Nasser knew that the struggle to create a renascent, self-reliant Egypt could not be won simply by defying the West in international politics, but that economic dependence and backwardness had to be overcome. He declared that ‘a revolution cannot achieve its aims for the people unless it goes beyond the mere political goal of independence and tackles the roots of economic and social problems'.

He believed that economic independence could only be achieved by socialist policies, by centrally planned development and the creation of state-run industries which would not be mere appendages of Western monopolies. Nasser was a socialist but not a communist. He allowed (capitalism a role in the Egyptian economy. As a sincere Muslim he rejected Marxist atheism.

In the 1950s Nasser was too busily involved in international and pan-Arab politics to concentrate on Egypt's development. But he finally emphasized domestic development from I960. The first Five-Year Plan of 1960-5 incorporated the socialist measures of 1960-1. Banks, insurance companies, industries and trading companies were nationalized and taken over wholly or partly by the state.

The property of the wealthy Egyptian bourgeoisie was sequestrated. A progressive taxation system was introduced and a maximum income of ₤f5000 per annum was imposed. One quarter of profits of companies were to be distributed to workers. The rather limited agrarian reform of 1952 was replaced by the more radical reforms of 1961 and 1963.

The major achievements of Nasser's government in the economic development of Egypt lay in the fields of agrarian reform and agricultural production, industrialization and social reform. Egypt's cultivable land, irrigated by the Nile and fertilized by the silt of the river, is the most productive in the world. But the cultivable land comprises only 3 per cent of the land area of the country. Yet before 1952 fellahin owned only 13 percent of the cultivable land.

Most fellahin owned unviable plots of less than two feddan (one feddan 1.038 acres), and were heavily in debt to money-lenders. Millions of rural Egyptian men had no land at all, and suffered from low wages in employment as casual labourers and from high rents. Before 1952 the Egyptian peasants were among the most miserable and downtrodden in world.

The agrarian reform of September 1952 was a decree by the Revolutionary Command Council which limited holdings to 200 feddan. The rest, including the royal family's 178,000 feddans, was confiscated and redistributed to the fellahin. The more radical l961 law reduced the ceiling on land ownership to only 100 feddan. But by 1970 only about 17 per cent of cultivated land had been redistributed, and only 250 000 families or 8 per cent of the fellahin benefited. The fellahin, therefore, gained little extra land, but they did gain considerably from the development of government-sponsored co-operatives on newly distributed land, and of the extension of the methods of the co-operatives to other rural areas. The co-operatives advanced loans to members and provided them with seed, livestock, fertilizers and agricultural machinery; arranged the storage and transport of their crops; and carried out pest-control, crop selection and irrigation improvements.

Large- scale farming of former small plots made it possible for a single crop to be grown over a large acreage and made ploughing, irrigation and spraying easier. The traditional biennial rotation was replaced by triennial rotation which was made compulsory in land reform areas in 1956 and throughout the country in 1963.

Triennial rotation in the long term led to less exhaustion of the land and to higher yields. Another advantage of the co-operatives was that most profits were now saved or invested collectively rather than being spent individually on new wives or marrying off daughters. Reserves were accumulated as insurance against a drop in cotton prices on the world market. Profits could also be spent on socially useful buildings such as mosques, clinics, social centres and new housing.

Another agrarian improvement was the extension of the cultivated area by the reclamation of about one million feddan of land from the desert by using water controlled by the Aswan High Dam. The main purpose of the dam. however, was not the subsidiary aims of increasing the cultivable area and controlling flood waters; it was to provide abundant hydroelectric power to enable Egyptian manufacturing industry to expand- By 1970 the dam had led to a twelve-fold increase in electric power in Egypt.

Egyptian industrialization made rapid strides after the Revolution. In 1952 ^here were only a few cotton-spinning, oil-processing and flour mills in the country. But by the mid-1960s Egypt manufactured a wide variety of goods from iron and steel products, cars, lorries, tractors, railway wagons, bicycles and rubber tyres to cement, fertilizers, television sets, refrigerators, cables, yarn and fabrics, dynamite and medicines.

