The government of Punjab has announced a housing scheme for provincial government employees. Details of the scheme are yet to be finalized but the information so far available suggests that it would be for middle and lower level government servants.
They comprise a neglected segment of the public sector employees and the provincial government’s intention is to be lauded, more so because other public servants, both civil and military, have been well looked after in this area, particularly senior level officials.
Indeed they have been given lands to a scandalous extent. Many officials, granted land for building houses in more than one city have become a major source of sustaining a booming real estate business.
The Punjab administration aims at providing land for this purpose in 34 districts of the province. This is as it should be: firstly, housing facilities in every district would be instrumental in eliminating, at least reducing further pressure on major centres that are already bursting at the seams and secondly, most people like to spend their retirement years in the city of their birth or in a place close by.
There however is a negative wheel in this otherwise attractive looking and welcome wheel.
Besides generous distribution of land among civilian officials and colonies for military personnel coming up in leading urban centres all the time, real estate barons have extended their business across the province on mainly fertile lands that were under cultivation and producing crops.
Provincial capital, Lahore, for instance has grown in all directions and for miles outside the city, housing colonies have been established on fields that once supplied fresh vegetable to the locals.
Government organizations assigned the development of urban centres have acted more like real estate agencies that bought land from farmers, converted it into housing schemes and development departments used residential plots carved out of agriculture fields for patronizing influential individuals close to the leadership and decision making officials.
Ruling politicians and bureaucrats obviously got the best slices of the cake.
Many such residential plots quickly found customers in the open market, the allotted persons making a quick buck as the land was sold to them at throwaway rates, the arrangement containing room for fat profits overnight.
There has never been a dearth of buyers because a queue of people wanting to change the colour of their money and invest in a safe outlet is always around.
Taking a cue from the government’s policy and style- not that they lack initiative or will to cash a situation, real estate barons entered the scene with fanfare, serving and exploiting the affluent citizen’s sense of superiority and their wish to stay away from the wretched of the society.
They came up with attractive, pollution free, green and fortified exclusive housing colonies that eliminated the remotest possibility of any lower class rif-raff neighborhood. Housing schemes and grandiose industrial estates, admittedly the later on a restricted scale in comparison with the former, have mercilessly devoured fertile agriculture land. Almost every major urban centre has gone through an explosion of expansion.
Large tracts of agricultural land surrendered to the real estate sector as it offered beleaguered farmers brief though illusionary relief.
In the process, many fertile fields were replaced by residential colonies; the rake-off of agriculture sector in the name of housing continues unchecked.
This is criminal in a country whose economy is based on agriculture, indeed where agriculture is regarded as backbone of the economy and where the industrial sector draws its major raw material from farming sector and the country earns over 60 percent of its foreign exchange through export of agric and rural based resources in the form of crops, finished products from crops or livestock.
Let us look at some of the big urban centres of Punjab. Multan, Bahwalpur and Rahim Yar Khan are cotton territory. All the three cities have grown in size; many fields have given in to construction business. In Multan, even trees in some mango orchards have been felled to create space for residential areas.
Lahore and Faisalabad grow wheat. These cities have expanded manifold over the years. Indeed in some areas, the traditional rural urban distinction has been obliterated by one huge urban complex comprising houses where cash and vegetable crops were raised.
Besides undermining the growth of the agriculture sector, this trend has been instrumental in raising prices of some produce, most notably of vegetables.
The agriculture sector has managed to produce more but this has been done by bringing more land under cultivation. However, if the land now used by housing and factories was still available for agriculture, the picture would have been different and more comforting instead of creating question marks and triggering speculations about the size of every crop and making food security a difficult proposition.
On the one hand, agriculture fields are being converted in to real estate and on the other the population of the country is increasing.
This intensifies pressure for producing more to meet the continuously rising food requirements of the populace and avoid food imports to meet domestic ends. This is not to ignore the fact that shelter is a basic right of the people and as urgent and as important in nature as food. Middle and low-level officials have had a bad deal so far.
The Punjab government has come up with a plan that meets the concerns of a deprived segment of the populace; hopefully it will be worked out in detail and implemented. However, it is essential to ensure that agriculture land is not devastated in the process.
Firstly, the government should do some stocktaking and identify how much agriculture land has already been converted for non-agriculture use.
Punjab Board of Revenue has not followed this development at all, let alone closely. The practice should be stopped herewith. Mushroom growth of housing colonies, be they military, civil or real estate developer’s schemes, should be disallowed on land under crops.
One believes that a lot of land has already been purchased by developers but it is still cultivated because real estate sector is waiting for price hike of residential land in areas close to urban centres.
Boundary walls have been constructed to separate such fields. An effort should be made to retrieve these lands that are mostly very productive.
A policy should be devised for promoting apartment living in Punjab. The local people, who prefer houses build on land rather than in the air should be educated about the importance of agriculture for the nation and persuaded that they should, in their own interest, try to change their lifestyle as far as housing is concerned.
The government should also concentrate on ensuring smooth and continuous availability of services like water and electricity, among others, in apartments. It is the availability of such basic facilities on affordable rates and their reliable supply that can convert people to the idea of living in apartments.
An effort should be made to develop housing in areas that are not the most productive land with regard to agriculture. Fertile land should be protected from housing and industries at all costs.
