On maize and socio-economic progress
On the front page of Weekend Nation dated July 13 2013 we read the heading “ High maize prices to hit Malawi.”
The reason given was that the government had not budgeted sufficient funds to stock up the commodity. This begs another question: why has the government not budgeted enough funds since maize is the staple food of the people?
Incidentally, this problem gives credence to the theory of Professor Amartya Sen, Nobel Prize laureate in economics, to the effect that famines are not always a matter of food shortage but absence of logistics- taking the food from regions where it is abundant to where it is in short supply. People also starve because they have no money to pay for the food.
Some people will blame the Minister of Finance for not having made adequate provision for the transportation of maize from where it is harvested to where it must be stored. But resort to elementary economics will spread the blame instead of confining it to the Minister of Finance.
The first lesson you learn in economics are the postulates called scarcity and opportunity costs. The wants and needs people have are greater than the means of satisfying those needs or wants. In simple language, people never have enough to buy all the things they want to have.
Opportunity cost states that anything you buy has two types of costs, financial and opportunity (real) cost. If you have two million kwacha only but you want to buy both a car and a house costing more or less the same amount, you cannot buy both. You must make a choice. If you buy a car then you have foregone the opportunity to buy a house, if you buy a house then you have lost the opportunity to buy a car.
Thus when you buy one thing, you forgo another. That thing which you have foregone or failed to buy is the opportunity cost, the opportunity lost.
The government has failed to provide enough money for stocking maize because the total amount of money it has raised is finite, less than the needs of the nation which have to be satisfied.
In situations of scarce resources organised members of society extract from a government more than others do. We have heard time and time again trade unions are pressing for higher salaries, percentage increase well-above percentage growth rates of the economy.
Those who will suffer as a result of food shortages are the unorganized ones including peasant farmers. As the government was accommodating the demands of one pressure group or another its pool of resources was diminishing. Now some of us ask why the government did not budget enough for food reserves.
Members of the media visited me to ask my opinion as to whether Malawi has done well economically and socially during its 49 years of independence.
What other commentators have said suggest that they are not part of the group to which I belong, the group that grew to manhood and parenthood during colonial days.
To describe the period 1964 to 2013 as shameful, wasted is an exercise in exaggeration and ingratitude. There have been palpable changes since Nysaland sloughed off the colonial mantle to become an independent Malawi.
What is not disputable is that compared with countries like Singapore, Mauritus, Botswana, Taiwan we have under-performed which is not the same thing as we have been idle or we have messed around.
Two things prevent an individual from making full use of his or her talent. One of these is self pity; self-help is better than self-pity. We should not waste time grumbling and feeling despondent over what we and our leaders have done or failed to do. We should be talking of self-help as the tool of the future.
The other thing is to avoid self-despising. Once you have lost respect for yourself and your leaders, you have lost the foundation on which to build a future. Great achievers of the world have had a healthy self love and self-respect. If you love yourself you will do things that will advance your interest.
Tentatively I would say we should, reposition ourselves by selling up new institutions that will work differently from these we have lived with for nearly half a century. Our very mindset should be refreshed with a healthy respect for hard work, frugality and patience, continuous study should be our way of life.
