Rehabilitation needs
Saturday, 30 Oct, 2010
THREE months after the Indus burst its banks and sent torrents raging across the country, the situation for flood victims remains critical. This was highlighted in a statement of the international aid agency Oxfam on Friday. The charity says funds are drying up, affecting the reconstruction effort. The challenges are daunting and need to be reiterated so that neither the government nor society becomes apathetic to the magnitude of the disaster. The spectre of disease looms large while sizeable areas, especially in Sindh, remain under water. Estimates of how long it will take for waterlogged areas to dry up range from three to six months. The UN’s message, echoing that of Oxfam, is equally clear: more money is required.
Yet it is not all doom and gloom. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation has started distributing wheat seeds so that farmers can sow the crop for the next harvest. The government also plans to allot one million residential plots to flood-affected persons in eight cities to help them begin life anew, the Sindh government’s coordinator for relief told a seminar on Thursday. Though this is a positive step, the challenge for the government will be to implement this scheme in a judicious, transparent manner. Also, as was pointed out at the same seminar, the floodwater needs to be drained in a planned, technical manner, not as per the whims of ‘influential’ people. There are reports regarding the misuse of Watan cards. Apparently some elements are exploiting the flood victims by buying the cards from them at a nominal price. The fraudsters make a profit, but the victims are deprived of greater government assistance. Nadra needs to crack down on this so that only deserving people are issued the cards, while the government must tell the victims that by selling their cards to cheats they are actually being short-changed. Flood survivors have also claimed that health department officials are selling medicines meant for them. These allegations need to be investigated.
The UN has called upon the government to ensure that minorities, women, the disabled and other vulnerable segments of society are not further victimised by being discriminated against in the relief effort. The state must ensure that rehabilitation is a non-discriminatory affair and that everyone has equal access to help. Overall, the flood victims cannot be forgotten as other crises — contrived or otherwise — begin to dominate the headlines. Both the government and the international community need to sustain the effort, the former through seamless, effective management and the latter through extending technical, material and financial support.
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Agricultural income tax
Saturday, 30 Oct, 2010
IT may be called the Reform Committee Group — a group of experts brought together at the federal level to address Pakistan’s woeful tax-to-GDP ratio — but it appears reform isn’t even on its agenda. According to a report in this newspaper yesterday, the RCG’s mandate has been limited to plugging loopholes in the existing tax structure, leaving the issue of a tax on agricultural income off the table altogether. Once again, the powerful landed lobby has prevailed in the corridors of power. Landowners put forward all manner of excuses for why they should be kept out of the income-tax net, arguing that they are already indirectly taxed, poor farmers will not be able to bear the burden, etc. But those are weak excuses. Just like salaried and self-employed individuals in urban areas are exempt from paying income tax below a certain threshold income, the same should be done to accommodate poor farmers.
It is far more revealing to debate the facts agriculturalists and big landowners tend to avoid mentioning. Agriculture accounts for nearly a quarter of Pakistan’s GDP, but only one per cent of its tax revenues. Farmers enjoy all manner of subsidised inputs — paid for by other taxpayers — from fertiliser to seeds to electricity. They can avail themselves of low-interest loans and enjoy guaranteed prices on their products in the form of support prices. In truth, hundreds of billions of rupees are transferred from the urban to the rural sector each year — much of it ending up in the pockets of big and powerful landowners. Anecdotal evidence alone demonstrates the capacity for the agricultural sector to pay income tax. Around the time lucrative cash crops are harvested each season, the demand for motor vehicles spikes, with Corollas and Civics disappearing from showrooms across the country. In the cities and towns of Punjab and in Karachi, multi-million rupee homes are maintained throughout the year, the ‘poor’ owners only turning up for a few weeks of rest and recreation. The regressive and skewed tax system in this country is unjust, immoral and must be changed. Agricultural income must be brought properly within the tax net.
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Mere lip-service
Saturday, 30 Oct, 2010
GOVERNMENTS in Pakistan have proved better at paying tributes to cultural representatives than making a determined effort to provide help where it is most needed. Year after year we witness the handing out of the Pride of Performance Award to citizens who have achieved stature in, amongst other fields, music, acting, composing, singing, filmmaking, directing and a host of branches of the performing arts. Though this is well-deserved recognition of their achievements, we also witness year after year the falling standards of life of these artists. Formerly iconoclastic figures, when old, are left to fend for themselves; their awards are reminders that their country and fellow citizens have short, treacherous memories. Rarely, if ever, do governments institutionalise any means to provide meaningful support to these artists; support that could come in the form of medical cover, aid to the mourning families of dead cultural heroes or the building of institutions that would promote and bolster their art and provide jobs for the skilled and opportunities of learning for the unskilled. Little is ever done for them in concrete terms.
It was precisely this lack of concern to which veteran comedian Safirullah Lehri referred obliquely the other day at the Karachi Press Club. An actor who enjoys near legendary status in Pakistan’s film history, the extent to which Lehri has been helped in his old age is restricted to charity, such as a minister’s promise of Rs50,000. This was well-meaning, no doubt, but what is needed is an institutionalised form of help for the country’s cultural legends, so that these fields do not eventually die out. There are many other such artists, fondly remembered but left in old age to their own devices which, given the earnings in these fields, are poor across the board. The state of Pakistan has in this context been unforgivably uncaring.