Land Reforms: A Landlord's Perspective

#61 by sadna You are right in saying ``Probably the emphasis is because most of the poor in our nations are among the rural landless``.

Most urbanites complain about how the nations wealth is concentrated in the hands of the landlords and how city dwellers are being discriminated against. This is totally incorrect. If you compare the richest rural landlord with the richest urban businessman/industrialist, there will be a world of difference between their incomes, with the industrialist of course being way ahead. Similarly on the other side of the spectrum, the poorest villager will be much poorer than the poorest city dweller. The big issue that causes disparity is that most of the governments resources are concentrated on a few cities, with the rural areas being neglected for the most part.

Another issue that most people dont realise is that the return on investment in agriculture is very low. A trader in Kharadar makes much more from a small shop/office than a landowner with say 200 acres of land.

If you think that life is great in the rural areas of Pakistan with all landlords being rich and powerful, why dont you migrate to a village and take up farming for a living?

Sameer#59
Re inability of landlord to ensure turnout in elections, let me be devil`s advocate.

Firstly the landlord knows he doesnot need a good turn out to get elected, he just needs more votes than his opponent and the advantage of `prepoll rigging`. Depending on the extent of his influence, few of those who depend his goodwill for their safety, livelihood or social acceptance, will oppose him within his party much less stand against him. If there is no other landlord, perhaps he maynot even have a strong opposition candidate. He is probably friendly with government functionaries in the area including the police. With this sort of influence, even if he cannot ensure turnout(even the govt. and Army cannot) he can certainly stand in the way of whatever the govt does or doesnot want.

His tillers, who are intelligent people, most probably donot go to vote because one of them or someone who can fight for their concerns will never stand for election as long as the landlord is around. As employees they already know the extent of what the landlord will and will(not) do for them, so what is the need to stand in line simply to put a govt. `mohar` on him when he is already maibaap?

``why land owners are expected to play their role in decreasing poverty? ``
Probably the emphasis is because most of the poor in our nations are among the rural landless.

Look at the social roles played by landlords in rural areas. When the crops fail because of droughts or floods, the farm workers survive on charity of the landlords. If a villager is harrassed by the police, he turns to the landlord. When his children are sick it is the landlord again who comes to his rescue.

Do businessmen do this readily for their workers? If a mill is in trouble one year, will the mill owner keep on paying his workers so that they may not starve?

There are no social ties or bonds between the owners and the workers of a commercial enterprise, but on the other hand these bonds are very strong in rural areas, havng been forged by generations over centuries.

History has shown that the institution of the Wadera or Choudhry has been weakening with time. As such institutions weaken, oppression increases, because in a weak and corrupt society the administration reigns supreme and when there is no one to keep this in check, the high-handedness of the administration keeps on growing.

pakfin #58: I agree with you. There used to be one interactor by the name of Baloch1 couple of years back. He wrote excellent post with regards to separating facts from myths and fictions on this issue. I wish he was here to interact.
sadna: Naturally, property owners are better off than propertyless anywhere in the world. Most of the Pakistanis are poor due to lack of property owning and no other means of income available in addition to poor levels of education and sub-standard treatment of women within poverty ridden society. I agree totally with the last paragraph of your post of using the goodness of jaati or traditional culture towards reducing poverty from the society and bringing justice to all, particularly who have been treated unjustly more often. However the power of landlord to do all this is limited. It needs planned government backing and smart approaches such as you mentioned in the case of South Korea. Just think about the power of landlord from one and only one fact.
Landlord is running in elections. The fight is tight. He expects all tillers and co-caste/ tribally affiliated prople to vote for him. He is not exceptionally rich but rich enough to take voters to nearby polling booth and back on election day. Right! Then why voter turn out does not exceed 25 percent despite all the powers he is exaggeratingly endowed with? He is totally unable to bring women of tillers families to walk less than a mile and vote. He is unable to excite or force more than half of his male tillers or bonded laborers to go to polling station even with the promise of transportation and free meal. It amazes me to read all the fancy stories of his powers from raping, pillaging, enslaving, stopping schooling for children and so on when on most important day of life and death, the electioni day, despite his wishes inability to just ask his ``so-called slaves`` to come to polling station and vote. Think about it!
Now if I have a house somewhere in Pakistan and giving upper floor to a poor will decrease his poverty: will I do it or how many other property owners would share their ownership so that poverty level in the society is reduced? How many will share their bank balances or businesses to do just that? If not many, then why land owners are expected to play their role in decreasing poverty? By the way whatever little charitable contribution, feudals or landowners contribute goes to their own caste, tillers and within village whereas urban charities go for LeT, LJ, HM, mosques and other Jihads mostly. Unlike urban wild mullahs, the feudal has nothing to worry about or gain from illiterate village mullah but they still subsuduze his living, year after year after year. From this income, the mullah of my village was able to give dowry to his daughters and able to send his sons to school and college until they moved to cities and settled with jobs. Who does an illiterate village mullah owes all this kindness and for what?
Who will disagree with you that steps must be taken to reduce poverty and eliminate injustices from any society but steps must be built before building castle in the air. The land reform in Pakistan is such as illusionary castle, or ``amrit dhara`` with nobody interested in paving the way to the castle or synthesizing amrit dhara.

