LAND REFORM EXPERIENCES

SOME LESSONS FROM

ACROSS THE GLOBE

Praveen Jha
Atul K. Singh
Namita S. Nayak
Subah Dayal

An Advocacy Document Prepared for

Ekta Parishad, India

Land Reform Experiences

Some Lessons From Across The Globe

First Printing 2007

Authors:
Praveen Jha
Atul K. Singh
Namita S. Nayak
Subah Dayal

Published by
Ekta Parishad
Gandhi Bhavan, Shyamla Hills,
Bhopal 462002, Madhya Pradesh, India
Ph: 09 1755 4223821
Email: ektaparishad@yahoo.com
Website: www.ektaparishad.org

Printed by
Systems Vision, New Delhi

Contents
1. Introduction..............................................................................................................................7
2. Land Reform and its Socio-Economic Outcomes ...........................................................19
3. Social and Political Processes Underlying Land Reform..............................................80
4. Womens Right to Land: A Neglected Issue..................................................................112
5. Conclusion............................................................................................................................114
Bibliography.........................................................................................................................118

Preface

rguably, the first great school of thought in modern political

economy, namely the Physiocrats in the 18th century
France, considered only labor working on land to be productive
labor, terming the rest as sterile labor. Though this definition
of productive labor was contested by Adam Smith, and may
be considered even outrageous today, given the significance of
other kinds of labor in the economy, fact of the maer remains
that it is labor on the fields, which gives existence to various
other kinds of labor and human enterprise on the face of this
earth. For the very existence of a civilized human life, labor has
to work on land. Land and labor have been at the very core of
human existence since times immemorial. Therefore, it is not
surprising that since the advent of human civilization, wars,
rebellions, movements, struggle of masses have, in substantial
measures, been around the issue of land, and the labor working
on it.
Since the Physiocrats, of course, Economics/Political
Economy in particular and Social Sciences in general, have
witnessed a mind-blowing explosion of arguments and
knowledge; nevertheless, centrality of land in facilitating well
being through economic transformation continues to be an
important argument. In particular, at the current juncture the
importance of access to land for the rural masses, in ensuring
decent livelihood in most developing countries is generally
acknowledged throughout the entire academic and policy
advocacy spectrum.
The land question has been a relatively understudied
question in terms of processes and linkages with the socioeconomic and political dynamics, particularly in terms of
the niy-griy at the grassroots level in most developing
countries. Ownership of a piece of land is not only a crucial
4

contributor to a sense of belonging in such societies and critical

in facilitating well-being of the masses, it is our contention
that in most contemporary developing countries, importance
of land as a basis for citizenship and economic justice cannot
be overemphasized. And yet, efforts at land reforms have been,
more oen than not, severely compromised by the political
institutions and processes in the respective countries. The fact
that political elites are also the landed elite may answer a
part of the question of difficulty of land reforms. In addition,
international institutions increasingly shape and influence the
land reforms agenda today.
This monograph tries to examine the successful cases,
of the recent experiences of land reforms across the globe,
focusing particularly on developing countries and latecomers
to industrial economic transformation. Chapter one highlights
the centrality of access to land in ensuring a decent livelihood.
Furthermore, we also recollect the argument advanced by several
scholars that access to land not only influences the livelihood
capability of masses, but also the context and forces of broad
based economic growth. Chapter two takes a look at the socioeconomic outcomes of land reforms in different countries with
varying degrees of success. Chapter three tries to locate the
political and socio-economic processes crucial in creating a
conducive environment for land reforms. Chapter four engages
with a relatively neglected, but extremely important issue of
land rights for women. Finally, we highlight some of the key
issues as concluding remarks in our last chapter. We are grateful
to a number of scholars and activists who have, directly or
indirectly, influenced this monograph and hope that it is of
some help in Ekta Parishads momentous mission of pushing
for land reforms in India.

