The Consumer Class

Our world is one of contrasts. While 1.7 billion people earn enough to be classified as members of the consumer class (users of items including televisions, telephones, and the Internet, along with the culture and ideals these products transmit), as many as 2.8 billion people including Pakistanis struggle to survive on less than $2 a day, and more than one billion lack reasonable access to safe drinking water. Yet providing adequate food, clean water, and basic education for the poorest could all be achieved for less than people spend annually on makeup, ice cream, and beverages.

Private consumption expenditures—the amount spent on goods and services at the household level—topped $20 trillion in 2000, up from $4.8 trillion in 1960. Some of this four-fold increase occurred because of population growth, but much of it was due to advancing prosperity in many parts of the globe. Production efficiencies of the 20th century have driven much of the consumption boom. Modern industrial workers now produce in a week what took their 18th century counterparts four years. In the semiconductor industry, production efficiencies helped drive the cost per megabit of computing power from roughly $20,000 in 1970 to about 2 cents in 2001. Global spending on advertising reached $446 billion in 2002, an almost nine-fold increase over 1950.

According to a survey on Consumer Spending and Population, by Region, in 2000 it is found that 5.2% of world population in United States and Canada has 31.5% share of world consumption expenditures. Out of 6.4% of world population in Western Europe has 28.7%, 32.9% in East Asia and Pacific has 21.4%, 8.5% in Latin America and the Caribbean has 8.5%, 7.9% in Eastern Europe and Central Asia has 3.3%, 22.4% in South Asia has 2.0%, 0.4% in Australia and New Zealand has1.5%, 4.1% in Middle East and North Africa has1.4%, and 10.9% Sub-Saharan Africa has1.2% share of world consumption expenditure.

The health status of women and children in Pakistan is awful—eight babies are born every minute, one mother dies every 20 minutes and about 15 of them suffer from morbidity every 20 minutes, about 50 percent women are suffering from malnutrition and anemia. Less than 20 percent of them are receiving help during delivery and about 25 percent of children are being born under weight. The vision of reproductive health in Pakistan is less costly than the amount spent on smoking.

Smoking contributes to around 5 million deaths worldwide each year. In 1999, tobacco-related medical expenditures and productivity losses cost the United States more than $150 billion—almost 1.5 times the revenue of the five largest multinational tobacco companies that year.

Time pressures are often linked to the need to work long hours to support consumption habits—and to upgrade, store, or otherwise maintain possessions.

In 2002, 1.12 billion households—about three quarters of the world's people—owned at least one television set—Pakistan had 4 million TV sets with only 2,823,800 registered. Some 41 million passengers vehicles rolled of the world's assembly lines in 2002, five times as many as in 1950. The global passenger car fleet now exceeds 531 million, growing by about 11 million vehicles annually. Consumers across the globe now spend an estimated $35 billion a year on bottled water and consumes 33 million liters (35 million quarts) a year in Pakistan.

In 1999, some 2.8 billion people—two in every five humans on the planet—lived on less than $2 a day (Pakistan falls within this category with Per Capita Income as $492). In 2000, one in five people (2 in 5 people in Pakistan) in the developing world—did not have reasonable access to safe drinking water. 2.4 billion people worldwide—two out of every five (and in Pakistan, 3.5 in every 5)—live without basic sanitation. Providing adequate food, clean water, and basic education for the world's poorest could all be achieved for less than people spend annually on makeup, ice cream, and pet beverages.

When the annual expenditure on luxury items in the world are compared with funding needed to meet selected basic needs we see that Annual Expenditure on products like makeup, perfumes, ice cream and beverages.

Consumer goods and services are often sold on the premise that they make life easier and more fulfilling. But too often, beneath the surface of these claims, lay hidden costs. Automobiles are often advertised as bringing freedom to their owners, yet in reality, the average adult urbanite now spends 50 minutes a day behind the wheel. As consumers upgrade, store, or maintain possessions, they are also likely to experience time pressures linked to the need to work long hours to support consumption habits.

If a person is very poor, there is no doubt that greater income can improve his or her life. But once the basics are secured, well being does not necessarily correlate with wealth. Most governments make ongoing growth in the gross domestic product (GDP) a leading priority, under the assumption that wealth secured is well-being delivered. Yet undue emphasis on generating wealth, particularly by encouraging heavy consumption, may be yielding disappointing returns. Overall quality of life is suffering in some of the world's richest countries as people experience greater stress and time pressures and less satisfying social relationships, and as the natural environment shows more and more signs of distress.

