If, sir, you are concerned about monopolies, I suggest you look at textile, cement, banking sectors of this country.
SANGHAR: This is with reference to Dr Pervez Tahir’s article of June 28 titled “A matter of land”. I am a landowner and a farmer. I spend most of my time on my lands and find most, if not all, of your submissions to lack intellectual clarity if not honesty.
If your submission is that land should be taken away from one individual and given to another in order to create greater efficiency, let me assure you that natural land reforms take place with every generation as a family grows. This natural occurrence of division facilitates productivity by requiring one to increase efficiency and output in order to maintain the same income.
As far as equality is concerned, will you also be pushing for loom reform? Should the number of looms per privately-controlled or privately-held textile mill or for that matter any other factory be nationalised as well? What about large houses that have extra rooms? Or for that matter urban plots? Shall we now start to nationalise those as well? After all, we do have a lot of homeless people.
If, sir, you are concerned about monopolies, I suggest you look at the textile, cement and banking sectors of this country.
Confiscation of private property in the name of the “greater good” is a slippery slope that has been tried and tested under various social engineering programmes since our inception. How successful were the nationalisations of the banks and industries? It takes capital to run a farm or a business and weather the ups and downs in these enterprises. Does Pakistan have the capital to fund even one crop of wheat for these new farmers? The answer is self-evident. Will private capital or public banks provide loans to these farmers? Unlikely, and not to the extent to provide protection against massive famine.
Here are some numbers to help you to get a better grasp of the effect of land reforms in Zimbabwe: Just for starters: Agricultural production down 60 per cent in 10 years; Real GDP down 40 per cent and around 450,000 jobs lost, and so on.
I do hope this helps to bring some clarity to your article.
Shan Ali Khan Junejo
Published in The Express Tribune, June 30th, 2013.
Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.