1
Introduction

sset poverty more oen than not lies at the core of poverty. Inaccessibility to land
is one of the fundamental determinants of poverty, and land redistribution is a
powerful weapon against poverty. Lack of assets is an effect as well as a cause of poverty
in terms of income opportunities, consumption, capability building of people and their
institutions. The term asset poverty indicates a vicious circle. People without assets
tend to be consumption-poor because they rely mainly on selling their labor in poorly
paid markets (i.e., on adverse terms), have nothing to sell or mortgage in hard times,
and consequently are economically dependent and politically weak. Access to land and
natural resources, invariably, have defined not only economic, but also social and political
deprivation of the masses in the developing world. However, these deprivations have
also generated powerful forces of protest, which have either resulted in a change of
political structuring itself, or have succumbed to the structuring of the extant political
construct. While the spirit of redistributive land reforms came from peasant mobilizations
during the nationalist struggle in colonized countries, the content of land reforms in
most of these countries, except for China, Cuba and Korea, came from the needs of
transforming their economies into modern industrial ones to which land relations were
seen to be a boleneck. This is the story across the globe, be it Africa, Asia or Latin
American countries. However, aer a certain period of time the land question was an
avoidable issue in most of these countries.
Land reforms came on the national and international agenda in a major way in the
post-World-War II period. In the free world, the newly independent countries, enamored
by the development path followed by the capitalist world (unmindful of the historical
contingencies of that path, of which colonialism was one!), were all set to chart out a
similar path for their economies. In doing so they were led by the transition theory,
which posed the classic transition problem requiring agriculture to provide both surplus
and labor for the growth of a modern industrial economy. Distribution of land here
came in as a structural boleneck in effecting a successful transition of the economy.
The very nature of the problem placed distribution second to the primary concern of
efficiency in agricultural production, which would release resources (capital and labor)
for investment in the modern industrial sector. Of course, equity consideration too
weighed-in due to the political considerations of these free states, but nevertheless was
fashioned in a way to play a seconding role to efficiency considerations. This comes to
be seen in the content of their land reforms package as well its outcome. This is not
to say that efficiency of production and distribution are contradictory, rather quite the
7

opposite. It is an equitous distribution that is a pre-condition of sustainable expanding

production; otherwise it would severely compromise the function of the other blade
(that of demand) of the famous Marshallian scissors.
Similarly, land reforms came on the national and international agenda at least in
part with an explicit political motive of containing communism from feeding on the
fire of wide unrest across the newly free world emanating from a highly iniquitous
land holding paern, which was severely compromising livelihood capabilities of the
rural-agrarian masses. Most importantly, in most countries, national movements (oen
built with strong support of the peasantry) prioritized issues of economic justice for the
masses, which obviously included redistribution of land. But the motive underwent a
transition over time. Land reforms took a different orientation under the guidance of
the global guardians of the free world, which sold it out to the developing world very
forcefully through their hegemonic institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF.
The focus now was on market-led agrarian reforms. However, to put the agency issue
in a proper perspective, it is important to locate the instrumentality of land reforms in
terms of what is sought to be delivered; whether it is capability of earning livelihood,
a source of well being to the masses, or is it agrarian transformation. It is the intent of
the policy regime, which would decide the choice of agency of land reforms.
Land assumes critical significance in rural areas where entire social, economic and
political life is woven around it. With agriculture and primary sector activities being
the primary source of income for the majority of population in the developing world,
paern of land ownership assumes a critical significance, not only in decent livelihood
capability of the masses, but also in their general well-being. Manifestations of ownership
of land and corresponding relations of production are not limited to food security and
questions of subsistence. Of course, physical subsistence is the most primary human
need, and fulfillment of all other needs is in crucial ways dependent on this basic need
of food. Positioning of the individual in the relations of exchange giving entitlement
to food is more or less determinant and indicative of his or her capability of fulfilling
other basic needs of a decent livelihood. A landless laborer selling his labor through the
day to be able to barely feed himself and his dependents can neither afford education,
nor health in case of a medical emergency. Neither can he afford to bargain his wages,
risking his daily bread. His state of existence is more or less defined by his positioning
vis--vis the food market. Here his daylong labor sells for a basic subsistence quantity
of food grains, leaving him with practically nothing to substantiate his human existence
except for the breath he takes. Therefore, issues of rights over land and access to cannot
be seen as merely a maer of equity in land distribution. It must deal with land as
a productive asset, which gives access to basic needs of human existence, a source of
decent livelihood.
The reforms, therefore, have to conceptualize land as a productivity unit, rather
than merely being an exercise in transferring of titles. It has been seen in the land
reform exercises across countries, that transferring of title itself does not convert into
entitlements in the market and polity. There are ample evidences of concentration of
land re-manifesting itself due to unavailability and inaccessibility of the complementary
8

