pervez.tahir@tribune.com.pk
In a country where exclusion is becoming a norm rather than a despicable exception, seminars on inclusive development sound like voices in the wilderness. One hopes that what the octogenarian Sartaj Aziz said at the seminar on Economic Policies for Inclusive and Sustainable Development in South Asia, organised in Islamabad by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute and by Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, was not the act of a lone ranger. After all, besides his encyclopedic knowledge of economic policymaking in Pakistan and experience of what works and what does not, he is the prime minister’s adviser on national security and foreign affairs. According to a report in this paper, “He said a prerequisite to inclusive growth was land reforms that also ensured benefits to small landholders.” (The Express Tribune, February 25, 2014).
Since many years, rising landlessness is making rural poverty and inequality extremely intractable problems. The PML-N government has announced a number of programmes to place social and financial assets in the hands of the deprived and the excluded in the urban areas. Land reform is their best rural analogue. It gives physical assets in the hands of the mass of the rural population. However, the PML-N has first to make up its mind on the principal legal obstacle in the way. Legislation passed in 1977 to fix the land ceiling at 100 irrigated and 200 unirrigated acres was not implemented in letter and spirit. In 1990, the Supreme Courts’ Shariat Appellate Bench declared this legislation un-Islamic. A constitutional petition challenging the verdict has been pending before the Supreme Court. Both Punjab and Sindh governments have opposed the petition. In view of the technological advances since 1977, the land ceiling needs to be scaled down further. Similarly, distribution of the state land to small holders is a widely acceptable form of privatisation. While nationalisation of land failed almost everywhere, small, privatised family-operated units of land have been the success stories.
Pakistan has receded from the position of a growth leader to a growth laggard for its failure to put in place institutional reforms to ensure participation and inclusion. Land reform is a means to ensure that change in the rural areas. Land reform contributes to equity as well as efficiency. There is no better safety net than owning a piece of land. It also creates the strongest incentives for investment. Efficiency or agricultural productivity gets a boost as owners optimise supervision cost, which can be enormous in agriculture. With less than five per cent of owners owning 41 per cent of area and 67 per cent of these owners owning less than five acres (Census of Agriculture 2010), the prospects of unleashing the productive forces of agriculture to lift the economy out of a low level growth trap and rising food insecurity are limited. As a matter of fact, there is a tendency for small owners to sell more land than they buy and large owners to buy more land than they are selling.
The economy, we are told, is one of the three important dimensions of national security. Within the economy, agriculture continues to occupy a pre-eminent position. Land reform, coupled with a credit and appropriate technology package, can double the agricultural output within three to four years. This will also have the effect of drastically reducing rural poverty and inequality. Before that, the PML-N government will have to take a position in the Supreme Court in support of the excluded population of the rural areas.
Postscript: I did not realise that while writing on Meekal Ahmed on February 12, I would myself end up undergoing angioplasty by the evening. My wife and I cannot thank enough for the messages of support still pouring in.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 28th, 2014.
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Wow this article makes no sense whatsoever. If we go by the same logic most of the PSE's the country is trying to privatize should be broken up into smaller lots and just handed over to the workers. While we are at it why dont we shut down Mian Manshas big empire and why stop at just land why not take Malik Riaz and Seth Abids real estate assets why should we try and achieve equality in rural areas when most of us know that real poverty is in the cities where you see people in the hundreds if not the thousands sleeping outside under bridges in parks etc. I bet the Drs Doctorate is not in economics or finance or a monetary field for if it were he would have realized that all the countries that are ahead of us in terms of agri produce do not put any such limits on land holding and quite the contrary they try and make the holdings as large as possible which can be managed easily with mechanization and thus achieving economies of scale. The problem dear Dr isnt large holding but rather its the smaller holdings which are the cause for the agri sector not being able to flourish properly and with smaller holdings come ancient practices as witnessed by yours truly in this day and age I have seen sowing being done with cattle. It may be good for the environment you know being clean and all, but we dont have to time to worry about environmental issues not when we have one of the lowest carbon footprints in the world. I oppose distribution of state land to landless farmers these lands should be sold to the highest bidder as with the PSE's. Its time we put archaic thinking and practices to where they truly belong in the past and lets move forward without biases with whats best for Pakistan. Thank you
Isn't this half a century old problem? All the wisdom contained in this masterly article will alas, fall on deaf ears.
Well-written!