| The textile industry of Pakistan often behaves like a stork. It stands motionless, supporting itself on one leg, it beak hidden protectively within its feathers, until suddenly, as if startled, it will take off and soar to unexpected heights before settling down again at another plane. |
| The weight of Pakistan’s textile economy rests on the singular leg of its cotton industry. In 1947, Pakistan inherited a total of 79,000 spindles fed by a cotton agronomy which produced a million or so bales. It was a modest beginning. ‘Pakistan is not, by world standards, a large producer of cotton,’ a survey by the U.K. Senior Trade Commissioner in Pakistan writing in 1954 reported. ‘She grows only about 5% of the world’s production.’ Today, Pakistan is one of leading cotton growing countries in the world, with the potential of producing (as it might have done this season had it not been for the summer floods, and harvesting 12.5.million bales. It has 28.85% of the world cotton yarn market and 6.76% of the world’s cloth market. Raw cotton being a perishable commodity, inedible except for the oil extracted from its seed, its disposal is necessarily a matter of national concern. [EXTRACT] |
Published in THE NATION 2 Jan. 1993, and reprinted in THE ARMLESS QUEEN (1994). |
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