Optimum Resource Utilization in Pakistan’s Agriculture

Despite the great promise that increased industrialization has held for rapid growth and labour absorption in the developing countries, industrialization has produced no such results in many of the LDCs. And, yet, the agriculture sector has generally been relegated to a secondary place in the economic plans of these countries. Pakistan provides an interesting example of one of these developing countries where industrialization and development were considered synonymous at one time and economic policies were geared to bringing about rapid industrialization. However, at the commencement of the Sixth Five-Year Plan, Pakistan had achieved an annual growth rate of about 4 percent over the 1955-82 period, yielding a paltry one-percent increase in per capita income, a gain not worth cheering about. What went wrong? Were the policies ill-conceived? Was rapid industrialization really the same as development? Was the promise illusory? These and similar other questions are generally asked. But one is hard put to come up with satisfactory answers, even though there is no dearth of answers.