Allow me to share what I saw last week which was, by the way, nothing unusual. But it’s worth reporting. I drove first to Sahiwal. The city built in the late 19th century during the colonial era is about 162-km from Lahore situated right in the middle of Multan and Lahore. Less than 20-km ahead of it lies in the dust of time Harappa, the cradle of subcontinental civilisation. Due to our love of history Harappa is now little more than ruined ruins.

When you leave Lahore you expect to enjoy country landscape, free of pollution and congestion. Agricultural land on both sides of the road is fertile which is comparatively virgin because it was mostly brought under cultivation in the early 20th century after the establishment of what is called canal colony with its huge and intricate canal network. So you expect to see trees and crops with their myriad hues. But instead you see shanties all along the road which block your view. You realise that you are forced to drive through a strip of slums spread over hundreds of miles. You see and smell nothing but dirt and filth. You are relieved to see the landscape interspersed with the weird looking gates of newly proposed residential colonies along the road but then realise that they are like an Albatross around its long neck.

Fertile land which had traditionally made Punjab the granary of the subcontinent is being recklessly converted into colonies with funnily fancy and thinly concealed deceptive names such as ‘garden’ ‘royal’ and ‘imperial’, for example. Nothing will grow in these big parcels of agricultural land for all times to come. Even in the villages - I visited two different villages in Sahiwal - in the vicinity of towns and cities you are horrified to see ugly gates of newly planned colonies most of which are only partially occupied.

The numbers of trees in the fields that traditionally surrounded the villages have not only dwindled but have almost disappeared because our new agro experts have advised the growers and farmers that trees could adversely affect the growth of their crops with their shadows, and the spaces they occupy would remain unutilised. The phenomenon is not confined to a particular place. It’s rather pervasive.

The next day I left Sahiwal for Bahawalnagar via Arifwala. The road distance is about 88-km. The road is awful but that’s not what we are discussing at the moment. A similar kind of emerging landscape stares you in the face; slums along the road, piles of filth and land for sale for residential purposes. Looking at weirdly spelt names of the proposed residential areas, you get the biggest laugh of the day.

Population increase, sale of agricultural land for residential colonies and filth are interconnected in an intimate manner. The state driven by its ill-conceived ideological imperatives has not only discouraged family planning but has, on the contrary, encouraged the clergy to preach their sermons on the myth of numbers of the faithful instead of their quality.

The ruling classes, in fact, smugly smile at this development as it provides them with an unending source of dirt cheap labour. So much so that even a middle class household can afford to hire two to three servants. What happens to the servants is an altogether different story that needs to be told separately. Increased heads need greater number of roofs to survive.

Consequently housing needs swell exponentially. The end result is that demand for land continues to increase that sends property prices sky-rocketing. So the temptation for small and big landowners is to sell the land to make big bucks and get rid of perennial hassles of farming.

Another factor that is making the agricultural community disenchanted with farming is its non-profitability that is fast becoming a norm due to complete lack of governmental action in evolving policies which can make it a viable option. Now we are in a double bind; we have fast growing population and dwindling agricultural land. Highly priced agricultural machinery, low quality seeds, spurious sprays, adulterated pesticides and high electricity tariff make the farmer’s profession miserable. Add to this the government controlled low prices of the yields and exploitation of the farmers by ‘Arhti (market agents)’.

Highly priced inputs and low-priced output make agriculture absolutely unenviable. And all this has been happening under the very nose of successive governments, elected and non-elected. If you have increased population you are bound to have many more houses, shops, shopping malls, offices and commercial areas.

In the absence of elected local governments - provincial elected governments are not willing to share resources and authority with elected local bodies - and dysfunctional government departments things have become horribly unmanageable. They cannot even transport garbage to the skips. Hence roads become garbage depots.

In a nutshell, we are having more and more mouths day and night. Thus the signs of us procreating more but producing less are unmistakable. Only our power-centred scurrilous ruling clique is blind to the portents of a disaster that looms large.

Since population increase, sale of agricultural land for residential colonies and filth are organically linked, you cannot solve the one without solving the others. What is urgently needed is an integrated approach to salvage the situation fraught with self-created problems that would prove deadly. Or perhaps our ruling clique has learnt the art of building new houses ad infinitum on the ground, raising crops in the air and making stones eatable.

As to the filth, one can learn to live with it, they think. Perhaps we are now similar to the people poet Bertolt Brecht had seen in the aftermath of the World War1:”…But at evening I looked up and saw them / Sitting on the wall eating / And what they were eating was stones / And I saw they had cleverly/ Learned to eat a new kind of food/ Just in time.” — soofi01@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn, March 11th, 2024