Land Reforms: A Landlord's Perspective

This would not have happened if the feudals were to dish out justice. from dawn of yeaterday



Hiring domestic servants



Nowadays hiring domestic servants, including drivers, cooks, maids, from streets is a very dangerous thing but so is hiring servants from registered domestic servant agencies.

I hired a servant from a reputed agency located in a posh locality of Karachi. The agency took full responsibility for the servant in addition to service charges equivalent to a month`s salary in advance.

After three months on the job, the servant got away with some of our jewellery and cash in our absence. When we informed the agency about this incident and asked them to either produce the servant or compensate our loss, they said that they would first question the servant`s guarantor before taking any action against him.

Over a month has gone by, but the agency is still investigating the case. So much for their efficiency.

The fact is that these agencies are fleecing people without delivering any goods. Will some one in authority look into problems like this before any other citizen becomes their victim?

AMIN KIYANI

Karachi

sameerJB #76
Its interesting how we can look at the same figures and come to opposite conclusions :).

Anyway if you are interested here is the whole report which carried those figures:

http://www.worldbank.org/pakistancas
Pakistan Country Assistance Strategy 2002

sorry for not visiting this thread for the past several days.
sadna: Indeed, your post #72 is an eye-opener for naive and ignorant proponents of land reforms in Pakistan. The low turnout of tillers on behalf of landowner as I mentioned is definitely proportional to owner`s limiting control over his tillers no matter what kind of rigging is applied. The contender is actually a representative of several landowners usually based on caste and past history of associations as well as intermarriages in the area and so are his opponents. Both or multiple candidates in competition has every reason to have higher turnout no matter how much rigging is there. All of them would love to win on their own without resorting to rigging. Moreover, once a contestant is considered a sure winner, the amout of rigging is reduced or even not applied saving the resources for some other constituencies. I bet government did not resort to rigging against PPP leader Makhdoom Amin Faheem from Hala, Sindh because he was a sure winner. They did not even try to put up strong candidate against Chaudhary Ahtizaz Ahsan of PPP in Lahore because making him forcefully lose means rigging of middle east proportions.
Dullabhatti: In Pakistan, on papers nobody owns more than 500 acres of fertile and 1000 acress of arid land but joint family system allows for a family to own many times that number and in politics it is all considered to be owned by the candidate because other members of the family are in the background. Same is true of Sharif family`s wealth. NS`s father and 5 other families had joint control of their properties with each family having children and grandchildren but for political exploitatioin it is all NS or SS property.
Just as your village, most villages in Punjab do not have any major landlords owning more than 200 acres, some own land at more than one places due to inheritance and intermarriages. The largest holding in Lyallpur-Jhang is in the name of two Syed families, one Sultan Bahu`s descendants in Shorkot area and control two seats in National Assembly. The Gaddi Nasheen of Sultan Bahu is one Sahibzada Nazir Sultan. The other big Syed family is that of Syeda Abida Hussain and her cousin Makhdoom Faisal Saleh Hayat. This family is Gadi Nasheen of another shia pir named Shah Jeewna but now cousins are on the opposite side of political divide and Faisal Saleh Hayat has won the seat for PPP. All others are Kharal, Sial and Wattoo Jatts or Bhatti Rajputs but there is no one person in these castes to be considered their main leader based on slightly bigger holdings than others. Kharala might own quite a bit of land but then their must be 100s of Kharal landowners.
In short, the biggest landowning families are descendants of well-known Sufis and cashing in as Gaddi Nasheens. It is a combination of spiritual and landowning powers. Same is true across the River Ravi in Pakpattan where Maneka family is the keeper of Baba Farid`s legacy and spiritual continuation.
The landowning ratio is not permanent and it is sold as property like any other property. A large portion of land mentioned in the table provided by sadna in post #72 is basically bought by small and midsized farmers over the last 100 years. Before the major urban centers and businesses, land was more precious commodities and people with money used to buy land instaed of other forms of properties. Once an arid land is made cultivable by bringing water by canal system, all the land is basically bought such as in Bahawalnagar district.
The last thing I must mention here is that a crore rupee property or business in anywhere in Pakistan does not employ 20-30 families (half based on non-agriculture related services in the village) as a crore rupee worth of agriculture land owned by landowners. Even in Indian Punjab, most of the migration from Bihar and UP is in agriculture sector despite smaller land holdings. Moreover, East Punjab traditionally had smaller sized landowning due to distance from direct watering from five rivers and watered by canal system and most of the land was bought and not given away for services to the kings and raj as the case was in West Punjab.
I agree with tahmed that it is a dead horse and its corpse will disappear on its own in 10-15 years or sooner if more frequent elections are held.

