RURAL REFORMS

Allah Nawaz Samoo

The politics of food in recently held high profile but fractious UN Summit remained
inconclusive on the ethical issue of producing bio-fuel on the cost of human survival.
Sidelining this core issue responsible for global crisis, the world leaders chose to rely, in
their joint statement, on oft-repeated promises of expanding food production, promoting
free trade and increasing aid to developing countries. Showing disgust on such a ‘model
that has brought agriculture under the control of transnational agribusiness corporations,’
the small farmer’s groups in developing countries demanded for ‘genuine agrarian
reforms with radical change in policies’.
The issues of millions of poor in countries like ours are not rooted in lack of production
or non-availability of food. There is in fact enough food available to cause, according to a
research published in a leading medical journal CMAJ, ‘a quarter of the population of
Pakistan overweight or obese and at the risk of hypertension and diabetes.’ We, at the
same time, also have about half of the population, mostly inhabited in rural areas, at
serious risk of hunger and most of them suffering from malnourishment and diseases
related to it. This stark contrast is characterized by wide economic disparity and social
injustice. The divide is deeply related to and gets strength from traditional power
structure.
Though, we have history of a plethora of projects for eliminating hunger and alleviating
poverty, but none of them has ever dared to target the issue of economic divide. Some of
the widely acclaimed programs of green-revolution decades like Village Agricultural and
Industrial Development program (1952-61), The Rural Works Program (1963-72) and
People’s Works Program (1972-80) gave some concrete results in terms of developing
physical infrastructure, engaging rural communities in economic activities, enhancing
their skills and creating employment opportunities for them. However, when government
in seventies introduced land reforms in order to complement these outcomes and to
narrow down income disparities, the initiative was rendered ineffective by influential
lobbies in power echelons to protect their interests and status.

The situation in eighties changed drastically in the wake of Afghan war. International aid
of billions of dollars embedded in varying sets of conditions and acronyms was poured in
to achieve ambitious political objectives. A new policy framework entitled as ‘Structural
Adjustment Program’ was imported and introduced. Any critique on its relevance and
effectiveness was set aside with sanctimonious attitude. A decade later, research proved
that SAP was a failure. Human Development Report 2003, by Mahbub ul Haq Human
Development Centre noted that, ‘poverty started rising after the structural adjustment
program began in 1987-88. There are various reasons for this, most of which relate to the
direct and indirect effects of macroeconomic strategy itself’

In new millennium, the same flawed strategy and its failures were further reinforced.
There was tremendous shift of investment from agriculture to non-agriculture sector. In
this so called ‘transformation towards growth’ the relocation of labor out of agriculture
was typically lagging, leaving large number of poor people in rural areas and widening
income gap. Also, it could not succeeded in developing town and village level enterprises
and creating non-farm employment opportunities for more than 34 percent of rural
households that depend on wage labor as sole source of livelihood. The result of such a
deplorable situation is not difficult to imagine. The World Bank Development Report
2008 notes, ‘Pakistan (with 2.4 percent agriculture growth rate) has been less successful
in reducing poverty, mainly because of highly unequal ownership of and access to
productive assets such as land and irrigation water’.

The report also highlights the most impressive success story of rural agriculture growth in
China, which has been responsible for decline in rural poverty from 53 percent in 1981 to
8 percent in 2001. The major underlying factor was ‘The Household Responsibility
System’ an agrarian reform implemented in 1981.This incentive system, designed to
increase yields and improve the condition of local farmers, reallocated communal land to
peasant households, creating hundreds of millions of smallholders with relative autonomy
over land use decisions and crop collection. This was followed by establishment of
‘Town and Village Enterprises’, which were industries owned by township and villages.

Justin Yifu Lin, the renowned economist, writes in ‘Reform in China: A Peasant’s
Institutional Choice’ that ‘the household responsibility system was worked out among
formers initially without knowledge and approval of the central government. It was not
imposed by the central authority and evolved spontaneously. Seeing the remarkable
effects the central authorities conceded to adopt it.’ Perhaps, for this reason late Chinese
leader Deng Xiaopang once termed it ‘a great invention of Chinese Farmers’.

The farmers in our country are also capable of making such great inventions if allowed to
have a little more access to social justice. A genuine agrarian reform is necessary which
gives landless and farming people ownership and control of the land they work and
returns territories to indigenous peoples. The right to land must be free of discrimination
on the basis of gender, religion, race, social class or ideology; the land belongs to those
who work it.
nsamoo@gmail.com