Who Cares about our Economy?
Our underperforming and ill directed economy may be seen both as a cause and symptom of our political ills.Kashmir has failed to integrate with India and it has not failed to long for Pakistan or independence. It has ridiculously bad performance in human development and other important indices. Its underperforming or ill directed economy may be seen both as a cause and symptom of its political ills. It has been weakness for rice that has been, both in symbolic and literal senses, at the centre stage of fight for Kashmir’s political future. Now Kashmir is a disaster in terms of management of natural resources (a huge fraction of them were never even considered for tapping and have been locked for reasons not difficult to fathom), unprecedented employment crisis (too many casual jobs implying casual attitude to future, most of important sectors like agriculture and livestock unorganized, mostly alienation in jobs and we have mostly jobs that drain us further in the long run implying job generation is, in many cases, really job destruction), structural causes of corruption (no government, including the Lion’s, has been – and arguably could be – much successful in curbing it because of them), enormous wastage and leakages at almost every point (from rotting wood, medicine and fodder resources in forests to rotting trees on the roads, failure in manufacturing all weather roads and an infrastructure for education that necessarily alienates/suffocates students and teachers, lack of integration amongst many departments etc.), lack of informed vision and direction or the imperative to modernize, loss of community spaces for nothing, mismatch of education and employment (our universities/colleges mostly teach subjects that have hardly any integral link to the needs of economy), many headless institutions (there are institutions but they suffer for want of thinking – there may be, nominally, sections for planning but real thinking seems to be largely absent as are long term vision documents, comprehensive reviews of scenario and research inputs for better planning). One sees less thinking and more use of jugard everywhere. Pension starts on the date of appointment for a huge fraction of employees. Holidays are always welcome (showing how massive is job alienation) or unofficially celebrated through an industry of laziness. Business here means, mostly, shop keeping where goods manufactured elsewhere are sold to be sold in turn or consumed in turn – it is simply middlemanship. Elsewhere we also see dral becoming indispensable. Kashmir has the largest number of medicine shops because health has been largely destroyed. Education, largely destroyed in public sector institutions, is a misnomer here and all we have is certain professional skill oriented institutions and literacy increasing/system reproducing missions and, one could say that the generality of schools and colleges and universities result ultimately in a generation of disabled people. Madarassa education has been another enormously mismanaged, exploitative sector that neither Madrassa management nor government seem to be interested in addressing (teachers are paid only peanuts, students learning only a few of Islamic sciences and they fail to find jobs outside highly congested Imam/Madrassa teaching market and any serious engagement with modernity or modern challenges lacking leading to their marginalization). Tourism, thanks to its mismanagement, has hidden costs that are fast accumulating to make it unsustainable and complicit with destroying much that is valuable in traditional spaces. What could have been a world class economy and a centre of excellence in a host of disciplines, specially soft skills, has been reduced to a debt ridden, begging economy with virtually no contribution to world culture and science in recent past. Kashmir economy is failing as evidenced by failure of cooperative sector, failure of most of traditional strongholds – crafts, agriculture etc. – a monstrously huge public sector employment at the cost of state exchequer, pathologies of ill planned modernization, worsening environmental crisis and general apathy of one and all following the perception that nothing can be done due to, fundamentally, political uncertainty. A senior economist who had the opportunity to work at top levels in management of economy and education told me, in a private conversation, that ours is a virtually gone case and one can’t say we have an economy worth its name and our bus is already skidding that can’t normally avert disastrous accident. Let me illustrate the issue by focusing on dying or highly underperforming livestock sector with key culprit as absence of research inputs and thinking.
Livestock sector being such a vital sector in landlocked mountainous region of Kashmir with a distinctive temperate climate (that distinguishes it from not only Jammu but the rest of India necessitating more specific regional institutions of excellence) has been, along with their Chopans, Bakarwaals and farmers, reduced to a nonentity or taboo that sometimes even ministers are hardly ready for taking the charge. The fact that we have continued to subsume animal sciences under SKUAST-K has been a Himalayan blunder of ex-governments. (One is tempted, with Prof. M. S. Mir, to apply an analogy of Abel-Cain relationship in which Cain working with agriculture kills Abel who works with livestock ). Livestock sector has been, relatively, contributing so much to economy and to agriculture as well that the proposal to subsume it under agricultural sciences in a third world set up could only be a ploy to squeeze its development in the long run and that is precisely what has happened. Let me mention a few lesser known points to show costs of ignoring thinking and research in livestock sector.