Looking at the numbers and going by what dullabhatti rightly said, what difference would breaking the hold of two dozen or so large landholders make to the nation as a whole? One of the big issues in this case is that an urban clerical worker starts to compare himself with the 20 or 50 odd big landowners that he sees and starts saying why are these guys so rich and why not me. It is not the industrialist, the businessman and the civil/military officials who necessarily have the same opinion.

dullabhatti #73
You are most welcome.
A lot depends on what lies behind those figures. As PM pointed out about this table on the other land reform thread, 2.5 % landowners are shown to own 35% of the land. And for instance, the 5-150 category may be masking the total landholdings of families by family members being listed as separate titleholders, but such a family having the same social/etc impact as one single large landowner.

Also its not clear how many absolute numbers of landless are affected by which demographic of ownership and what is the correspondence between distribution of poor people and size of the local landlords landholdings. Perhaps someone can clarify for those interested.

Sadna, thanks for a very informational post. You are indeed quite resourceful.

150 acres in 1990 is already 75 acres or less this year per farm. One can easily assume that only 15% or less of the agricultural land is owned by the big landlords owning hundreds of acres. I am sure few of them are big guys owning 10,000 - 50,000 acres each numbering probably few dozens. Other than these few the land distribution is not that skewed...in fact taking out the 15% big guys, for 85% of the other land to be more evenly distributed one will need a red revolution in the land of pure. yeh kaam na army na mullah kar sakeiNge.

My conclusion now is that when someone complains about feudalism in Pakistan he is certainly refering to 2 dozen big guys who they can`t knock out..not even Pak army.

The World Bank CAS report has this table.

Distribution of Land Ownership in Pakistan 1990

Farm Size (acres).......Percent of Owners.......Percent of Total Farm Area
5 or less............................54.0 ........................................12.0
5 – 25 ..............................39.0 ........................................39.0
25 – 50.............................. 5.0 ........................................15.0
50 – 150.............................2.0 ........................................17.0
150 and above ...................0.5 ........................................17.0
All sizes ............................100.0 ....................................100.0
Source: Government of Pakistan, Agricultural Census (1990).

I couldnot locate an equivalent table for India.. But the picture seems to be that below a certain size of landholding the Indian farmer doesnot have the capital to improve his techniques and become a more productive farmer and this can lead to consolidation or a small farmer leasing his land to be tilled by a larger farmer or insolvency and debt. Land redistribution has to be accompanied by strengthening things like farmers organisations, distribution and marketing etc.

The CAS report also says `Close to 75 percent of Pakistan’s poor are landless and constitute 70 percent of the rural poor, while less than 3 percent of households owning 10 acres or more are poor.`


Here was an interesting comment on World Bank prescriptions from foodfirst.org:
``.. Listening to the case studies, it soon became clear that the World Bank is imposing a virtually identical set of policies on widely different countries, without regard for their unique histories, cultures, or patterns of land use. The policies focus on privatizing and individual titling to create markets in land, and in some countries include credit funds by which the poor acquire debts to purchase land from ``willing sellers.``

When communal lands are parceled up and individual titles are given out, the result has often been a disaster, as in the case of Thailand. Communities that had held relatively stable tenure over their land for many generations lost them in just a few years after the new titles were used as collateral for bank loans, generating destitution and despair. In cases where the poor were given credit to buy land from willing sellers, as in Brazil, Guatemala, and South Africa, the results have been no better.