resources, which would fructify in productive powers of land such as water, credit etc.
Any production enterprise in these circumstances more oen than not results in losses,
which take form of indebtedness, finally leading to alienation of land amounting to
counter-reforms. In case of regions that are under forests and rich in mineral wealth,
rights of the indigenous population for habitation along with the rights of productive
exploitation have to be recognized. Declaring these indigenous segments, as encroachers,
and forbidding them from accessing the only source of livelihood and way of life they
have known so far would amount to an effective decapacitising these segments of any
possibility of a decent livelihood. And it is in this context, that land has to be seen in
its relation with water and natural resources. An equitable distribution of land with an
oligopoly over water would yet mean substantive inequity in terms of productive and
social capacity. Similarly, forests have to be seen as productive resources that not only
provide the inhabitants a livelihood, but also a way of life far simple and equitous than
what modern societies have to offer.
As mentioned above, it is the policy regime which not only decides the content,
but also the possibilities and limitations of any enterprise of land reforms. Any effort
at land reforms cannot be seen in disjunction with the macro-economic policy regime.
It is a given fact that land reforms cannot deliver against the spirit of macro-economic
regime in place in the country. In fact, irrespective of its packaging and content, its
deliverance would be in consonance with the policy regime of the day. Macro-economic
policy regime not only allows and strengthens, but also structures and enforces a certain
paern of exchange relations. Exchange relations determine distributive outcomes, which
in turn effect relations of production. A just and equitable distribution of productive
potential could end in highly iniquitous distribution outcomes given the way macroeconomic policy regime shapes and enforces the relations of exchange.
A conducive macro-economic policy regime, therefore, is necessary for any effective
move towards land reform. It has been a historical experience that an open trade (mostly
one way) policy regime necessarily leads to a concentration process in the agricultural
sector and a simultaneous marginalization of the already marginal segments. Experiences
of developing countries across continents speak of the indigenous population and farmers
loosing their land and being pushed to the margins of existence by the ever-expanding
plantations and farms catering to the export-policy regime. Not only that, entire agrarian
economies can be seen to have been wiped out in export promotion drives led by minerals
and oil in Africa. No amount of land reforms effort would succeed in delivering the
goods in a policy environment that prioritizes production over distribution. Ironically,
in doing so the regime severely compromises on both, production and distribution.
A substantive inequity in earning capacity would mean an ineffective demand, which
would dent profit realization and hence severely compromise production itself. A
bludgeoning production would then require continual market (external or internal or
both) expansion, leading to similar processes of concentration and consequent needs of
creating, capturing newer markets.
In absence of a conducive macro-economic policy regime, the entire effort of land
reforms would be futile on the count of delivering on the core issues of equity and
9

decent livelihood capability. Experiences across the globe have seen concentration of
land in few hands, as policy regime gets oriented towards market, in particular the
international market. The industrial revolution in Britain, colonial experiences of todays
developing world, late twentieth century export-oriented policy regimes in Africa, Asia
and Latin America are all undisputed evidence of this process of concentration seing
in, and being reinforced by the macro-economic policy environment.
Land has come back very strongly on national and international agenda once
again, but with a very different driving force with very different intentions behind it.
International institutions have been a major player, both in the comeback and in the
framing of the land reforms agenda in the developing countries across the globe, in
particular over last fieen to twenty years. Even where land reforms have been pushed
into the limelight by pressure built-up by indigenous groups (Brazil, Zimbabwe, Ghana,
Mozambique, and Philippines), the content of the reform program has been shaped in
accordance with the principles advocated by these institutions.
While this comeback of land issues may be argued as a welcome development,
the context and ideals under which it is being carried out, the breach between the
targeted beneficiaries and the ultimate beneficiaries casts doubt on the real intent of
the program. The priorities of the state-led land reform were the landless poor people
and the destitute. However, the priorities over which the land question is going to be
seled under the policies of the World Bank, given its effects on beneficiaries, clearly
amounts to a comprehensive counter-reform program of yesteryears, with an enticing
slogan of decentralization. Given the triple squeeze (cost-price-employment) of todays
structural adjustment and open frontier policies, the relevance of land to the livelihood
of masses cannot be underestimated.
This monograph draws on some case studies of land reforms in different countries.
An aempt is made to reproduce the role of peasant organizations and civil societies
in bringing land reform issues to the forefront. Though the state is the main actor in
the land reform process, the role played by peasants, workers, in fact the society as a
whole should not be underestimated. No social group is more conservative than a land
owning peasantry, and none is more revolutionary than a peasantry that owns too lile
land or pays too high a rental, argues Thiesenhusen (1989). Even for charting out a high
growth path, inequity in distribution - be it of income, or assets, cannot be afforded as
it not only distorts the production structure, has a built in demand-deficiency syndrome,
but also entails a high cost economy. The welfare burdens, social tensions, degradation
of the environment, political instabilities, the costly flood of refugees and migrants it
is evident from a very small list itself that the costs are distributed across classes. In
this respect, poverty has become a luxury, which even the rich can no longer afford in
the long run (Jazairy, Alamgir and Panuccio, 1992).
Ironically, there has been global campaign against poverty, under the tutelage of
Breon Woods Institutions. Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers have been prepared for
different countries (of course with similar prescriptions and proscriptions!), and aid is
being pumped in via the civil society groups (notice the state has to retreat here too
under the World Bank prescription) for combating poverty. Surely, the importance of
10

