Righting land rights

Structural reform in rural economy, especially ownership structure, is crucial to reduce poverty, improve productivity

While the appeal to review the Shariat Bench judgment on land reform awaits consideration at the Supreme Court, some new evidence adds urgency to the resolution of the issue. In a survey carried out for the Karachi-based Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research, Kaiser Bengali, a fellow economist, has brought out sharp differences across provinces in land distribution. As a consequence, one shoe size will not fit all when it comes to land reform policy. The districts were carefully selected. These included Charsadda, Rahim Yar Khan, Muzaffargarh, Jafferabad, Shikarpur, Dadu and Thatta. Swat could not be included as permission was declined.


The data for Sindh districts confirms the common perception of an unbroken feudal stranglehold. In Shikarpur, 85 per cent of the farmers are tenants/sharecroppers. The corresponding percentages for Dadu and Thatta were 70 and 76. Jafferabad in Balochistan presented a similar picture with 71 per cent, but it is less feudal than Sindh. However, the distribution of farmers by size category revealed by the survey destroys the routinely held view about the predominance of feudal hold in south Punjab. Rahim Yar Khan and Muzaffargarh have the lowest percentage of tenants/share-croppers, 10 and eight in that order. These districts also have the largest percentage of small farmers — 58 and 61 per cent. What is happening here? Where have the rest of the farms gone? The answer lies in the rise of leasing. Lessees constitute 27 and 28 per cent, respectively. Traditionally, land reformers have campaigned for suitable ceilings on land ownership. For leasing, it seems, the sky is the limit. Most leased farms are into the cultivation of cash crops. This has serious implications for an increasingly food insecure population. Their management style is corporate, but without any social responsibility. While tenants and sharecroppers have some legal rights, workers toiling on corporate farms, many among them women, have none. They are wage workers, but the minimum wage is not applicable to them. Trade union laws do not apply either. Even white-collar workers, mostly agriculture and veterinary graduates and MBAs, live at the whims of the corporate management. Charsadda in Khyber-Pakhtunkwa stands in the middle. Its distribution comprises 58 per cent small farmers and 35 per cent tenants/sharecroppers. Leasing with five per cent is in its initial stages. The percentages of large and medium farmers are in single digit.

How small is a small farm? According to the survey, those in the one to five acres category range from 47 per cent in Thatta to 86 per cent in Muzzafargarh. The range for six to 10 acres is eight per cent in Shikarpur to 24 per cent in Dadu. The area under small ownership is even smaller. In Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa districts, 81 per cent of the farms in the size category of one to four acres commanded 33 per cent of the area. In the Punjab districts, 64 per cent of one to four acre farms had 22 per cent of the area. In Sindh, 56 of the one to four acre category held only 15 per cent of the area. In the same category for Balochistan, 36 per cent cultivate only three per cent of the area.
It is a small survey and statisticians will find a number of sampling errors in it. But it does convey a message that the agricultural census leaves us guessing about. The message is that structural reform does not stop at privatisation, taxation and energy. Structural reform in the rural economy, especially the structure of ownership, is crucial to reducing poverty, improving productivity and developing a democratic culture.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 25th, 2014.

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