Unfortunately, what wealthy landlords are willing to sell are their poorest quality lands. Rampant corruption means that the prices the poor pay for almost useless plots are inflated by 200 to 300 percent over their true value, making this form of ``land reform`` so expensive that it cannot possibly make a significant dent in the scale of landlessness, and generating debt burdens so high for the ``beneficiaries`` that 100 percent of the families interviewed in the case studies said they would not even be able to make their first payments once the several-year-long grace periods are up. Not only that, but families are required to put up so much of their own counterpart capital that the poorest - and thus the most in need of land - are completely excluded. The participants in the meeting concluded that these ``market-led land reform`` policies - to use the Bank`s terminology - amount to huge transfers of cash into the hands ofwealthy landlords without real benefits for the poor. Instead, the participants called for land reforms based on the expropriation of excess holdings of good quality lands...``

dullabhatti #70 Landholdings are also steadily shrinking in Pakistan as a growing population uses up remaining virgin territories, and (along with other trends like urbanization, opening up of jobs outside agriculture, growth of the expatriate pakistani population, and so on) it seems that a decade from now the entire issue of land reforms may be a dead horse. The failure of successive governments to fix the horse when it was still alive, and the resulting cost to at least two generations of pakistanis in general and the misery to the peasants in particular, will then pass into history as another small monument to the mismanagement of pakistan by its leaders and entrenched interests.

Thanks pakfin and Tahmad for your replies..that helps in correcting my understanding of the situation on your side. I don`t think putting a ceiling on the land holdings in East Punjab produced any political or economic repercussions. Biggest sikh land lords were in West Punjab most of whom got some land alloted in Punjab, Haryana etc but not to the extent of their preious holdings. Majority of the landowners already had smaller holdings...usually all the land used to be under the name of the family head..Only thing I know or heard about land reforms is that most families ended up transfering the land to all family members..e.g. earlier grand father had everything uder his name..say 120 acres... although his 4 sons and 12 grandsons had physically distributed the land and each owned his 10 acres, grand father held on to the ``registry`` printed on the ``ashtaam faarm``. Now they ended up paying some registration fees and regitered under ``real`` owners` names which they did not do before to avoid paying the taxes or fees. Other than that I have heard few big land lords (500 acres or so) in Ferozpur, Faridkot districts were effected slightly but frankly there was not enough excess land to take away from them. Land reforms or no reforms in East Punjab, the land holding was already shrunk to a level to be any serious problem.

Let us look at the a pricing model for a farm frowing sugercane.

Average cost of land/acre: 25000
Opportunity cost of this/yr. @10% 2500
Fertilizer Cost/acre: 3000
Seed Cost: 1000
Tractor: 1000
Water and Land Revenue: 300
TOTAL ANNUAL EXPENSE/ACRE: Rs.7800

Average Yield/Acre: 500 maunds

Average Revenue/Acre @Rs. 40/maund: Rs. 20000

Farm Workers share @25% (Net Income): Rs. 5000

Landlords Share @75%: Rs.15000

Landlords Net Income: Rs.7200

Usually a farm worker would work on say 4 acres and would net Rs. 20,000 per year. On the other hand tha landowner may own say 200 acres and hence would net Rs. 1,440,000.

Please note that this analysis is for one of the best cash crops namely sugercane and the numbers would be much less for say wheat or rice. We have also not taken into the account the fact that crops need to be rotated at least every three years. Therefore, in essence you can grow sugercane on about two thirds of your land holding at any one time as the other one third would have a rotational crop like clover growing on it, which is then plowed back into the ground and is therefore not a revenue earner. Another important point to note hear is that during lean years of drought or floods, the labourers are supported by the landlord.