By redefining prosperity to emphasize a higher quality of life—rather than the mere accumulation of goods—individuals, communities, and governments can focus on delivering what people most desire. Indeed, a new understanding of the good life can be built not around wealth, but around well being: having basic needs met, along with freedom, health, security, and satisfying social roles. Asif J. Mir, Organizational Transformation

GM Food

New technologies play an increasing role in food production, and genetically modified foods (GMF) are at the forefront of the changing nature of our food culture. The promise of GMFs seems almost too good to be true. With a human population of more 6 billion, producing higher yielding foods may be more crucial than ever. Genetically modified (GM) crops are now grown in more than 16 countries. In 2002, farmers around the world planted 60 million hectares of land with dozens of varieties of GM crops. The appearance of GMFs in the marketplace of the West has resulted in a firestorm of public debate, scientific discussion, and media coverage. A variety of ecological and human health concerns come with the new advances made possible by GM.

GM is the technique of changing or inserting genes. Genes carry the instructions for all the characteristics that an organism – a living thing – inherits. They are made up of DNA. GM is done either by altering DNA or by introducing genetic material from one organism into another, which can be either a different variety of the same or a different species. For example, genes can be introduced from one plant to another plant, from a plant to an animal, or from an animal to a plant. Transferring genes between plants and animals is a particular area of controversy. Developing countries have special interests, but fairer trade rules would do more to eliminate hunger than GM crops.

GM foods offer a way to quickly improve crop characteristics such as yield, pest resistance, or herbicide tolerance, often to a degree not possible with traditional methods. Further, GM crops can be manipulated to produce completely artificial substances, from the precursors to plastics to consumable vaccines.

By manipulating the genetic code of organisms that provide food sources, they have created new strains of plants and animals capable of growing larger in less time on less suitable soil. From an ecological perspective, adding more food to a starving population promotes reproduction, exacerbating the very condition scientists are trying to solve.

The policymakers of Pakistan ought to see how GM technology can help produce more food and offer medical, social and economic benefits but without attached threats. Some of the many health advantages of GMF include the edible vaccines, which can help curb various diseases in Pakistan. Nutritionally improved crops with a higher content of proteins and vitamins can supplement the nutritional requirements of the lower strata of the population, who cannot afford a non-vegetarian diet. Pulses constitute a major source of protein in Pakistan. However, the presence of raffinose-like sugars can cause digestive problems. The genetically tailored pulses that contain reduced amounts of raffinose and similar sugars can result in enhanced digestibility. GMF that contain sweet proteins like thaumatin will be good for people with diabetes. And GMFs that have greater iron content can be especially beneficial for Pakistani women, as they are susceptible to anemia.

GM crops can result in enhanced agricultural productivity with lower inputs in terms of plant protection strategies and fertilizer applications, raise the per capita income and, hence, the living standard. Further, the availability of better quality nutrition at affordable costs can also improve the general health of the population, which in turn will raise national productivity.

Contrary to the natty payback, many leading scientists admit that GM is unpredictable, unstable, and potentially dangerous because of the consequences. GMF raises the possibility of human health, environmental, and economic problems, including unanticipated allergic responses to novel substances in foods, the spread of pest resistance or herbicide tolerance to wild plants, inadvertent toxicity to benign wildlife, and increasing control of agriculture by biotechnology corporations.
In Pakistan it will be a tragedy if the multinational corporations pushing genetically engineered crops gain control over crops and seeds. Although the corporations claim biotechnology is needed to feed the world, this is a myth. There is already more than enough food to feed everyone; poverty and inadequate allocation of resources are the major hurdles. According to a FAO report, the world can produce enough food to meet global demand in the year 2030 without the use of GM crops.
Meanwhile, organic farmers are among those most threatened by GMF. One reason is because cultivation of genetically engineered crops on neighboring farms can contaminate their crops via pollen drift. No genetically engineered materials should be used in organic products. Thus, a grower may be unable to sell his or her crop as organic if it has been contaminated
Ultimately, it is the consumer--and all Earth's inhabitants--who have the most to lose in the long run. Because little thought is being given to the consequences of what GM crops will do to the environment and to biodiversity, Earth's ecosystem could be turned upside down. There will be no way to undo the damage or recall new organisms that have been unleashed.
Large seed companies are likely to make large profits from GM crop seeds. This will be exacerbated if they make crops that produce sterile seeds, which cannot be replanted the following year. Consumers and small farmers who are forced to buy seed year after year will lose.
Pakistan needs to adopt a harmonized, uniform and transparent procedure for safety assessment of GMF. Coordinated and comprehensive labeling requirements for GMF should also be prepared with the aim of providing the consumer with a real choice.
Pakistan has a national food poverty rate of 33% and 40% of children under the age of five are underweight, 50% are stunted, and 9% are wasted. The GMF has the capability of overcoming these problems. Its dubious impact, nevertheless, compels us to seriously consider all pros and cons before the risks involved in GMF take the nation by surprise. Asif J. Mir, Organizational Transformation

