2024 Elections: feudalism continues its reign
The writer has served as Chief Secretary, K-P. He has an MA Hons from Oxford University and is the author of two books of English poetry 'The Dragonfly & Other Poems' and 'Bibi Mubarika and Babur’
According to a Geo-Jang Election Cell report, during the 2024 elections, out of 266 directly elected National Assembly seats (60 more are reserved for indirect election of women and 10 for minorities, making up a total of 336), a total of 112 or 42% of returned members are described as agriculturists, a polite euphemism for feudalism. These are individuals whose main source of income is derived from land, its rent or product, some possessing vast holdings of up to 1000 to 5000 acres (held individually or in the name of family members or benamis) and others with possessions between 50 to 100 acres. The vast majority of dependants on land are peasants, sharecroppers, wage labourers and menials.
A total of 83 members are reported to belong to the business. A number of such individuals, which may safely be placed at 25-30, have converted from agriculture to business or industry, thereby increasing members linked to feudalism to 145 constituting 54% of the 266 directly elected NA members.
Of the three members who are placed in the group of gaddi nashin (heirs of saints or holy men), they mostly belong to the feudal class, since, historically, their religious position is accompanied by sizable land ownerships. This increased the feudal representation, spread over all parties, in the National Assembly to 148 or 55% out of 266 directly elected members.
The most numerous of these elected landlords belong to the province of Punjab, followed by Sindh and a small number belong to the irrigated areas of Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
In the largest province feudalism is most prominent in the 8 to 10 divisions of central and southern Punjab while Sindh has the presence of feudalism in some of its starkest forms.
The representation of landlords becomes more conspicuous taking those indirectly elected to the reserved seats into account. Since reserved seats mostly go to relatives of the directly elected, or those tied through transactional favors, it is fair to conclude that about 50-55% of seats go to individuals belonging to the same economic class. The representation of the landed class in the NA would thus range around 175 or 52% of the total membership of 336, by far the largest, most powerful group with shared social, cultural, economic and political interests, especially vis a vis state policies.
Despite various land reforms the land tenurial system in Pakistan, to this day, is marked by both acute inequality and depressed agricultural productivity.
Indian land reforms reduced holdings to 10 to 44 acres across various states. One result is quite noticeable: in Indian Punjab one acre yields 3.5 tons of wheat compared to 2.8 tonnes in Pakistan.
Out of 2.8 million acres under the Ayub Land reforms, only 35% were resumed and redistributed whereas the 1971 and 1977 land reforms covered merely 3.5 million acres, most of which circumvented resumption. Out of the total cultivated area of 54.5 million acres, only 11.5% was targeted with hardly 35 to 36% redistributed.
In 1989 the Shariat Bench of the Supreme Court declared land reforms un-Islamic, against which an appeal by the Worker’s Party is still pending before the Supreme Court.
Landed wealth and patronage following therefrom and political access, through elections, to state institutions and services such as revenue, judiciary, police, agricultural credit and machinery, irrigation, health, education are mutually reinforcing and are two sides of the same coin.
In addition most governments, civil or military, protect, encourage, nurture and cultivate landlords in order to buttress their political interests, position and power.
Elections are a major route to power in society. It becomes an instrument to endorse and reinforce the historic wealth and economic supremacy of the landed by obtaining access to and a share in the state delivery apparatus.
How does the control of landlords over elections work out? More than 60-70% of people in Pakistan depend upon agriculture, directly or indirectly, for their livelihoods.
According to World Bank estimates (2022), nearly 50% of rural households do not own any land. (Nicolas Martin: Politics, Landlords and Islam in Pakistan: Routledge, 2016. Pp 22). In a typical village of rural Punjab nearly 35% of the population consists of landless peasants, wage workers or small landowners working as sharecroppers dependent upon large landowners. Besides 10-15% of the residents are kammis i.e. menials or performing different services for a fixed share in wheat crop and access to wood and fodder. (ibid)
Most of them live under ‘debt bondage’ and in houses built on land owned by a landlord under constant threat of eviction for failure to fall in line with the landlord’s wishes in voting or multifarious issues of everyday life. The owners are mostly ‘absentee landlords’ living lavishly in big cities.
Barely 5% of landholders possess 65% of total farmland and 65% of small farmers hold 15% of the total farm land. (Farooq Tariq: Small Farmers, Peasants, Landless Workers and Agriculture: International Viewpoint: 2019).
During the green revolution and even today it is the large farmers who have access to agricultural credit and subsidies to finance new farm inputs and machinery. In 2018, less than 20,000 big landlords received agricultural credit worth Rs227.7 billion. Contrarily 1.75 million small farmers received farm credits equal to Rs183.6 billion. (Tariq: ibid)
The present relationship of the landed classes with the state is a continuum of a system in which the emperors, later followed by the British colonial power, pursued indirect rule through local landed nobility by extending titles, patronage through grant of lands, the right to collect land revenue and maintain order, in return for loyalty, tax collection and maintaining order and stability.
Large land grants were awarded and the landed aristocracy was inducted into lower posts in army and police and as patwaris and tehsildars.
Democratisation ushered after the 19th century did not bring any fundamental change. Every regime, civil or military, has co-opted and promoted the landed aristocracy. The tendency on part of military dictatorships to promote local government was an attempt to undo populist politics and create a loyal support base for its own longevity.
‘Parochial politics’ was promoted, defeating the evolution of strong, national level ideological political parties addressing broader issues of social welfare and social justice.
The impact such a constituted National Assembly with a crucial role in law making and policy formulations are not too difficult to configure vis a vis Income, Wealth and Death Taxes on agriculture as well as subsidies granted for fertilisers, seed, pesticides and irrigation water.
True democracy is yet far off.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 10th, 2024.
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