As the year 2022 comes to a close, Pakistan is once again facing the threat of default. In other words, the ever-present crisis of national debt is nearing its inevitable conclusion. Our untenable debt is also behind lower economic growth, with widespread acknowledgment that Pakistan have never been able to maintain macroeconomic stability. Since Partition in 1947, Pakistan’s economy has experienced several economic crises, which have failed to teach it important lessons; instead, they have “case-hardened” its leaders, who go hat-in-hand to an increasingly demanding IMF. In short, economic “bailouts” have become second nature to whoever rules Pakistan.
One reason Pakistan has suffered frequent balance-of-payments crises is its neglect of the agriculture sector. Despite claiming to be an agrarian economy, Pakistan today imports wheat and cotton, overloading an already heavy import bill. Why is agriculture ignored? Even with policies skewed toward non-beneficial sectors, agriculture dominates, yielding 24 percent to the Gross National Product and 19 percent to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This sector should have been recognized as the most vital of the country’s economy, as it can prevent Pakistan from being seen as a troubled state. Unfortunately, successive governments in Pakistan have looked away from the sector, which can sustain us even when the world economy is in crisis by making us self-sufficient in food and giving much-needed employment. Not to mention food is also an important source of export and foreign exchange, unlike manufacture subject to competition.
According to the World Bank, the estimated GDP growth for Pakistan in 2020-21 was 4.3 percent against 8.7 percent for India. Between 1993 and 2020, Pakistan achieved over 6 percent GDP growth in only two years—2004 and 2005—while India’s GDP growth exceeded 6 percent 18 times during the same period. Pakistan’s national potential for agriculture is further diminished by housing societies rapidly consuming arable land, while offering little to boost the economy. Add to that the faulty writ of the state over a large part of the country’s territory and you see Pakistan not only neglecting a large section of its population, but also failing to protect it against man-made hazards. The country’s rural areas have witnessed mass migrations, upsetting population balance by destroying the link of communities to land. This has led to the unnatural development of urban areas as home to communities that were not urbanized through natural processes. Sadly, many in Pakistan are more concerned with building up our defense capabilities rather than focusing on the people and the economy: having an atom bomb in the attic does not help a population looking for food.