These goods were produced almost entirely for domestic consumption. Thus Egypt made little headway in exporting her industrial products, Even as late as the early 1980s the vast sub-Saharan African market remains largely unexploited by Egyptian industrial marketing. Egyptian industry is Still insufficiently competitive and productivity is low because it is almost impossible for political reasons to dismiss a worker. The vast oil and coal deposits of the Sinai Desert remain to be developed fully.

Egypt's inability so far to export many industrial goods has meant that the country is not yet in a position to pay for food imports by industrial exports. Egypt has frequently since the late 1950s taken American loans in order to buy American surplus wheat and meat. generally at 4 percent interest. A steady increase in the size of the population at the rate of about $ per cent or one million new people each year has meant not only more mouths to feed but that the expansion of industry has lagged behind the increase in the number of urban unemployed. Family planning has so far made little headway in the countryside where traditionalist Muslim views (that it is wrong to interfere with Allah's dispensation concerning the gift of children) are still dominant.

Major problems have arisen in the economy as a result of the interest charges and repayment of the principal on loans piling up. As early as the 1960s Egypt began to negotiate debt-financing loans. War has also held back the expansion of the economy.

Other factors which have had their effect are: the massive military expenditures on Russian and Czech arms in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s; the loss of revenue from tolls when the Suez Canal was closed for nearly a decade following the Israeli occupation of its cast bank in 1967; the inflation of the mid-1970s; and the waste and corruption that were common under the monarchy But have not been entirely eradicated since 1952. Nevertheless, in spite of a number of failures, it is clear that on balance the government of Nasser between 1952 and 1970 did more than any previous Egyptian government since ancient times to develop and modernize the country,

Perhaps it is in the field of social reform that Nasser's most considerable achievements lie - in the areas of health, education and the status of women. In 1952 the Egyptian people were among the most diseased and miserable in the world. Malnutrition was rife, Bilharzia affected 60 per cent of the population and left it weak and exhausted. Nasser's provision of free medical care for all has transformed the health of the whole nation. Bilharzia is still fairly common because of Nile irrigation in cotton growing- But tuberculosis and malaria have been much reduced.

Eye diseases of children have been largely eliminated, as has malnutrition following the introduction of free midday meals for schoolchildren. Several thousand rural health centres have been set up, roughly one for every 5000 people, broadly within a three-kilometre radius. Clean drinking-water was provided to all villages by 1970. The number of doctors doubled from 5000 in 1952 to 10 000 in I960.

 

Figure 59: HOSNI MUBARAK in picture became president of Egypt in 1981. He was reelected in 1987, 1993, 1999 and 2005. He was removed from power through a peoples' revolution in 2011 to repaced by President Mossi who was also removed in the same way in 2013.

 

The school population rose from 1 900 000 in 1951 to 3 500 000 in 1961. In the 1950s new schools were built at the rate of two every three days. Compulsory primary education for all children between the ages of six and twelve was introduced before 1970. New faculties of science, medicine and engineering were opened at the ancient Al-Azhar University in Cairo, and a new university was opened in 1957 at Asyut. An appalling drop in standards among arts students was more than compensated for by the creation of a new class of desperately-needed qualified doctors, scientists and engineers.

Nasser's government adopted a gradualist but progressive approach to the status of women, in the Islamic modernist tradition. More women were employed in schools, offices and factories. Crimes of honour (the killing of girls by their kinsfolk as a punishment for asserting sexual freedom) have sharply diminished- It is not quite true, however, that the veil has been abandoned in the countryside, for the very simple reason that it was never common there. In Nasser's time the veil was abandoned, though, in the towns, where it had been common. In 1962 the first woman minister was appointed. In 1964 eight women were elected to parliament. In 1962 26 per cent of university students were women.

Another vital aspect of social reform was cultural revival. The educational system was Egyptianized as private schools were nationalized, and as Europe-oriented syllabuses were replaced by Egyptian and Arab-oriented ones. Classical Arabic drama has been revived and modern Arabic plays encouraged in the Cairo theatres. Television ballet troupes and the famous Reda folk-dancing group have done much to revive traditional entertainment and present it in a modern and relevant idiom.