Adil Najam
The Pakistan Kisan Conference met in Lahore this Sunday and (again) demanded an end to feudalism.
My first reaction to reading the news was to remember Faiz (remembering Faiz, by the way, is my default mode in just about all matters):
youN arz o talab say kab aiye dill, pathar-dil paani houtay haiN
tum laakh raza ki khoo Dallo, kab khoo-i-sitamgar jaati hai
But this was tempered immediately as I read of a new World Bank report that highlights the troubling inequity in land ownership in Pakistan.
Before saying more about both, let me just put my own views on the table. First, I think that the ‘feudalismâ €™ card is a favorite boogie of the urban educated elites of Pakistan. It is a very convenient thing to blame all our problems on. Why have we not had democracy? Feudalism. Why does the economy not flourish? Feudalism. Why did we lose to South Africa yesterday? Feudalism. Feudalism and the so-called ‘unparh, jahil awam’ are our scapegoats of choice. It is a very easy way for us urbanites to disown ourselves from many of our own sins.
Having said that, I have long held that feudalism is a critical challenge, and one of the biggest ones. It is not the problem we often make it out to be, but it is a huge problem that needs attention, and urgent attention. It is not a problem because it makes life difficult for the urban rich, it is a problem because it makes life impossible for the rural poor.
It is for this reason that I wholeheartedly support the call from the Pakistan Kisan Conference and the findings of the World Bank report.
On the Kisan Conference, it was mostly a political event but its politics and political rhetoric was uninteresting. The substance of the message, however, was spot on. According to the Daily Times (5 February, 2007):
Speakers at the Pakistan Kisan Conference on Sunday demanded the government eliminate feudalism and introduce land reforms to bring about development in the agriculture sector.
âà¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚¬Ã‚¨ Around 5,000 farmers and labourers attended the Conference organised by the Kisan Rabita Committee at the Minar-e-Pakistan in collaboration with the National Workers’ Party (NWP)…. The speakers said feudalism was a hurdle to the farmers’ interests. They said land reforms could help strength the agriculture sector. They urged the farmers to adapt to the innovations and changes taking place in the agriculture sector. 
ââ ¡Ã‚¬Ã‚¨They urged the government to provide land to the landless farmers. “Allocating agriculture land to the military and civil officers should be stopped,â€Â? they said, adding that the government should give ownership rights to the tenants at the military forms in Okara and Khanewal.
On the World Bank study, the Daily Times (5 February, 2007) reports:
Pakistan has extreme inequality in land ownership and the enforcement of several laws on tenants’ eviction, says a World Bank (WB) study. The study also says that sharing of crop outputs and costs between a landowner and tenant is practically non-existent. Authored by Hanan G Jacoby and Ghazala Mansuri, the WB Policy Research Working Paper says the fraction of tenanted land is high. More than one third of the land is tenanted and about two-thirds of land is under sharecropping, a form of farming where outputs are shared by the landowner and tenant… Sharecropping is the predominant form of tenancy in Sindh where the land ownership distribution is particularly skewed. According to the study, a median landlord in Sindh owns 28 acres of land, whereas nearly 80 percent of the share-tenants are landless farmers. Big landlords in the province often employ labour supervisors (kamdars) to manage their tenants. In Punjab, tenancies are split more evenly between share and fixed rent contracts. Landlords in Punjab are much smaller than those in Sindh, with a median holding of only seven acres of land, and are more likely to be residing in the same village as their tenants, the study says.
Is it time for a new set of meaningful land reform with a view to stamping out the residuals of feudalism? Yes, it is and it has been for quite some time.
The least important reason to do so is that it will rid the urban elite (i.e., urban feudals) of their favorite boogie and hopefully force them to accept their own responsibility. The most important reason is that it will make a real difference in the lives of the rural poor; the poor that no one even talks about anymore.
I agree that something has to be done and that the time is right. But et us also acknowledge that Bhuttos reforms, while not complete specially in Sindh, did make a difference. The task now is to complete the land reform process. If he really wanted to, I think Musharraf could.
FYI …the guy in the picture is the famous Abid Hassan Minto, a leading lawyer at the LHC Bar, marxist, secularist, progressive, a proud Pakistani and the the nephew of none other than Saadat Hassan Manto…
On the issue of feudalism… Punjab- being the main recruiting base for the British Indian Army- was deliberately kept as a “regulated” province, where the British ruled by coopting the local notables and feudals who could be called upon to serve the British Army when the time was right… this is precisely why Punjab never produced any major national leaders (like Jinnah, Gandhi etc) in the independence and Pakistan movements… despite the fact that it had no dearth of talent- as evidenced by the great career of the brilliant Zafrullah Khan whose birthday it is today.
The reason why feudalism was perpetuated in West Pakistan was because the bourgeoisie leadership of Pakistan at the time of partition – after Jinnah’s death- had no popular appeal in this region since it was entirely derived from the provinces that now constitute India.
Hence, the Punjabi feudals, the ex-unionists, and the Civil Military Bureaucracy had a relatively easy time ousting the early leaders and establishing their stranglehold on Pakistan.
There is undoubtedly a lot of hidden expenditure that doesn’t get reflected in the books. Military pensions for instance have been shifted into civilian spending, which is one of the more known accounting sleights of hand. It’s probably also not counting the cost to the Treasury of the military using government assets for its’ own foundations and interests, like the takeover by the Rangers of large numbers of buildings in Karachi.
Landlords will continue to get an unfair slice of the spoils. It’s the unfortunate consequence of Pakistan being created from the most backward and undeveloped provinces of India.
Hopefully rising urban incomes will mean they eventually get what’s coming to them.
The following article has some interesting data:
http://www.dawn.com/2007/01/29/ebr3.htm
One quote from the article:
“Even merely a 10 per cent tax on income from agriculture, which accounts for 22 per cent of national income, would yield Rs. 160-190 billion in income tax revenues. It is grossly unjust that while a salaried person pays not just income tax but more and more withholding taxes on utilities and bank transactions, large landlords’ incomes should go completely untaxed.”
Note that this year’s defense budget is somewhere around Rs. 270b (if I recall correctly). Now, if this defense budget is rationalized, as it should be, how much could we save at best?
Probably less than 160-190b (the above figure for tax potential from agricultural income tax)
So clearly, we have a pre-occupation with the defense budget, while there are clearly other sectors that are starving the economy of funds with a similar magnitude.
Don’t get me wrong; I am all for cutting the defense budget, but I can’t help saying that this single track obsession with the defense budget while completely ignoring other areas has something to do with the fact that many of us think less for ourselves and more on the basis of the propaganda from the political opposition and our eastern neighbour.
Land reforms are indeed the need of today’s Pakistan. Not only the reduction in the size of agro-estates of our feudal lords, but also the readjustment of small land holdings. A 100 acre estate is generally not as productive as a 15acre land, unless ofcourse it is run as a corporate farm. What’s also required is the redistribution/readjustment of small land holdings. In many parts of Pakistan, especially in Sarhad and Punjab, poor farmers hold lands in kanals and even marlas; pieces of land that can’t even feed their families. We need a law to stop further division of agricultural land. Trimming down the agricultural estates of influential feudals may not be possible in the near future, but some much needed reforms can be brought about given sustained public pressure through media. Any ideas? shouldn’t we be writing more letters to the editor and other media outlets?