land reforms could not have been missed in this highly charged campaign against
poverty. In fact, a World Bank study (quoted in Thompsom, 2003, 413) observes that
implementing land reform has a similar effect on poverty to a 10 per cent increase in
per capita income. Likewise, Bharat Dogra refer to a study by FAO which estimates
that redistribution of only 5 per cent of farmland in India, coupled with improved
access to water, could reduce rural poverty levels by 30 per cent compared to what it
would otherwise be (Dogra, 2002). Besley and Burgess (2000), in their recent empirical
work on the subject, make a persuasive case and argue that land reforms in India, as
and where implemented, have had a robust impact in reducing poverty. A one time
redistribution of assets can in an environment of imperfect markets is associated with
permanently high levels of growth. Cross-country regression clearly demonstrates that
inequality in the distribution of land ownership is associated with lower subsequent
growth (Birdsall & Londono 1918; Deininger& Square 1998, Deininger & Olinto World
Bank, 2001 world development report). At the household level, asset ownership has a
clear impact on subsequent growth possibilities (Blanchflower & Oswald 1998; Hoff 1996).
Contribution of a more equitous distribution of land ownership to human development
indicators comes out very powerfully in the country experiences, such as that of China
vis--vis India (Burgess, 1999).

Importance of land
Land has been a major determinant of social status, political power and class structure
since times immemorial. It is the main asset around which power system and social
hierarchy gets structured, at least in rural society (Uphoff, 2003). Owning a piece of
land gives one a very immediate and physical sense of citizenship in one country. As
Penn has rightly observed in much of the world today the ownership of land carries
with it ownership to government - the right to tax, the right to judge, the power to
enact and enforce police regulations. As Dore (1958) argues, the land ownership is a
decisive determinant of the social structure, of the level of agricultural production, of the
well-being of the mass of the population, and increasingly in this age when ideologies
transcend frontiers, of the stability of the political system. Inequality in access to land
in whatever form, stands in the path of development. Teeming slums, people under
flyovers with died hopes of a possibility for a beer future are the results of this
inequality. This story does not end in one generation; it transcends generations, severely
limiting any development potential worth its name.
Barracloughs observation that existing inequalities in the distribution of
wealth, power and social status, which in turn impede the efficient use of disposable
resources, depress the rates of investment in industry as well as in agriculture and
prevent the achievement of minimum social and political stability, though made in the
context of Latin American countries, holds true for entire developing world. Likewise,
Dorner (1972) observes that a system built on inequity and privilege is inconsistent
with economic development. Inequality in the ownership of land thus maps directly
into inequality of income through implied distribution of rental income (Benjamin and
Brandt 1997).
11

All the above views put together are testimony to the fact that inequality in access
to asset is not only incompatible with development, which consists of substantive
freedom - economic, social or political, but also works to counter economic development
conceptualized in terms of higher and faster growth rate. History shows that countries
with greater equality in asset holding have grown faster, for example: Japan, South
Korea, Taiwan, and China etc. The fact that ownership of land and equity in holdings
has a much favorable and permanent impact on the economy than any other asset
distribution because of the fundamental relevance of land to human existence is borne
by the experience of these countries. Reduction of inequality was achieved through stateled land reforms in these countries. The following section sheds light on the concepts
of land reform.

