“ONLY three out of 20 aircraft owned by the plant protection department are operational, a meeting of the National Assembly Standing Committee on Food Security and Research was informed on Wednesday … the remaining 17 aircraft, which were used for conducting aerial spray to control locust attacks on crops, were not operational due to shortage of funds.” Trust these rural folks to play the spoiler every now and then. We travel on the solid roads that have been built, the flyovers that have come up in urban Pakistan, we imagine the airports that are in the making and the chimneys which are about to billow smoke, and then we suddenly veer in the opposite direction. Just when everyone in the visibility zone is busy chasing their urban dream there is a 200-word news item from somewhere deep inside the country brutally updating us about who we actually are and where our roots are. We are reminded of the budget speech the last year, the year before that, in fact, during all these years.

This is an agricultural country that we are living in and off. There are fields — and ‘hands’ that work these fields — which lie mostly concealed thanks to the urban model of development and urban concerns which are but to be protected. If the news item about the absence of aircraft — only three available where 20 were previously assigned — for aerial spray is taken as a barometer, the country is meeting only 15pc of the commitment it made to rural Pakistan. The standing committee on food security and research ‘recommended’ to the government that required funding should be provided for the upgrading and maintenance of the spray planes. A close watch has to be kept for signs of the government’s will to actually intervene on behalf of rural Pakistan wherever it is necessary. Let’s see if the committee has some real purpose or is just another forum to create the impression that the government cares.