- We have yet to properly even document and characterize, not to speak of develop and harvest vast animal resources. It means we have little idea of what we are losing for want of attention. The tale of Hangul is an example. What little we have developed, we are failing to consolidate. And our cross breeding policy has been at the cost of indigenous livestock wealth a significant part of which we are irrevocably losing. A biodiversity disaster under our very nose. Who cares? And why should anyone care?
- Universities are tailored to economic needs. The fact if understood would have meant establishment of a university researching animal sciences in local temperate environment decades back. But we are still in the brooding stage. And one wonders if hatching stage would come in proper temperate ambience?
- We are exporting around 2 million pelts losing 1000x2000000=Rs 2 billion annual loss assuming only 10 fold increase in value after value addition procedures.
- Total number of jobs lost on account of inefficient individualist management, lost opportunities in animal farming, absence of big investment, degraded or squeezed land/fodder resources, are in scores of thousands.
- We have no answer to the basic question where are the good farms or professional suppliers of good cows/ewes. Even economics of livestock farming in our conditions is not available. Why waste more than 50% of human resource associated with inefficient modes of livestock rearing? (Around 10% population would have produced equivalent livestock products that currently much bigger percentage is doing sparing the rest for other productive ventures).
- Currently followed individual farming or semi-cooperative in some seasons mode necessitates great individual effort, both physical and mental, much more labour cost, more risk and uncertainty, difficulties in supervision and many other costs all of which may lead to their abandoning farming enterprise and this is precisely what has happened with greater urbanization and education in our State.
- Our huge livestock population is not something to be eulogized as much of it is unproductive or less productive, weak, suffering from malnutrition (we have, presently, managed to be acute shortage of feed/fodder), unorganized, uncompetitive thus drains limited fodder and feed resources and wastes other investment efforts in livestock sector.
- We could but don’t produce most of our requirement of vaccines, day old chicks, feed/fodder and certain drugs locally.
- The scope for dairy goat and dairy sheep is far from being even seriously considered for exploration.
- Although an average vet helps to contribute to/save more than Rs 5 lacs/month when we factor in major figures in terms of A.Is done, diseases prevented/ treated, value of extension work, role in sustaining hundreds of small enterprises constituted by few animals, continued production increase (we have done phenomenal increase – around 80 fold increase in mutton production and 17 fold increase in wool production in last six decades. Compared to local breeds increase of only 5kg milk/cow in a population of say one million cows means 50 crore daily and billions a year) and investment attracted, he/she is struggling to get a job! We are sitting on a goldmine and yet starve ourselves for want of will to employ workers to mine!
- Almost every sector in livestock development from formulating long term objectives, working on local breeds and strains, reorganizing livestock sector to eliminate leakages, working on local problems afflicting development departments, importing new breeds, processing livestock byproducts, targeting increasing needs due to expansion of population and purchasing power, taking care of such challenges as global warming and emerging diseases and huge public health issues requires research inputs that a university provides and, no wonder, we have shortfalls in all these areas losing jobs and failing to prevent capital flight.
- Unlike some developed nations relying significantly on livestock rearing, livestock education doesn’t figure in any meaningful or target oriented way in curriculum at primary and secondary level implying general apathy of our education and human resource management system.
All these points show how careless, ignorant and impotent we have been post-1947 in one of the sectors that all agree has an important role in economy. Other sectors I leave to subject experts to analyze in depth. The question is: shouldn’t we resist the downward march to perdition or watch the ship sinking and prepare for mourning? What does our CM think about all this? Or she is already worried, taking stock of situation and doing something. I hope the way education has been let go down the drain would be avoided.
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