Film Production in coming days

In a world of flickering screens, large and small, filmmakers will work inside and outside of the studios and television networks, bring in diverse voices to televisions, cinemas, and computers alike, tell stories ruled not by profit but by art, by conviction, and by people’s need to connect to one another and the world around them. In the same world ignoramus filmmakers of Pakistan—clueless about the modern technologies, the art and science of filmmaking together with the oddments of globalization—will drag on poking holes in technological jumps and thus demonstrating that they were powerless to draw breath in the 21st Century.

Future’s digital technology will transform the way the media is made and consumed. The moment is not far off when critical decisions will be made, in the halls of government and in the marketplace, about how digital technology will be used to create, copy, distribute, and present media in the years to come.

As digital opportunities and challenges change our landscape, one question will stand out: how will the public—and the diversity that filmmakers bring to it—benefit? Filmmakers will depend on a healthy public media ecosystem, and our shared future tied to policy that nurture or weaken that system. They will take creative risks, speak their minds, and champion the many voices that matter most but seldom heard.

For future’s media makers, the essence of digital is this: everything we do to create content can be turned into a series of ones and zeros that our naked eyes can’t decode into pictures and sounds, but that a variety of devices can.

This new digital code will change media making forever. This code will transform the four most important processes for media makers—production, replication, distribution, and presentation.

To produce media, future’s artist will be able to point a digital video camera at a tall mustachioed man scratching his ear and capture this moving image, represented inside the camera as a unique piece of digital code. The artist will manipulate that code to remove the man’s mustache and add a large and hungry dinosaur bearing down behind him (using CGI technology). The artist will then combine this new code with other pieces of code to shape a complex story of images, sound and music (using editing systems such as Avid or Final Cut Pro).

The result will be an enormous sequence of finished code: a movie, say, that will be copied an unlimited number of times, with each copy an exact replica of the original. Any of these copies will then be transmitted through the air, across wires or via a physical container (such as a CD), depending on how large the code is and how much capacity the transmitter has read at the receiving end in many different ways by a wide variety of devices—a computer, a projector, a television, a phone—that translate the code into images and sound.

The possibilities with digital technology will be nearly infinite. The realities will be much more confined. The question with digital will not be what might happen, but what filmmakers actually do with it.

The dizzying pace of digital change will, in fact, catch us all somewhat by surprise. Businesses and lawmakers will scramble to catch up with the changes wrought by this technological explosion. New business models and new policies will be built to deal with it.

Major economic stakeholders in tomorrow’s burgeoning media economy will all work hard to shape the outcome in their own interests. And much will be at stake for them all, because digital technology will challenge the traditional business models that media companies have relied on to profit financially from their work.

But they will not be the only stakeholders. There will also be public—all of us as citizens and parents and children, artists and consumers. When the dust will settle on the new digital economy and society, how will the public have benefited? Will the media policies actually promote freedom of speech and diversity of expression? Will they foster the many facets of the cultures that make up a nation?

The good news is that digital technology will make production cheaper, faster, and more manageable. It will also open up avenues for distribution, such as the Internet and, to a lesser extent, cable and satellite, while drastically reducing the costs of replicating copies of an filmmaker’s work.

And that’s also the bad news. Filmmakers will face challenges in three big areas: ownership, distribution, and funding. Specifically: (1) Ownership: How will filmmakers protect their work from unauthorized use and copying, while still having access to others’ work for legitimate use in their own creations? (2) Distribution: Will new distribution networks give filmmakers more or less access to audiences—and how will that distribution affect production? (3) Public support: How will the public resources now provided—such as spectrum allotments and public funding—change in the digital era?

In the days and age of democracy, stakeholders will assert their interests in the coming changes. Broadcasters, movie studios, technology companies, and other players will try to figure out how to make sure that the answers to these questions benefit them. They will take their issues to legislators, to the courts, and to consumers. The result will be policy.

Filmmakers will also be stakeholders—as well as artists and business people with a job to do. Digitization won’t change everything. The old standbys of good storytelling, the battles over concentrated ownership, the resistance to change by those with power, and conflicts over public support will repeat themselves in the digital age.

