efense spending became a top priority and - along with the cost of civil administration - accounted for more than three-quarters of the federal government's budget during the first decade after independence. This spending was soon supplemented by western aid, as Pakistan adopted the role of junior guardian of the Persian Gulf in the Cold War.Yet there was little corresponding effort to ensure the supremacy of elected institutions within Pakistani society. Administrative/bureaucratic influence over the state rapidly increased, and democratic institutions decayed. By the late 1950s, the civil-military bureaucracy had consolidated its hold on the government, and the country settled into a mode of state rule that remained largely unchanged for the next three decades. A succession of military and civilian regimes followed, and while each professed some commitment to greater political participation, all ultimately fell short of popular expectations. Elites often opted for a controlled form of democracy; they saw politics less as a participatory affair than as something to be steered from above.PROBLEMSDemand and Supply-Induced ScarcityLand. Pakistan comprises 88.2 million hectares of land, of which 61.8 million has been surveyed. Approximately 20 million hectares is used for agriculture, while some 31 million hectares is forest, rangeland, unutilized, or unutilizable .Since independence, the area of land under cultivation has increased by approximately 40 percent. Yet today the country is approaching its physical limits. Of the total surveyed land area, less than 20 percent retains the potential for intensive agricultural use, while 62 percent is classified as having low potential for crop, livestock, and forestry production. Overall, land categorized as cultivable represents less than one-quarter of the country's total area. Today, nearly all of this land is already under cultivation. Very little additional land is available for the expansio...
