Rural development planning in Pakistan

Summary and Perspectives

Most of the rural development plans and green revolution technology attempted in Pakistan between the years 1950 and 1970 were a part of “induced transformations and institutional innovations.” These attempts did bring some advances in productivity in Pakistan. In recent years, Panjab broke the international records in wheat production. But, a review of rural development efforts and wide application of induced innovations provide mixed results. Since 1972, the Integrated Rural Development has been adopted as a model for country's agrarian reforms, because of the gains at Shadab Project. The success of Shadab was impressive indeed, but Pakistan's economy, history, and society call for caution and raise scepticism, as were rightly pointed out by Ruttan (12) for Integrated Rural Development Program.

Success of Shadab Project was in large part due to well guided input of human resources devoted to organizational, management and technical assistance. Extensive extension services, model demonstration farms, publicity, and the training of farmers in various new techniques of agriculture were provided. The history of other development efforts prove that similar intensity of resource input cannot be maintained, when the program is generalized.

Furthermore, the administrative freedom usually available in pilot projects of limited geographic extent to tailor programs precisely to local, national, and human endowments is usually not available in widespread use due to administrative inconveniences. Likewise, resources of physical, and institutional infrastructure are likely to diminish when the program is spread widely. Another perspective which worries the historical-cultural geographers is the dominant cultural attitudes and preferences of the village people in Pakistan.

Pakistani way of life does not set man so much against the nature, as he often has been in the western world. Man is viewed as a part of nature, who can be happy and successful if he adjusts himself to his habitat. Rural Pakistan values leisure as an end in itself, and believes in its predestiny as set by one's luck. This luck-leisure attitude is one of the graces of rural Pakistan, and often serves as an impediment to quick “induced” changes, which did not evolve from within their own society.

Deh Nareja, which this author is studying for the past 23 years as his laboratory to study rural changes, is a good example. Deh Nareja is an assemblage for six villages, with about 1000 people, located 15 km southwest of Tatta. The Deh is linked with Tatta, a tourist town and headquarter of the district administration, by a canal path and a surfaced road. Proximity and spatial linkage with Tatta have made the people of Deh Nareja more mobile, than their counterparts in other villages. In spite of this interchange, and exposure of farmers to other ways of life in the town, Deh Nareja remains a repository of traditional values, and traditional agriculture.

Comparison of two maps of Deh Nareja, substantiates this point (Fig. 2). In order to improve the field ditches and save the water lost to seepage and spills, a survey was done in early 1960, to lay the fields in a rectangular pattern. Equal amount of land which belonged to a farmer as an irregular field was given to the farmer in a rectangular pattern (Fig 3). It took considerable amount of time and resources to accomplish the task, but the rural people resisted this change to the extent that the entire plan had to be abandoned. The traditional sentimental love of one's own land, its hereditary linkage were far more important than an efficient irrigation and agriculture.

However, consequent to March 1972 land reforms, certain changes were visible in the attitude of the farmers. During a visit again to Deh Nareja and to a number of other villages in Pakistan in the summer of 1976, a certain optimism and hope was noticeable amongst the villagers. The farmers seemed to be more conscious of their rights; they were more aggressive, and were looking forward to a better future. Comparing with their former subdued and downtrodden condition, their changed situation and perceptions can better be expressed by the term “agro-nauts”. The term agro-naut is introduced here for the present conscious, partly reliant, and aggressive farmers, as against subdued, downtrodden and exploited peasants. Like astronauts, these agro-nauts still do not know their destiny or ramifications of induced changes, but seem to be prepared to accomplish something new. The first ever national conference of agro-nauts convened at Mandi Bahauddin, Panjab, and adoption of a national farmers charter were the steps in the right direction to enhance the confidence of the agro-nauts.

Under this changed situation, the Integrated Rural Development Program, seems to have some potential, if environmental, cultural and historical roots of Pakistan are not ignored, and “package transformations” are induced without destroying the present producing ability of the farmers.