Land reform
Land reforms (also agrarian reform, though that can have a broader meaning) is an oencontroversialalteration in the societal arrangements whereby government administers
possession and use of land. Land reform may consist of a government-initiated or
government-backed real estate property redistribution, generally of agricultural land,
or be part of an even more revolutionary program that may include forcible removal
of an existing government that is seen to oppose such reforms.1
Land reform most oen refers to transfer from ownership by a relatively small
number of privileged owners with extensive land holdings (e.g. plantations, large
ranches, or agribusiness plots) to individual ownership by those who work the land. Such
transfer of ownership may be with or without consent or compensation; compensation
may vary from token amounts to the full value of the land. This definition is somewhat
complicated by the issue of state-owned collective farms. In various times and places,
land reforms have encompassed the transfer of land from ownership even peasant
ownership in smallholdings to government-owned collective farms; it has also, in
other times and places, referred to the exact opposite: division of government-owned
collective farms into smallholdings. The common characteristic of all land reforms,
however, is modification or replacement of existing institutional arrangements governing
possession and use of land.2
Land reform is a blanket term oen used interchangeable with agrarian reform,
though they are not necessarily the same things. Land reform can be defined as a
change in the agency relationship of production sphere preceded by change in land
ownership. It is a process, which while effecting changes in the existing power relations
in the society enables the masses to explore a healthy economic, social and political life.
As the primary source of income, status, and security for over half a billion families
in the developing world, unfeered and secured access to agricultural land can play a
defining role in improving nutrition for poor households. It can produce other crucial
benefits like ladders out of poverty and a foundation for sustained and inclusive
1

hp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reform

Ibid

12

economic growth, reduced social unrest and urban migration and beer environmental
stewardship.
The idea of agrarian reform evolves when a society, or a part of it, realizes that
some of its institutions are inadequate with regard to the reality of the existing agrarian
structures and vis--vis the immediate economic or political needs. As observed in the
April 2000 report of International Fact Finding Mission to Brazil, Agrarian reform is one
of the most effective measures for guaranteeing the right to feed oneself; it breaks up
the cycle of exclusion for millions of peasants, whose access and control over production
resources has been denied, whilst offering them the possibility of producing food for
their own subsistence and for conditions of male and female peasants, allowing them to
become real actors in the economic, social and political development of society. Agrarian
reform is also the basis of a sustainable agricultural system.
Not only do these reforms have profound implications for livelihood of the masses,
it also plays a generating force in overall development of the economy. By reducing
speculation in land, it releases crucial financial resources from agriculture to nonagricultural sectors (e.g., China, Taiwan). It changes the resource distribution, bringing
equality in the distribution of wealth, access to productive resources. It also implies that
with land reform other institutions must be redirected and reshaped at the same time like
the insurance of services, inputs, research, irrigation, credit, market, and strengthening
the position of the beneficiaries in the market by appropriate macro-economic policy
regime. Thus, agrarian reform involves much more than simply distribution of land.
Indeed land tenure system can be likened to a prism which government policy must
pass on its way to delivering a product or service to the recipient farmer. In traditional
land tenure systems, government policy is refracted so that most of its benefits are
narrowly focused on the rural elite, the large landowners. Subsidized credit, extension
help, market breaks, less expensive inputs, and agricultural resources tend to benefit
the dominant elites, the majority resource holders. What redistributive land reform does
is to make government policies and services accrue to a larger and needier section of
the population, which is more likely to make productive use of those services. Land
reform is no panacea. Its main purpose till date has been to make certain that the
growth is sustainable for which benefit of growth is directed to a wider group than a
select few.
In this context, it is imperative to discuss the typology of land reform. Based on the
result, land reforms could be classified as genuine land reform, and blanket reform.
All land reforms that do not break the agency relations are blanket reforms, while
the genuine reforms include the breaking of agency relations, establishing new social
relations and also initiation of a new and more equitous wealth distribution process.
Empirical evidence shows that where the land reform was aimed at establishing right
to access to land as a legitimate right of the masses, reform was successful. While the
case where the masses are included in a charity oriented land reform, the outcome has
been disappointing to say the least. Blanket reforms are more about puing intentions
on paper rather than translating them in the fields for the benefit of the masses.
Most of land reform models inevitably bring drastic change in the mode of
13

