Land Ceiling... ours has not yet begun!

India is eyeing at the second dose of land ceiling at 18 acres per head.

Having reaped a rich harvest of the first land ceiling immediately after independence India thinks it is time to go for a second ceiling that will furthere release land from the hands of the land owners who may or may not be tilling it. Read Dawn:

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/columnists/kuldip-nayar-can-drought-bring-us-closer-589 Excerpt:

"Steps to grow more food are linked with the land. Farmers have to be motivated to put in their best. India introduced some land reforms nearly five decades ago. It needs another dose to reduce the highest holding of 18 acres per individual so that land is available to the landless.

Pakistan continues to be a feudal society where both President Asif Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Gilani possess hundreds of acres of land. Once I asked a leading landlord in Sindh if he knew how much land he owned. He was frank enough to admit that he had no idea but took pride that two railway stations were located on it.

Bangladesh may not have big zamindars. Still the inequality in holdings is too glaring to be ignored."

To be continued.

If you live by the sword you die by the sword...

Revenge politics has got you nowhere Mian Saheb... Stop living in the past... understand the new ground realities and don't be fooled any more...
It is high time you realised Mian Saheb that Allah does not like revenge. He says all the time "forgive as I forgive you". My father had issued an Eid Card once and sent to every body saying - Make forgiveness your creed.

The only constant in this world is change. So times change things change. One should realise that. Grasp the new realities. You were so transfixed on what Musharraf did to you in October 1999 that you could not grow beyond it and comprehend the new realities and opportunities to take advantage. Instead of doing something good for the country which you are fully capable of, you were stuck on revenge with Musharraf.

The result was Mr. Zardari took full advantage of you. He literally fooled you as is the universal perception. He got every thing and you got nothing. And now he has got your government dismissed. That was the height. Even now Mian Saheb, millions love you, try to understand the situation. The president is way too smart for you. I strongly urge you to play real politics, not revenge politics if not it will hurt you and your party more and more.

First forget and forgive then see The Pakistan situation in new light. There is a lot you can do. A lot. You must have new agendas. This judiciary thing is fine. Judiciary must be free and without judicial activism but you must have other important issues too Mian Saheb. Like what? Read on this blog I have written earlier, something on economy and let me briefly repeat here.

You have public appeal so do things for the public. One thing you must do is release the people of Pakistan from the yolk of the landlords and sardars. One way to do is to bring land ceiling. You see land is limited and people unlimited. Let there be more ownership of land. More people should be owning land than few. That gives self employment opportunity to more people. More people become affluent than few. With their new found wealth they want things. Don't import. Make them locally and give them. You set in an industrial revolution.

I propose no more than 60 acres per person including no more than 15 acres of irrigated land if under a canal. Under a dam more people should have access to water than few after all it is the nations wealth that is being used to build a dam. So why should only a few benefit from a mega project? Maximum number of people must avail of the facility that will also ensure better productivity. Mian Saheb campaign for it. You will sweep the polls from Kashmir to Sindh.

Mian Saheb campaign for making the economy a manufacturing one unlike the trading one the banker Shaukat Aziz made it. Make policies such that people are encouraged to manufacture and market it nationally and internationally. Give free land outside towns with roads, electricity and water and some export incentives then see how the economy booms. We may have to bring labour from abroad like in Saudi Arabia (but without their terrible laws of course).

Campaign for conservation of foreign exchange and import substitution. Give a few years of this dose, Pakistan will be the most prosperous country in the world. Then don't be selfish help others in need. Muslims all over the world need our leadership. You can then provide it and help them in so many different ways.

We want Heroes not Villains please...

Choice between Villains...
Is it our destiny that we can only choose from a list of proven villains, each twice failed. Do we not deserve heroes? Or is it too much to expect? Perhaps. Where are the heroes? Who I consider as heroes is not the hero for others. There is only one undisputed hero and that is Mr. Jinnah. Every single leader after that is tainted one way or the other.

For me Ayub was a hero, probably he was the first Pakistani leader I heard about when growing up. I sort of liked him. But you talk to people they disagree. He is accused of derailing democracy and destroying the then existing institutions.

I even attended the funeral prayers of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. But no one agrees that he is a hero. He is accused of autocracy, arrogance, vendetta, lack of vision and above all integrity. For me his biggest blunder was nationalisation of industries that crippled the economy and stunted growth. He made many industries no more viable and Pakistan lost the world export market by overnight becoming uncompetitive. He is also blamed for dismembering the country into two.

Every thing that Zia did, I wonder if he did anything besides Umras, is over shadowed by his military credentials. It is a long story what he did and didn't.

However I can't recall any thing big he did on the domestic front in Pakistan. He may have had some successes on the international arena. His Kashmir policy was a failure so was Khalistan policy after initial successes. His crowning glory is the success achieved in ousting a super power in Afghanistan. But that did not help Pakistan but we fought a proxy war for another super power that has never been nor can ever be our reliable partner.

But the price we paid for America and Afghanistan is so great that for the next 50 years we are stuck with it. The Kalashnikov Culture. So Zia is most certainly ruled out also as a hero. I would have liked to call him a hero for his humility and his histrionic talents.

But one thing is clear in my mind and that is the regimes of Benazir, (now called moothorama by media) and Nawaz Sharif. My, what periods. Truely tumultuous for its incompetence and rampant corruption. They competed against each other in loot and plunder. If one was the patron of a 10%, later cent per cent, the other was a looter par excellence. Remember his "dollar bhijao and mulk bachao".

God alone knows where all that money went. The country went bankrupt in Nawaz's time and was about to be declared a default state. In moothorama's time her husband is on record as having said "things are good today, only 50 died." This is the state of our elected so called democratic leaders. Heroes? Where are they? Villains. Villains. Villains.

Don't we have a third choice? So far none, because whatever development Pervez Musharraf might have done is disregarded because he hails from the military. He is a very strong contender though from what he has achieved on the domestic front. An assembly completing it's full term is an achievement in itself. There has been development all over Pakistan even in remote towns and villages.

My driver who hails from a remote town in Punjab says they could never have imagined, roads and drainage there and he attributes that to the present people at helm and prays for Pervez Musharraf. People have benefited. The prosperity is visible. Mega projects have been completed in record time and the work goes on. If his policies reach there logical conclusion the country will benefit enormously. History will then judge if he was a hero.

There surely are the down sides like inflation that went uncontrolled. He did not introduce any measures to remove feudalism. He failed miserably to understand the Indian psyche in solving the Kashmir problem and did not even take advantage of 9/11 in solving the same issue. He did the dirty job that America should have done for itself. Why should we have been involved in problems which Arabs create for themselves by being inactive for past 100 years. Why should we pay for their follies when they do not even consider you as Muslims.

But what ever he may do he will never be accepted as a hero publicly although in heart of hearts of poor people he could possibly be a hero. So let us leave at that.

I have not the faintest idea how we could have a hero as a leader. I am clueless for the time being. If you have some ideas how we can have a hero as our leader please post it here.