Govt must focus on rural development for sustainable growth

LAHORE: Pakistan’s labour market is going through five transitions from farm to non-farm, rural to urban, unorganised to organised, subsistence self-employment to decent wage employment, and schools to diversified avenues of job creation.

Nearly 40 percent of the country’s labour force is currently attached with agriculture. Employment in agriculture has reached saturation.

Additional workforce that enters the job market from farming families would have to look for nonfarm jobs. These job seekers are in millions as 65 percent or 133 million of our population lives in rural areas. Out of the four million youth that enter the labour market, 2.6 million are from the countryside.

The planners would have to focus on speedy rural development to facilitate creation of nonfarm jobs in these regions to ensure equitable and sustained growth. With proper planning, it is possible to create new jobs in rural regions, as infrastructure development has improved the links between semi-rural towns and villages. This has brought down isolation.

The state would have to facilitate the entrepreneurs in establishing agro-based industries in the rural areas where the raw material would also be available. By patronising food processing industries in the countryside government would also be promoting high-value agriculture.

Many fruit orchids would be established by small farmers when they are assured of selling the produce to the rural food processing industries. The government must make a paradigm shift in its development priorities by giving more importance to rural development where majority of the Pakistanis live.

Creating rural nonfarm employment is also essential to prevent the influx of rural job seekers in the big cities. Many large cities are becoming unmanageable because they are unable to provide sanitation and other civic facilities to the bulk of immigrants.

The state should create opportunities through incentives for setting up industrial zones particularly for agro-based industries in rural areas. The only long-term solution is to make rural areas a better habitat for job creation.

Sustainable long-term solutions lie in an integrated approach to education, employability and employment - that will arise from the reform of current regimes in infrastructure, education, skill development and labour laws.

It is high time that government earmarks substantially more resources for rural regions that would create new markets. This would also induce the private sector to exploit the potential of these newly created markets.

If the government succeeds in eradicating rural poverty mainly by creating nonfarm jobs, then 65 percent of Pakistanis who reside in small towns and villages will have more money in their pockets and spend more on consuming value-added products.

This strategy if adopted would boost consumption. Increased consumption in rural Pakistan will create new jobs required for providing value-added products and services.

The key in this regard would be the level of governance. Besides transparency the additional resources should be accompanied with new innovative thinking and a clear plan for ensuring that the ambitious spending plan of the government delivers growth. The planners would have to take into account behavioural economics on how rural spending by the government can be productively used by rural consumers to enhance their quality of life.

The planners would have to realise that the weight of poverty falls most heavily on women in rural areas who have a very low level of education and who are subject to a multitude of cultural and other social constraints. Women are vital contributors to the economic survival of poor households and family reliance on women's earnings increases with the extent of poverty.