Postings #42 by dullabhatti and #48 by sameerJB are right and have described the situation on the ground very accurately.

The major points here are as folows:

1). Some urban political parties or interests resort to landlord bashing; not because they want to support the lot of the downtrodden, but because they want to take political control out of the hands of the rural masses.

2). The primary issue in countries like Pakistan, irrespective of Urban or Rural areas, is lack of justice and corruption.

3). Most landlords who flaunt there wealth are not wealthy from farming/agriculture, but have become rich through ill-gotten means.

4). The richest people in Pakistan are not landlords, but are corrupt civilian and military officers followed by tax-evading businessmen.

//... You get a trophy for so cleverly avoiding the issue...//
Actually u will win the ``world cup``, if there is one given, for your expertise on avoiding thorny issues. When you are backed up the wall - you respond with stupid hyperboles and hide behind vague explanations like ``I have no doubt someday pakistanis will prove their mettle``. And of course anybody questioning such statements will immediately be bombarded with more hyperboles and invectives.

I am not pointing out just ``murders`` in pakistan - rather the constitutionally-guaranteed massacres that goes on. Honor-killings are legal - carved in stone in law books of the state. In fact - the first thing Mushy Boy did after he took over pakistan was to invite a couple of honor-killers( parents who killed their daughter for falling in love or something) for a photo-up and their felicitation. The couple were also felicitated by Nawaz Sharif while he was still ruling the country. Blasphemy is legalised too: heck - you would have been declared blasphemous by now just for saying mullahs rushing to be secular - and you know what the punishment is for such ``sin`` - don`t you Mian? death by stoning.
And then a whole group of people(Ahmedis) have been constitutionally-declared ``non-muslims`` and legally-sanctioned to be murdered being by mobs of blood-thirsty mullahs - for worshipping the prophet`s son or somebody. This is even worse than Nazi Germany man!

Lajwanti #51 i give good advice to AAmir, and you say i call him pissaco. i think you try put me in bad books of AAmir. Then he write more abstract post on chowk and confuse me even more. you bad person.

Romair #54 give a fool a rope and he will hang himself. that is what I think you are saying about giving maulvis power. i thought the mullahs (in the form of the taliban) had already hung themselves once by making afghanistan the breeding ground for terrorism. in doing so they also turned millions of afghanis into homeless people seeking refuge in neigboring countries from this ``islamic government``. So will we now have people from NWFP and Baluchistan suffer for five years while we wait for the mullahs to hang themselves?

Tahmed bhai, whyy ouare call AAmir pissaco? HaiN?

Ia mthink thisis not niceness, okay.

SameerJB #48
``Small corrupt police presence will never be able to stop this from happening yet it does not happen often because of common concerns, caste, relatioships, brotherhood etc etc. How can they start throwing out people from land in this kind of tight knit structure?``


PM quotes from World Bank`s CAS in the Junaid Ahmed thread
``* The landless comprise 50% of the population and are afflicted most by rural poverty, which falls steadily as rural ownership increases.
* Almost 75% of Pakistan`s poor are landless and these comprise of 70% of the rural poor.

The CAS report further states that ``INEQUITY IN LAND OWNERSHIP explains why overall agricultural yields in Pakistan remain BELOW that of other countries of SIMILAR LAND ENDOWMENTS. There is evidence from developing countries, including Pakistan, that as farm sizes increase, productivity falls``

Just as you mention there is a societal consensus against looting, and another societal consensus against eviction which springs from the tight knit biradari-jaati structure in the rural areas, what is needed is to create a similar societal consensus in the tight knit biradari-jaati structure for poverty alleviation of the landless, another consensus to promote literacy and civic participation including women`s literacy, a third consensus for women`s health and reduction in infant mortality, just like in the cities, and you are all set to achieve UK`s developed nation status :).

#40 by tahmed32
//...Your (irrational) opinions about pakistanis are duly noted and filed at the bottom of the barrel (which may then be scraped by any comedian who has run out of jokes). ...//
My opinion was no joke Ahmed Mian. Not to those pakistanis who are planning to board the first plane out of pakistan the day the chief mullah of MMA takes over (As reported in pakistani news readers` columns). U don`t have to worry about that of course - you already out from the land pure - safely settled in land of Kafir.

And speaking of jokes - the standing joke of our time actually came from you - when you declared Mullahs of MMA are ``rushing`` to prove their secular credentials.

