meaningless rote information to work?

Clearly, the not-so-bright planners of some of these ideas seem to think that most poor people are doomed to joblessness unless the state provides them. It sounds more like the erstwhile USSR's lifetime job guarantee practice. - But the USSR had excelled in one necessary aspect that we still don't. They educated all their citizens, and to a very standard too, so that they all came out as the finest academics, scientists or skilled workers.

Madrassahs are said to be religious educational institutions that unfortunately help in brainwashing impressionable young minds to believe anything they're taught and to foolishly be used to sacrifice their lives under the misleading impression that they're doing it for their faith. They could be more accurately described as orphanages for developing cannon fodder which was why the previous government had required that their curriculum include subjects such as social and other sciences that could lead to employment or specialisation. For that matter, why should madrassahs be allowed to exclude standard curriculum from their studies?

The PM's 100-day plan envisages setting up a Madressah Welfare Authority "to provide a uniform syllabus for Madressahs in consultation with all stake-holders and audit their funds." That is not satisfactory under the present circumstances that is taking advantage of poverty to force parents sending their children to madrassahs, while safer society and government looks on with the full knowledge that they are being dispatched to a dead-end and probably violence-ridden future.

Without normal education, the only careers the students can look forward to is as low-paid mosque imams or religious teachers at best of a number that are far too many than needed or can be absorbed. Every normal citizen has a duty to work for his living, but unless they take up separate academic studies, madrassah students tend to end up as being superfluous to the economy, not very well informed, anti-women and extremist, and even anti-social for no fault of their own. The only difference between madrasahs and other standard schools should only be that the former has a single additional focus on religion, while others schools may have it in some other area, such as fine art or music, etc.

Hunger and jobs are the biggest problems today, and yet the government did not turn to the obvious solution and oldest demand -- from the rural poor especially -- that directly addresses both the issues of employment and food security. - The solution of land reform. As promised under the Tenancy Acts on the eve of independence, land should be restored to the peasant, a minimum of 2 acres each - albeit under usufruct that places the conditions that the will be indivisible and non-saleable for the lifetime of the user, after which it can be transferred to a pre-named heir/user or returned to the government to be then given to some other peasant.

With peasant women, a different variation of land rights is called for. A mere quarter-acre with water access and doorstep micro-credit rights being awarded to every rural mother or female family head practising missed, natural, chemical-free, manure-based farming, would not only ensure full food needs for an average family of 6-7, but also produce a surplus for the middleman-served market.

Held by her as usufruct property for which she can pay 10 percent (or whatever is determined by the state) of the value of her crops in cash or kind, she would have the security of shelter that cannot be taken away from her or sold even by a wayward husband. Under the circumstances, she would be less likely to be subject to physical violence and independence as a recognised, working citizen with acknowledged rights.

The feudals who still control the most and best land and also continue to "represent the people" in parliament, are certainly not going to give up their lands n a hurry. -- Notice that the PM's 100-day plans neither include land reforms nor land-ownership ceilings. But the government can make a start by redistributing "state lands" that have still not been grabbed. After all, the previous government had offered to sell minimum of 1000-acre plots to foreign agricultural investors for export farming, an offer that wasn't taken up in the climate of war and terror, water shortage, and poor farmland quality. If there were millions of acres available for unwarranted foreign investment, there is that much available for distribution to hundreds of thousands of peasants.

It is only when small farmers are self-sufficient and able to produce a saleable surplus so that they do not need to depend on seasonal labour for survival, that the big landlord will find true competition from the peasant and not find it worthwhile to do large-scale chemical monoculture any more. In any case, big farmlands are deteriorating and the manufactured inputs are getting more and more expensive so that it would be better to sell off their lands in small parcels and re-invest their money in the urban areas which lifestyle they prefer anyway. That would enable peasants to rehabilitate damaged soils, a labour-intensive hands-on task that only they can carry out since landlords are incapable of getting their hands dirty.

As for education in the rural areas, what is needed are agriculturally-oriented schools with an acre or two of farmland attached to each for practical classes, that teach biology, environment, ecology and organic farming as the main subjects. It's time to be realistic and sensitive to empty stomachs than to be pretentious for the media. It is not true that there are no immediate solutions for hunger. Immediate hunger can only be resolved by rationing and by basic free rations for every citizen as his or her share of the common public resources and assets of the country that some are arbitrarily allowed to invest in and others are not - especially land.