If we compare the ratio of incomes here with those of an industrialist vs. a factory worker, we will see that the industrialist or trader earns manifold more than the factory or commercial worker compared to a farm worker vs. a landlord.

#64 by dullabhatti. First of all we should not look at the absolute size of the landholding. For example, land in the Multan, Sahiwal or Faisalabad area may be more productive than say land in the Potohar region or Bahawalnagar. Similarly on orchard on 200 acres in Mirpurkhas or Nawabshah would produce much more income than say 1000 acres in Thatta or Badin.

The land in Punjab and I presume it is the same in both West and East Punjab is much more productive than land in Sindh, which in turn is mch more productive than land in Balauchistan. The primary reasons being arid zones in the South and West resulting in poor quality of soil because of a lack of organic matter and control of the water supply in the North resulting in more dry patches down South.

I do not know the exact ratio of landholdings in Paksitan between small and large landowners, but I suspect that most of the land is held by larger rather than smaller landowners. Having said that, it is all relative; there would be very few landowners in Sindh owning land in the thousands of acres and fewer still in the Punjab. Most landholdings would be in the hundreds of acres, which in my opinion is not large but more like medium landholding size. The problem with owning 2 or 3 acres is that it would barely generate subsistance level earnings. There is a mix of tillers owning land vs. no land at all. Most tillers would not own any land.

As far as East Punjab isconcerned, I have heard that a lot o the reforms were carried out to break the political hold of the Sikhs, however, I do not know if this is correct.

dullabhatti #64 Here are some numbers that are indicative of the size of landholdings in Pakistan (and an anecdote, this being chowk), and the games played with land reforms:
In the 1959 land reforms, the ceiling for private ownership was fixed at 500 acres irrigated and 1,000 acres unirrigated BY INDIVIDUAL. Multiply this with the landlords` wife(s) plus children plus loyal servants and that gives you an idea of the number you are looking for. And EVEN this ``re-distribution`` was never implemented (less than a million acres, often useless land, was taken over by the government). In 1972, Bhutto reduced the ceiling to 150 and 300 acres BY INDIVIDUAL, and even these ``reforms`` were never implemented (an expatriate pakistani who had taken a sabbatical from his job in the US in hopes of pushing proper land reforms in pakistan ended up exchanging angry words with Bhutto over the latters lack of sincerity in calling for land reforms, and in quitting the assignment).

#65
``..feudals have MORE reason to realise that..``

If we are not looking solely on the merits of large landholdings, I will concede, as a comparison with other power groups, feudals have nore reason to realise that their destiny is interlinked with that of their tenants and others of their soil.

I cannot imagine what would have happened for example if in the UK, every discussion on national policies mindlessly pitted the landholdings of feudals on one side against the influence of neo-feudals among taxevading, lawbreaking industrialists, the civilian-space invading Army and externally-funded religious fundamentalists all on the other side.

Pakfin: I have few questions regarding the feudals of West Punjab. Biggest land lords that we have in East Punjab(India) own may be few hundred acres..200..may be few upto 500...anything beyond that is rare and even people owning 200 acres is very rare..most villages don`t ahve even 1 land owner who owns that much..my village has a big land area compared to many others in the neighbourhood and there is no land owner who owns more than 50 acres now. May be previous generation but not any more. Many landowners whose grand fathers owned 200 acres now have 2 or 3 acres and earn their living by leasing other people`s[absent owners like myself] land to feed their kids...some have actually started working for dihaaRi doing construction work etc.
So my question is:

- What percentage of farming land area in Pakistan is owned by few land owers who own thousands of acres?
- is it that few(1 or 2%) people own all the land and everyone else is a tiller? or some tillers also own some land of their own but not enough to survive so they lease others`? what I want to knwo is that is this a case of some people own more others less or some people own other don`t at all?

pakfin #62
``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? ``
My doing so will not prove anything to the point here because I`m an Indian and we have land ceilings.