One of the points I had made earlier about the maulvi brigade becoming more pragmatic rather than succeeding in making Pakistan more religious, after their huge success in the polls, seems to be coming true, faster than I could have imagined:

``MMA on fast track from hard-line to pragmatic: ISLAMABAD, Oct 28: Islamic party alliance have abandoned the hard-line demands of their election campaign, pledging instead flexibility on US troop presence, constitutional changes and Islamic laws. Maulana Fazlur Rehman, a key leader of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) alliance, told reporters late Sunday that the Islamic bloc was ``flexible`` on constitutional amendments and Islamisation, and that the question of US troops` use of Pakistani airbases was up to Washington. The expulsion of US troops from Pakistani airbases, where they are based for operations in Afghanistan, was a key pledge by MMA`s firebrand clerics in the campaign before the October 10 general elections. But MMA leaders have not once repeated that demand since winning massive gains in the polls and landing the balance of power in the hung national assembly. ``We have made our position very clear, that we can root out terrorism on our own and we do not need anybody`s help,`` Maulana Fazlur Rehman said. (AFP) (Posted @ 15:50 PST) (Dawn, Pakistan)

These guys are politicians first, and maulvis second. I think they are slowly coming around to reality. This is why I think it is a healthy change to actually have these guys go through one round of power, specially if they defeated the dreaded feudal, in the process. Aik teer say do shikar.

I think if the upper class women (and men) can hold their breath for five years, this whole phenomenon of maulvi politics will fizzle out, once the maulvis get discredited also.

AAmir #49 Your post is a unintellible melange of cut and pastes from mohar`s posts and from my posts. I have no clue whether you agree or disagree, and if so with whom and on what point. You have obviously chosen the wrong medium (namely, the english language) through which to express your genius, boy. You would be better off using a paint brush rather than the keyboard, and critics will then rave about your abstract art that no one (not even you, as the artist) can make head or tail of. You will then be acclaimed as a 21st century picasso.

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jay #41

.......... even i cannot find any redeeming value in this post ....... jay, get a grip on yourself !

sadna: Actually there is a difference between supporting the rights of landowners and opposing land reforms Pakistani style considering all the factors I have been talking about. Author of this article defended the rights of owners but did not go deep enough in opposing the land reforms what dullabhatti and I are focussing on.
There are two main issues here. The lawbreaking by anybody, feudal, tiller or an urban citizen are indefensible by law. If anyone is getting away with bonded labor, private jails or other abuses is due to poor law and order/ corruption. The other issue is abusing the unwritten tradtional ethics governing at the grassroot level in village environment. Power corrupts and powerful in all fields abuse power. While good law and order provides a remedy or respite from abuse, the traditional way do have built in checks and balances, otherwise it would not have lasted as long as it did.
For example, with very limited very corrupt police force at village level, roughly 3-4 policemen per 5 villages -more than 10,000 people, major thefts are rare and the culprits are quickly apprehended. The crime rate is much lower at village level. A thief or landowner can kick open most village doors if so wishes, an entrance through mud wall can be made in minutes with an average drill to steal most valuable thing - Jewellery. Small corrupt police presence will never be able to stop this from happening yet it does not happen often because of common concerns, caste, relatioships, brotherhood etc etc. How can they start throwing out people from land in this kind of tight knit structure? They just can`t! The problems do appear but usually settled with the interference of elders or go betweens. The owner owns farm land and not village residential area. The owner can not evict any person from the home in a village. Moreover, only few villages, mostly in south Punjab and Sindh, have whole village farming land belongingt o one person. In most Punjabi villages, amny competing owners own pieces of lands. In my grandfather`s village, out of 1000 acres, the largest holding was 100, followed by 3 about 75 and so on.
My grandfather had 6 acres after inheritance divided great grandfather`s 40-50 acres. Now five children of my grandfather inherited 6 acres, about 1 1/2 acres each. Having seen this situation coming, they are went to school and colleges, sold their acre and a half of land and settled in urban jobs. If I want to fo into farming, I will have to buy land from somebody in similar situation, my grandfather was decades ago. Other owners in the village would have no right and no problem with somebody selling his land to me. Big plots of land are often not for sale because agriculture land does not bring enough money to move to big cities and live happily ever after. The feudals having big houses in Karachi and Lahore, bought decades ago when it was cheap to own property there. The new settlements in Karachi, Lahore and all of Islamabad have much less presence of feudals because the real estate in cities is too expensive. It takes to sell high quality 25 acres in Punjab to buy a house in upper middle class areas of Islamabad.
No feudal whose income is primarily from land makes into the top 50 of Pakistan. Only one family, Noon family of Sargosha, made it to the list 30 years ago due to their large land holding that became part of residential Sargodha city and they were in politics too for a long time and must have made some money there. Another group that regularly makes it to top 50 is cotton traders brothers, MiaN Amin-Mian Bashir, who work as middlemen or comission agent in cotton trading. Lyallpur being highly fertile and well watered district with many feudal families has the richest people in transportation and textile businesses. The largest land holder in Sindh is, I believe Ahmed Chandio but no comparison with Bhutto`s wealth because Bhutto and Zardari are not rich from the land but from other sources. Sharif family did not own much land and Chaudhry`s of Gujrat, the current big shots are not big landowners. Both of them made money during Zia`s era by borrowing, defaulting and investing oney in industries. The top 50 list is made up of mostly businessmen, children of corrupt generals and some bureaucrats.
I was not familiar about South Korea model. It is interesting and development friendly model. That is my point. There has to be something well planned, debugged and forward looking instead of controlled by raw passion in the name of justice, equality or politics.