A needless proposal

Land-owing, slave-owning ‘farmers’ do not require aid in any shape, why the scheme to make farmers buy fertiliser?

The annual flooding of millions of acres of agricultural land along the River Nile in Egypt is an event greeted with celebratory relief. Landowners and agricultural labourers depend on this bountiful river to flood their fields, depositing a fertile layer of silt in the process, then slowly recede so that planting can get under way. In the wake of the mighty Indus doing the very same thing why, it is pertinent to ask, is there such a hullabaloo about supplying fertiliser to those who are still prepared to go about the business of tilling the soil and sowing seeds? Who, exactly, stands to reap a profit?

The country’s largest fertiliser producer has absolutely no need to invent sales campaigns to maintain its revenue. Therefore, one suspects, that it is sticky fingered middle-men who, as usual, are manipulating a hefty slice of the aid pie. However, this time, the government itself is promoting the scheme (for farmers to be helped through the flood aid), pushing largely unnecessary tonnages of fertiliser in the direction of hapless farmers.

The majority of those displaced by the floods are landless haris. They own no land of their own, so have no need of fertiliser whether it be totally free or low cost and no need of main crop seeds or other agricultural inputs either. They are basically slaves to landowners, many of whom are the so-called feudal elite with more money stashed away than ordinary people could ever dream of amassing. This class of land-owing, slave-owning ‘farmers’ do not require aid in any shape or form so why the scheme to make farmers buy fertiliser? A small percentage of haris may very well own equally small patches of land if, that is, they can still lay claim to such with land records and boundaries having been destroyed in the deluge. If so, they do not need huge agricultural inputs, simply hand tools and household vegetable not wheat or cotton seed and perhaps a cow and a few chickens to help make ends meet if, of course, they chose to return to eking out a meager existence in places which may be washed away again in the future. So what on earth is going on here?

Squandering foreign aid on the land-owning class, some of whose members undoubtedly sit in parliament when they can be bothered, is, despite claims that all international assistance will be disbursed in a transparent manner, blatant malfeasance. An insistence on agricultural assistance, including free or low-cost seed and fertiliser, plus the urgent promotion of ‘cheap’ loans, does not help landless haris. It only serves to promote the self-interests of landowners desperately looking for ways to ‘force’ their slaves to return. Such moves appear to be aimed at encouraging those people liberated by the deluge to return to the shackled status quo prevalent before the heavens opened.

Liberating haris from bondage has long been the goal of some international and national human rights movements yet now, when thanks to the devastating intervention of nature, millions have been released in one fell swoop, all minds seem to be set on turning the clock back rather than helping these poor souls learn the necessary skills to adapt to a life freedom.

Meanwhile the agricultural aid white-wash is being laid on by the truck load and someone, somewhere is counting their profits with glee.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 21^st, 2010.