Towards Rapid Industrialization

Speech on the occasion of laying the Foundation-Stone of the building of the Valika Textile Mills Ltd.: September 26, 1947

It has given me great pleasure to come here today to lay the foundation-stone of the Valika Textile Mills. Pakistan is at present mostly an agricultural state and for manufactured goods it is dependent upon the outside world.

If Pakistan is to play its proper role in the world to which its size, manpower and resources entitle it, it must develop industrial potential side by side with its agriculture and give its economy an industrial bias. By industrializing our State, we shall decrease our dependence on the outside world for necessities of life, we will give more employment to our people and will also increase the resources of the State.

Nature has blessed us with a good many raw materials of industry and it is up to us to utilize them to the best of the State and its people. I hope this venture of yours will prove the precursor of many such enterprises and bring prosperity to all concerned.

I also hope that in planning your factory, you have provided for proper residential accommodation and other amenities for the workers, for no industry can thrive without contented labour.

The Quaid-e-Azam went on and said that he had at heart this satisfaction that he had been called upon to lay the foundation-stone of the Textile Mills which was the first of its kind. He said that he was told by a very well-known gentleman in Sind, who has got a very long experience, that if Sind were given full opportunity, it could be three times more prosperous in agriculture and industry than Egypt. So far as agricultural potentialities were concerned, there was no shortage. That was Sind's biggest fortune. Sind had been surplus in the production of food.
The Quaid-e-Azam, therefore, urged Sindhis that they had to develop other fields like science, commerce and industry. He said that they should realize that the real strength and power of the State depended upon its capacity to produce.
For commerce and trade, money was needed and Sind being prosperous in agriculture, its power was great and we could feed the various channels like educational, social and political. The way in which we could consolidate the State was by industrializing as fast as we could.
He then blessed the sponsors of the Mills and said that it would not only be the first and the last mill but many more would follow.