Experts call for agro-based industries

LAHORE: For the rural population dependent on agriculture, one consequence of high fertility is increasingly smaller average farm sizes, as family land assets become further divided. Inability to find alternate sources of income is making them desperate.
Experts say there is a need to motivate youngsters who cannot pull on farm incomes, or they can drift away from peaceful activities. The state should provide them hope by establishing agro-based industries in their backyard.
“Understanding what leads rural Pakistanis to aspire or fail to aspire is especially important given that Pakistan has an extremely young population that will need to find employment in the coming years,” said Social Worker Dr Kishwar Dhingra. She said a quarter of Pakistan’s population is under the age of 10, and 59 percent under the age of 25. It also has the world’s fifth-largest population of 15-25 year olds, she added. “This problem is especially acute among the poor; in rural areas, the poorest per capita expenditure quintile has 4.0 children under the age of 15, whereas the richest has 1.2 children,” she revealed. As Pakistan’s working-age population grows, it is vitally important to understand what drives individuals to aspire to improve their outcomes and to invest in their future, she said.
Dr Dhingra said Individual decision-making is constrained by at least three factors; lack of information, cognitive limitations, and limited time to make decisions. A decision-maker consequently searches until a satisfactory (rather than optimal) solution is found, she said. This process she added is guided by aspirations. “Individuals with a high aspirations level may be more likely to make costly but rewarding investments,” she said.
The aspirations of Pakistanis are also at an especially critical juncture given the country’s deteriorating security situation, and the two major floods in the last 5 years, she said. “In 2010 alone, floods in Pakistan affected 20 million people, destroying an estimated crop value of 1 billion US dollars,” she pointed out. Pakistanis generally lack basic necessities such as education, health, security, mobility, and access to information which adds to their woes.
Without these basic information tools, aspiration levels are exceptionally low, deepening poverty and triggering a vicious cycle that further reduces aspiration levels.
Poverty expert Mehmood Mirza said aspirations may relate to income, wealth, educational attainment, social status, or any other area one considers important. When an individual’s aspirations are high relative to the average level in his district, his aspiration level is considered to be high, he said. Conversely, when an individual’s aspirations are low relative to the average level in his district, his aspiration level is considered to be low. He said it is essential for policy makers to understand what leads to high or low aspirations among the poor, as well as cognitive biases. This would help determine an effective, pro-poor policy.
“Our farmers lack ambition, which is the distance between what an individual might aspire to and the conditions he/she currently finds him/herself in,” said progressive farmer Hamid Malhi. He said a rural inhabitant can aspire to any level of achievement, ranging from absolute complacency with the status quo to limitless ambition to achieve something greater.
Experts say that the aspirations gap plays an important role in driving future-oriented behaviour, such as costly investments aimed at raising future standards of living. They said it is critically important to understand what policies lower aspirations, raise aspirations, and which can ensure that aspiration levels remain high.
However they pointed out that failures occur when individuals do not proactively invest to improve their situation. Such failures they warn may manifest themselves in fatalism– a belief that one’s destiny is preordained and beyond one’s control.