Managing Water Resources for Environmentally Sustainable Irrigated Agriculture in Pakistan

Pakistan’s agriculture is almost wholly dependent on irrigation and irrigated land supplies more than 90 percent of agricultural production. Irrigation is central to Pakistan’s economy. Massive investments in irrigation contributed to the development of one of the largest Indus Basin Irrigation System. Despite heavy budgetary inputs in irrigation system, it is facing shortage of resources and suffering from operational problems. The sustainability of irrigated agriculture is threatened due to problems of waterlogging and salinity, inadequate operation and maintenance, insufficient recovery of O&M expenditure, inequitable distribution, environmental degradation, institutional issues etc. The growing scarcity of water sets the future stage for intensive competition over water between agriculture and non-agricultural users. The growing need for food and fibre requirements of increasing population further limits the per capita availability of water. Due to the limited prospects for expanding irrigation facilities, the projected increase in irrigated agriculture will have to come from significant improvement in the performance of existing systems. Policy-makers and planners are of the view that Pakistan’s irrigated agriculture requires new strategies to enhance input efficiency and maintain and improve the quality of the resource base and to get the irrigation system out of crises. There is a global movement for searching a new type of relationship between the managers of irrigated agriculture and farmers. Such options are being considered by government at various levels to put the system on sustainable development path. In addressing the environmentally sustainable water resource management in Pakistan, the paper makes an attempt to provide an over-view of water resource issues and options.

Marketing Capability, Strategy and Business Performance in Emerging Markets of Pakistan

In this project an attempt has been made to demonstrate a positive relationship between marketing capabilities and Strategy using Porters framework and corporate performance in an emerging/developing market of Pakistan. This paper reports a study that marketing practice regulates the relationship between marketing capabilities & Strategy using Porters framework and business performance. In turn, the type of marketing practice adopted is moderated by the market served. Various studies have suggested that marketing capabilities & Strategy using Porters framework influences business performance. These discussions are summarized by a theoretical model and a series of theoretical propositions. The results suggest that Marketing Capabilities and Strategy frame exist in the business environment of Pakistan but there is a weak relationship with firm performance.Marketing Capabilities, Competitive Advantages, Business strategy, Firm Performance

Estimating Long-run Trade Elasticities in Pakistan: A Cointegration Approach

Trade Elasticities, Pakistan

LHIP: Extended DCGs for Configurable Robust Parsing

We present LHIP, a system for incremental grammar development using an extended DCG formalism. The system uses a robust island-based parsing method controlled by user-defined performance thresholds.Comment: 10 pages, in Proc. Coling9

The Definition and Measurement of Poverty: An Integrated Islamic Approach

In this paper an attempt is made to learn as to how the Islamic shariah defines and measures the phenomenon of poverty. A systematic study of the Qur’an, the traditions of Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), the conduct of righteous caliphs, and the writings of early Muslim jurists would make it clear that the poor, indigent, and destitute are given adequate importance. The early Islamic state, where necessary, made serious efforts to assist and rehabilitate the poor and the needy. One of the means of assistance and rehabilitation was zakat. The disbursement of zakat funds required that the poor should be unambiguously and convincingly separated from the non-poor. How was it done in the past? Traditions of the Prophet (the sunnah) throw sufficient light on this issue. When we carefully go through the traditions, it would be clear that the explanation of poverty as given by the Prophet is dynamic. It defies time and space limitations. A deeper probe of the traditions would reveal that, for all practical purposes, the Prophet has stressed on an integrated approach. His explanation is far more comprehensive, integrated, and meaningful than the one expressed today in terms of daily intake of certain minimum calories. Present-day Muslim countries should redefine their approach towards the definition and measurement of poverty to reflect the essence of Islamic shariah.