production in agriculture. For example, when large estates and plantations, or collective
farms are dismantled into small owner operated farms, as in Latin American and
transitional economies, the reforms are bound to have significant impact on productivity
of agriculture either positively or negatively. On the other hand, the Asian model does
not bring the substantial change of the production mode, though the land tenure
relationship can be modified drastically.
As mentioned earlier, effective land reforms negates the economic prowess and
profligacy of landlords and releases resources which can then be judiciously utilized
for productive investment in agriculture and to increase the rate of capital formation.
The following two premises of redistributive policies are particularly relevant for
the understanding of the economics of land reform: (1) total income available for
consumption and for capital formation in an economy is itself a function of the state
of distribution. (2) Changes in the state of distribution have a direct impact on the
prospects of income generation in the economy.
One of the benefits of land reform counted by a host of academics is that it also
shis saving and labor from agriculture to industrial sector, thus further creating an
environment for development. Guinnane and Miller argue that land reforms, particularly
the reform of tenancy system and reduction of the size of very large farms, should
be seen in the liberalized situation to increase economic efficiency in three ways - 1)
security of tenure and livelihood, 2) land as collateral, and 3) commoditization of land
(Guinnane and Miller1997). In fact this is seen to be among the most important lessons
emerging from development experience in the post World War II era.
One very important point to note, however, is that the arguments made for
land reforms in effect define its content. At the risk of deviation from the immediate
focus of the study, it may be pertinent to note here that development defined today
is in effect a production centric process, which calls for cumulative accumulation of
capital, irrespective of the sector in which it has to set in. It is in this perspective that
transformation of land as collateral and a commodity are seen to be as should be
targets of land reforms, a step towards an efficient mode of production. What is missed
is that the very fact of commoditizing land and giving it a collateral value would
pose serious questions not only on equity, but also sustainable economic growth (let
alone development!), a sustainable environment, and last but not the least a truly
democratic and just polity. Majority of the literature on land reforms has confined itself
to discussing the need and packaging of reforms in the context of current development
paradigm. Any reform measure aimed at establishing, or allowing a full-fledged land
market, inevitably establishes a tendency towards concentration of land and a tendency
towards derivation of rental income from it.
The economic performances of the so called Asian miracle cases, such as Japan,
South Korea and Taiwan, which are considered to be very impressive examples of
extremely effective land reforms, made small farms efficient through dispersal strategies
and highlighted the superiority of these farms in contributing agricultural surplus
for investment in other sectors of the economy. The conditional ties of structural
adjustment cannot be consciously permied to obscure the virtues of small farms in
14

fostering wholesome agricultural development. Thus the efficiency of the sector should
be improved by activating the small farms through easy access to factor markets by
removing various imperfections (be it of a social or market make). Otherwise, the
unbridled growth of large enterprises, and the resultant over-specialization would
exacerbate the landlessness among the rural masses. The retrenched unskilled
agricultural labor force would have to seek employment in the urban service sectors, this
would further the social problems. Hence, the reforms in agricultural sector, particularly
land ceiling, should not be integrated with blanket reforms consistent with liberalization
in the other sectors.
Feudal centers created by the concentration of land ownership in few hands are the
main reason of low productivity of agricultural sectors of many developing countries.
It is generally well acknowledged that the class of emancipated and economically
empowered small peasant producers played a key role in the agricultural revolutions
in these countries. In India, a variety of regional and sub-regional politico-economic
paerns have emerged since independence, and here too, the relatively successful
agricultural performances have oen been via the peasant route: for instance, the
early green revolution belt in India, i.e. Punjab, Haryana, Western Uar Pradesh and
some other pockets can be described as a version of the capitalism from below. Any
argument against small farms and farmers made on the issue of capital formation
and hence economic development is clearly ignorant of the inter-sectoral linkages. Jha
very aptly points towards the importance of these historical experiences. The need for
addressing the agrarian questions of developing countries with these historical contexts
of colonialism/imperialism and massive migration in mind is even more urgent, as
some of these processes facilitated the economic transformation of the contemporary
developed world.
Furthermore, the range of trajectories of agrarian transition for the latecomers has
also got constrained in significant ways. Specifically, it has become increasingly clear that
for countries in the third world, where large sections of the population are dependent
on agriculture for their livelihoods, feasibility of successful agricultural transformation
through the landlord road, or by any other road that ignores the issue of land reform,
is highly suspect. There is a great deal of evidence from countries in Asia, Africa and
Latin America that the agricultural policies pursued in the post World War II era, (i.e.
period when most of these countries got the political space to embark on trajectories
of relatively autonomous economic development), generally neglected thoroughgoing
land reforms. By and large, the strategies adopted by them resulted in being on the
strong and excluding the weak. Not surprisingly, across these continents, agrarian
structure has either remained, or has evolved towards, what Barraclough (1997) has
described, with reference to the Latin American agriculture, as bi-model, or what
Joshi (1987) calls, with reference to the Indian agriculture, as structural dualism.
Such a characterization does seem useful for much of the Third World, with suitable
qualifications for country-specific differences and varying degrees of complexity, and
does capture one of the fundamental traits of most of these countries: that a large
section of the rural population is almost trapped in agriculture for livelihood, much of
15

