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If you engage someone (especially an urbanite) who is droning on about the "missing" land reforms in Pakistan, you'll be disappointed that their arguments simplistically start and conclude at feudal-this and feudal-that. Land reforms are important (explained shortly), and their tenuous link in abolishing modern-day, residual feudalism is also there. But these reforms are a very hard thing to implement: for government as well as the peasant-patron combine.
This column does not claim to be experts on land reforms, but feels that the conversation for land reforms--specially brought up in current political climate--needs to be grounded in the context of reforms history as well as current realities. But first, what exactly constitutes land reforms?
According to Encyclopedia Britannica, "land reform (is) a purposive change in the way in which agricultural land is held or owned, the methods of cultivation that are employed, or the relation of agriculture to the rest of the economy. Reforms such as these may be proclaimed by a government, by interested groups, or by revolution."
Available literature shows land reforms have meant different things to different reformers and different societies in different eras. To some, purpose of land reforms is "titular": take land from large private holdings and redistribute among the landless, besides establish laws for fairness in tenant-owner transactions.
Whereas others have an "agrarian" argument: very small plow-fields and very large farmlands both hurt agricultural productivity, so reforms must focus on finding the right farm size, keeping in mind factors like crop yield, human productivity, farming practices, and irrigation patterns.
Then there are others who advocate "fringe" reforms: improve the existing agricultural productivity by incentivising the landholders and growers through gradual improvements. Areas cited for intervention include credit availability, farm-to-market roads, farmer education, technology transfer, crop marketing and extension services, farmers cooperatives, etc.
The need for land reform is pressing in view of current landholding patterns that intensify both land and gender inequalities. As per Pakistan's Agriculture Census 2010, about one percent of landholders (50 acres and above) owned 29 percent of farming area, whereas 67 percent of smallholders (less than five acres) owned just 18 percent of the area. Only three percent of the land is reportedly owned by women.
Then there is the issue of very small average farm size. The Census shows there were 8.26 million private farms on some 52.9 million acres of farm area (80% is cultivated area). That gives an average farm size of 6.4 acres across Pakistan: 8.8 acres for Sindh, 5.6 acres for Punjab, and 3.6 acres for Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP). Using SBPs definition, these farm sizes fall well inside the subsistence holding category (up to 12.5 acres in Punjab and KP, and up to 16 acres in Sindh).
Current holding patterns atrophy optimal land usage. Operationally, farms in the subsistence category (up to 12.5 acres) were 89 percent of total farms, but only had 48 percent of the total farming area available to them. The economic holdings (12.5-50 acres) constituted 10 percent of farms with 31 percent farming area with them. Above-economic holdings (50 acres and above) were 1.1 percent of total farms but had 22 percent of farmland under their use (detailed break-up is provided in the figure).
Clearly, something must be done about that, and soon! But the history of land reforms in Pakistan doesn't inspire much hope. Current Pakistani geography has had three rounds of comprehensive land reforms since 1947: first was in 1959 (Ayub Khan era) and the subsequent ones in 1972 and 1977 (Zulfikar Ali Bhutto era).
All three reforms focused on land redistribution by placing ceilings on large landholdings (ceilings narrowed with each round). Little emphasis was paid to land usage. The 1972 reforms were the most-radical of them all, announcing zero compensation for lands freed up above the ceilings (resumable area) and giving immense legal cover to tenants from landowner exploitation.
Much has already been written about how the three rounds compare, so for paucity of space, this column won't go there, but lets move to the most-important aspect: impact. Vali Nasr, a US academic and former diplomat, wrote in International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society [Vol.10, No. 2, 1996]:
"In 1976 the government again reduced the ceiling on irrigated land, resuming an additional 1.8 million acres. Such measures, however, were a poor substitute for effective land reform. By the end of the 1970s Ayub Khan and Bhutto's measures had benefited only 272,000 out of the total 10 million eligible rural population and only 4.5 million acres of cultivated land (less than 10% of the total) were redistributed. The state, even at the heights of its power, proved incapable of reigning in the landed elite. The two land reforms at best clipped their wings, but they remained the most powerful force in rural Pakistan."
In their preliminary study in 1974, titled The 1972 Land Reforms in Pakistan and their Economic Implications, Ronald Herring and M. Ghaffar Chaudhry of PIDE note positive impacts such reforms (in the period 1959-1974) have had on land redistribution, cropping intensity, income redistribution, smallholder productivity, and employment.
However, the study also forewarned the government about various complex implementation issues, which later did the reforms in. Herring and Chaudhry, like other noted scholars, pointed out that its a Herculean task to enforce land reforms in a rural setting like Pakistan's. Perhaps shocked by the legal loopholes, enforcement inadequacy, systemic corruption and landed elites subversive workarounds, authors firmly noted:
"The alternatives to the supervision-intervention regulative model would be either to adopt a laissez faire policy, foregoing any attempt to intervene, or to make the actual cultivator the owner of the land." That statement is not a shrug, but rather reflects a hopeless situation in the face of implementation chasms.
Learning from what happened in the 1960s and 1970s--all kinds of issues surfaced, like ceiling concealment, illegal transfers, ensuing reform-neutralizing provincial laws, forced tenant ejections, legal limbos, etc.--it is a prerequisite to reform the land revenue administrations before devising land reforms.
Then there are social and financial issues that hamper implementation. State may commendably provide subsistence holding to a landless tenant or smallholder, but, if the grower is already indebted, s/he will not be able to finance even working capital, leave alone invest in new crop varieties or farming machines. If the state is not there for some handholding, through, for instance, readily-available and affordable credit supply, rural dynamics may not change. The smallholder will become further obligated to local fiefs and may eventually sell that land and retreat to old ways: sharecropping.
One would close this piece with the emphasis on land redistribution as well as optimal land usage for socio-economic development. But, there is a reality that barely gets confronted: land reforms are currently un-Islamic, hence illegal, in Pakistan. In the 1990 verdict of the decade-long Qazalbash Waqf case, the Supreme Court's Shariat Appellate Bench gave a 3-2 split verdict that various provisions of Land Reforms regulations of 1972 and 1977 were against Shariah. The latest law, the 1977 Act, thus remains stalled.
Its been a quarter century since, but no government has forcefully challenged that ruling. For over three years now, a petition from Workers Party Pakistan, which plead the 1990 ruling to be overturned, has been reportedly languishing in the Supreme Court. Some observers say that the door for land reforms is practically closed. Others hope civil society can rally for the cause and judiciary will reconsider on social welfare grounds. There is a view that land reforms can still be packaged without violating the verdict.
Whatever happens, it must be remembered that land reforms are not as simple as some quarters make them seem. Nor are they a magic wand that will address all social ills with a single swoop. They have been tried before, without much luck. For next time be different, if there is a next time, appropriate lessons need to be learnt.

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