Pakistan used to be an agricultural country well known for its exports of cash crops like wheat, rice, cotton and sugarcane. Now, however, we have depleted so much in agriculture that we have to spend precious foreign exchange on agri-imports that include not just sugar and wheat but even tomatoes and onions, and that too from India. In the past few months, Pakistan has imported 14 lakh bales of cotton, costing Rs 20 bn from Brazil, America and India. The expected produce of Pakistan for the year 2008-09 was 12 million bales and there was a deficiency of 2 million bales in the local market. One of the reasons for our dismal failure in agriculture is the conspiracy of India. It has stopped Pakistan's water supplies by damming the rivers that irrigated our fertile agricultural land that has now become barren. The water storage supplies are also running down. Unfortunately, the ignorance and insensitivity of our politicians to the problem persists. -RAFIA RUSTAM, Karachi, via e-mail, April 7.