Digital will change the ecosystem that the filmmakers live in. The vision that filmmakers bring will be important, as stakeholders thrash out the terms under which they use digital code. Cut and dried, this future has already made an entrance in Hollywood. Asif J. Mir, Organizational Transformation

A Dehydrated Future is coming

Water resources are declining and different UN reports confirm that serious shortages are occurring soon. Thus we see a future when there will be no or less drinking water.

Access to water is a human right. Current declarations on human rights include basic water needs sufficiently. Basic water rights focus only on water for domestic use, and speak only of amounts of the order of 30-50 liters per person per day. Nonetheless, for many poor people, access to water for productive purposes is a crucial basic need as well. This is because water is a key factor of production in agriculture and for most other forms of economic activity that are vital to the livelihoods and opportunities of the poor.

Some question the wisdom of providing water of drinking quality at great expense, only to have a large share flushed down toilets, to carry waste, where after it is cleaned again for the few that can afford this costly practice. Opinions differ: some water experts advocate ecological sanitation, others dry toilets, some people argue that only bottled water should be of drinking quality and piped water quality should be limited to fit all other use made of it. All these alternative approaches deserve more attention.

Water infrastructure of Pakistan is turning into archaic. Reservoirs are silting up irrigation networks and turning disrepair. Groundwater levels are falling in important aquifers that have contributed substantially to food security in recent years by providing water-on-demand to millions of farmers that tapped them using tube-wells to grow their crops. This situation has impacted adversely causing a serious scarcity of water resources. This scarcity has hit the poor and vulnerable-first and hardest.

Pakistan’s per capita water availability in 1951 was 5,650 which has fallen to around 1,200 cubic meters 1,200 and with current population growth rate, it will be reduced to 1,000 cubic meters by the year 2012. So the hard reality that we as people faced today is that Pakistan in the past fifty years has turned into a water-scarce from a water-sufficient country and the situation continues to go downhill. This is the specimen of a mismanaged case.

Pakistan is the victim of repeated wrong planning of its land and water resources to produce food. All this is due to the pathetic and inert attitude of the technocrats, bureaucrats, politicians and the government as no national policy on water development was framed.

Large-scale development of river and groundwater resources is less acceptable today, for environmental reasons. It is also less cost effective than it was in the 1960-1990 period, when the large majority of the world's 45,000 large dams were built.

Water can be distributed through government institutions or the market. Privatization of water service provision, however, does not imply privatization of water resources. Water is a public good, which should be treated as an economic good where it is used for economic purposes. The public-private sector role nevertheless does not imply the role of multinational companies but the role and significance of the small-scale private sector.

In agriculture, private farmers have been largely responsible for the major investments in groundwater development. This groundwater use has contributed significantly to food production and the creation of wealth in rural areas. But government has failed to elaborate rules and mechanism ensuring that groundwater is used in a way that minimizes the risks of over-use and protects groundwater quality.

Increasing the efficiency in irrigated agriculture can result in large water savings. The UN Secretary General once rightly uttered: We need a Blue Revolution in agriculture that focuses on increasing productivity per unit of water. Indeed, at the farm level, the focus on water productivity in physical terms, crop output per unit of water, is a necessary and useful framework. Likewise, appropriate soil fertility and plant nutrition management can be a way to achieve more crops per unit of water. Water productivity at the basin level must be defined to include crop, livestock and fishery yields, wider ecosystem services and social impacts such as health, together with the systems of resource governance that ensure equitable distribution of these benefits.

For sustainable development, it is clear that better water management should be a means to reduce poverty. Strategies to address water-poverty relationships need to improve the different capabilities of the poor in their battle against poverty. These strategies also need to address the pervasive gender issues in water. Those affected by water problems are too often women, while those deciding on solutions tend to be men. Building gender-equitable capabilities of the poor to manage their water resources should also be at the heart of capacity building in the water sector.

The Provinces should formulate a water supply master plan and continuous planning process to estimate demand for drinking water and identify alternative ways of meeting that demand.

They should also establish and allocate resources to local governments for the preparation of provincial-mandated water supply plans. The Provinces should also enact legislation requiring local governments to formulate and administer comprehensive watershed protection programs in designated future water supply watersheds.

A system needs also to be evolved to promote the adoption of best management practices to minimize agricultural erosion in designated future water supply watersheds by funding and extending existing state cost-sharing programs to those watersheds and by targeting federal, state, and local technical assistance programs to them. A framework also has to be in place to increase technical assistance to local governments to help them prepare and administer watershed protection programs for designated future drinking water sources.

In evaluating alternatives for conjunctive use, water managers should also view ground water as more than a supplement to surface supplies. In particular, managers should assess the value of ground water in optimizing storage capacity, enhancing transmission capabilities, and improving water quality of the system. Asif J. Mir Organizational Transformation