Planning, agriculture and industry

Pakistan Affairs · Economy and development. The idea in plain words, the rules to remember, the mistake to avoid and a worked example, written and checked by Mega Lecture.

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The idea

Pakistan began with very little industry, so the state planned development. Five-year plans set targets, and the 1960s under Ayub Khan became the Decade of Development: fast industrial growth and the Green Revolution in farming. Critics said the gains went to a few, the point of Mahbub ul Haq's remark about twenty-two families. Z. A. Bhutto's government then turned the other way and practised nationalisation of major industries and banks between 1972 and 1976.

Agriculture is still the base of the economy. It provides food, employs over a third of workers and supplies cotton to textiles, the largest industry and the main export. Farming depends on irrigation from the Indus river system.

Rules to remember

First Five-Year Plan: 1955-60. Second: 1960-65. Third: 1965-70.
Pakistan Industrial Development Corporation (PIDC), 1952: set up industries that private investors would not enter.
Green Revolution (1960s): high-yielding wheat and rice varieties, chemical fertiliser and tubewells.
Land reforms of 1959 (Ayub Khan) and 1972 (Z. A. Bhutto) put ceilings on individual landholdings.
Rabi (winter) crops: wheat, gram, barley. Kharif (summer) crops: cotton, rice, sugarcane, maize.
Wheat is the staple food crop; cotton is the main cash crop; sugarcane is the main source of sugar.
Pakistan Steel Mills, Karachi, was built with the help of the Soviet Union.

Common mistake

Rabi and kharif are often reversed. Rabi crops are sown in winter and harvested in spring (wheat); kharif crops are sown in summer and harvested in autumn (cotton, rice).

Worked example

A fall in the cotton harvest is reported. Why would an examiner expect this to hurt Pakistan's export earnings as well as its farmers?

Cotton is the main cash crop and the raw material of the textile industry.
Textiles are the largest manufacturing industry and the largest source of export earnings.
Less cotton means mills must import raw cotton or produce less, so textile exports and foreign exchange earnings suffer.

Answer: Because cotton feeds the textile industry, which is Pakistan's leading export sector.

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