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KRC pleads for land reforms
SHR Jahfery
Islamabad—Vast estates run by feudal landlords who command enormous
economic and political power in Pakistan are condemning their
tenants to poverty. On some of these estates, debt bondage has
forced 1.8 million people to work on the land for no pay,
generations after generations, according to the campaigning group
Anti-Slavery International report. On others, sharecropping systems
are practiced; under which landless tenants hand over between
two-thirds and half of the crops they produce to the landowner.
“Without distributing land among tenants and landless peasants,
there is no possibility of progress. The end of feudalism is a must
for modernizing society. Until effective land reforms are carried
out, poverty can never be eliminated,” Farooq Tariq,
secretary-general of the Kissan Rabita Committee KRC an alliance of
22 peasant organizations, said. Unlike other countries in the
region, including India, Pakistan did not carry out land reforms
after 1947, and attempts in the 1950s and 1970s to reduce the size
of land holdings had limited impact.
“Land reform has not taken place because the lawmakers in many cases
themselves have large land holdings and will never want to transfer
ownership to tenants. There will be no land reforms until the people
are in control of governance,” Mubashir Hasan, a former finance
minister and social activist, told IRIN.
Former finance minister Hassan said about 2 percent of households
control more than 45 percent of the land area. Powerful farmers have
also taken advantage of government subsidies in water and
agriculture, and benefited from technological improvements which
have boosted yields, according to the World Bank. According to the
World Bank, 33 percent of Pakistan’s 162 million people live below
the poverty line. By 1977 the biggest estates had only surrendered
about 520,000 hectares, and nearly 285,000 hectares had been
redistributed among some 71,000 farmers. Around 3,529 landowners
have 513,114 holdings of more than 40.5 hectares in irrigated areas,
and 332,273 holdings of more than 40.5 hectares in non-irrigated
areas, according to the government’s annual Economic Survey. Farming
contributes 21 percent to gross domestic product (GDP) and employs
44 percent of the workforce, according to the government’s annual
Economic Survey. Of the total land area of 80.4 million hectares,
about 22 million are cultivated, according to official data. Nearly
65 percent of this cultivated area is in Punjab, about 25 percent in
Sindh and 10 percent in the North West Frontier Province and
Balochistan.
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