Social and
Economic transformation of Northern Areas,
The Muslim dated December 21, 1997
By Syed Shams ud
Din
The Northern
Areas spreading over an area 72,496 sq km constitute a territory which is
unparallel due to its unique geographical composition and immense natural
beauty that has all along been a source of unabated attraction the world over.
Leaving its touristic significance aside, the area has a great potential in
terms of its untapped mineral wealth and immense glacial network which serves
as veritable life-vein to the rest of the country.
Its
geostrategic importance redoubled with the construction of the Kakoram Highway
(KKH), linking Pakistan and China via Khunjerab Pass. The KKH will also serve
the Central Asian Republics (CARs) as is evident from the agreement between
Kazakhstan, Kirghizstan, China and Pakistan in early 1995 regarding transit
trade which if implemented, will surely turn these areas as a hub of activity
in commercial context. The population of the Northern Areas is around 2.5 millions;
the mainstay of the population has all along been the scant agricultural
activity while acreage under it has always been quite negligible mainly due to
innumerable geographical barriers vis a vis the non-existence of the direly
needed modern technology specially on ‘Mountain Farming’.
In such a
scenario, intensive efforts have so far proved quite unfructuous as a
consequence of which bare subsistence of the entire populace is now squarely
hinged on the importation of most of the food-grain from down country. Prior to
opening of these areas to the outside world via effective means of
transport-communication, the people would remain contented with the scant
indigenous agricultural produce as the population then was quite contained
vis-Ã -vis the resources available.
What has
primarily plagued the agro-economy in the region at present is all ascribable
to the lack of innovativeness vis-Ã -vis the exploding population which has, by
the time, alarmingly acquired nightmarish dimension. The primitive agricultural
economy in the aftermath of unabated toiling underway, miserably fails to yield
tangible results to cope with the growing needs in the current economic
scenario persisting in the region.
There is dire
need of an instantaneous switch over from the primitive to the modern ‘mountain-farming
techniques’ especially on the foot-steps of the neighboring China where they
have successfully brought about miraculous change in the context of
‘mountain-farming’ in mountainous regions lying at altitudes like ours, on the
other side of the border, as has recently been disclosed by an Urdu daily
relating to Dr Shaheena Hafeez Malik – a well-known scientist of
mountain-farming.
The situation
persisting in the Northern Areas at the moment is such that almost all the
consumable items are being imported to cater to the growing needs of the people
here. Hence agricultural economy in this region remains subject to a constant
stagnation mainly because of the fact that the pace of bringing more land under
acreage in keeping with the population growth has quite dismally been never
afoot in juxtaposition with the erstwhile agricultural land within the
available arable pockets of valleys that has become ruthlessly decimated due to
exploding population by virtue of which the superfluous populace is constrained
to insinuate its way onto the farmland for erection of commodious shelters and
this thrust virtually shrank the much needed agrarian activity.
Under such
appalling state, there the need of a crash programme to be undertaken, to find
ways and means with the use of modern technology to irrigate more land to cope
with the growing needs of the people.
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