Covid-19 an Opportunity for Pakistan

 

You might think that I am some sort of sick capitalist who is looking for opportunity in a pandemic, trust me I am not. If fact I am not a fan of capitalism either. So spare five minutes to go through what I have to say. We in Pakistan are at a unique sweet spot regarding industrialization. Fortunately we have not industrialized and automated to the scale and level as in the western world and that provides us an opportunity not available to the western world. Let me give you a few examples to illustrate my point.

When Covid-19 hit America “As many as one in 12 cases of Covid-19 in the early stage of the pandemic in the U.S. can be tied to outbreaks at meatpacking plants and subsequent spread in surrounding communities, according to a study.” (https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2020/11/27/591963.htm ) As a consequence several meat processing plants were closed. These closures meant customers did not get the meat and workers lost wages. We in Pakistan did not have this problem because overwhelming part of our meat processing is done by traditional skilled butchers. They continued doing their work, which meant they did not become an economic liability and people got the meat they wanted.

Similarly BBC reported that in UK “Some dairy farmers are having to throw away thousands of litres of fresh milk due to disruption to the supply chain caused by coronavirus. There is concern that some dairy farms may go out of a business, which could result in a milk shortage when demand returns after the pandemic.” ( https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-52205163 ) We in Pakistan did not have this problem because a large portion of our supply chain still consists of milkmen (gawalas). They kept on delivering milk even during lockdowns.

The major cause of diabetes is white sugar produced in sugar mills. We still have people in our villages that have the skill to produce “gur”. Look at the benefits of locally produced “gur” as compared to white sugar produced in sugar mills. From health point of view “gur” is far better than white sugar. The “gur” makers work as a family and as such the knowledge of “gur” making gets transferred and social bonds are strengthened. They use the sugarcane they grow and sell the finished product directly. Now look at the sugar mill side. The sugar mill owners generally exploit small farmers by keeping them waiting in lines for several days, pay them late. Apart from some technically specialized posts most of the labour they employee require little or no skill. Workers live in poor conditions far from their families. One can easily imagine the social ramification of this.

I am not against industry. In fact I think industry is extremely important for us and without it we will be always in a blackmail situation. Without it we cannot have a robust defence, cannot provide medicine to our people etc. But we have to be careful as to what industry is really essential, what is not, and what we should actually discourage. I would dare say that most of the food processing industry should be discouraged. We should try to get as close to the food source as much as we can, with as little processing and packing as we can. Look at the amount of money and packing material that is involved in a typically home delivered burger or pizza or you name it. Instead of teaching our next generation how to prepare their own meal ( I know in cities we cannot grow our own food ) we are training them how to be even more dependent on the capitalist food processing corporations. We should discourage this trend and raise awareness by discussing different angles of why it is bad.