A further, long-term impact of the monopolisation of urban property will be the disparity in access to water.
LONDON: This is with reference to your editorial “Plots for bureaucrats and generals” (June 10). I am concerned about where all the land that is allotted to these people is coming from and how many peasants and farmers are displaced in the suburbs of cities and in the rural areas to accommodate all these rent seekers. A further, long-term impact of the monopolisation of urban property will be the disparity in access to water. In a water scarce country like Pakistan, access to rural irrigation is already prioritised in favour of the influential and the same attitude will dominate the urban developments, ensuring that these rent seekers receive access to good roads, water, gas and electricity at the taxpayers’ expense, while the rest of the country continues to suffer.
This will help shore up the prices of these landholdings, which will eventually be inherited by the sons and grandsons of these bureaucrats and generals. Rewarding bureaucrats and civil servants is one thing, but reallocating state resources to enrich them and their families at state expense is criminal. Generation after generation of these elites continues to get rich at the state’s expense and then they have the audacity to dodge taxes and say, “hakumat tau kuch nahi karti”.
Nadir El-Edroos
Published In The Express Tribune, June 13th, 2012.