it barely surviving, with no means of escape. Much of this section forms the hardcore
of persistent rural poverty globally.
Thus, the process of agricultural transformation in much of the Third World, even
though it may have pockets of substantial achievements, can hardly be considered as
being on a successful trajectory, even in terms of the conventional kinds of paradigm
thrown up by the early literature in Development Economics regarding the contribution
of the agricultural sector to a countrys economic development. In the case of latecomers
to modern economic growth, the limited success, or even abject failure in many cases, in
terms of agricultural transformation can be traced to their inability to confront squarely
the structural constraints related to inequalities in access to land, with substantial masses
of landless populations in several instances eking out barest of subsistence, and insecure
tenancies etc.
The process of modern economic growth has not contributed much to poverty
alleviation, in fact, the growth periods have seen intensification of poverty; though,
the causality between the two is highly contested. Nevertheless, because this process of
growth largely bypasses the pocket of poverty, it is not surprising if poverty reduction
has not gone hand in hand with growth process. Poverty is a global scourge, and it
does not seem to be abating. The total population below poverty line is estimated to
be more than one billion, of which about 939 million are in the rural areas. Asia has
the highest shares of these, some 633 million followed by 204 million in sub Saharan
Africa, about 76 million in Latin America and the Caribbean and the balance in the
near-east and North Africa. Female-headed households account for 20 percent of all rural
households in the third world (excluding China and India) are among the poorest of the
poor. In sub Saharan Africa, female-headed households account for one-third of all rural
households. The number of rural women living in absolute poverty has risen over the
last 20 years by about 50 percent - from an estimated 370 million to about 565 million
as against an increase of about 30 percent for rural men. The road to sustainable growth
involves, recognizing the contribution the rural poor make to economic production,
savings and growth, and to help foster conditions in which their contribution can be
upgraded, made more productive and be made less of drudgery.

State-led versus market-led land reforms

While the cause of land reforms is well established, there is a divergent opinion regarding
the agency of reform. Till date, there have been two primary agents of land reform: 1) the
state, and 2) the market. While the land reforms in the immediate post-colonial period
were led by welfare states, overtime the mantle has shied to the market, especially at
the pushing and shoving of the World Bank. Where state-led reform with a redistributive
focus takes into account the economic and social justice, market-led reforms are led by
the sacred principle of efficiency. Market by its very construction does not recognize
need. It is driven by demand, which is need backed by purchasing power. As Samuelson
aptly remarks, the market recognizes only dollar votes in which the legitimate demands
and just needs of a society have no cognitive value. Now, if land is taken to be merely a
commodity, market could successfully yield its efficient allocation (or would it?). But in
16

this land market, of which International Finance Institutions (IFIs) are staunch votaries,
equity has no place. Commoditization of land would very simply mean that at the end
of the day, howsoever circuitous route may be followed, land would ultimately get
concentrated in the hands of those with greater dollar votes.
Land policies should be made in order to make land an accessible asset for those
who till it, invest in it, whose livelihood and well-being is dependent on it, rather than
to direct it in the hands of those who can buy it with their money, derive rental income
and speculate on it. M. Borras Jr (2006) distinguishes between these two reform kinds
in the context of ongoing critique of these two reforms. According to him market led
approach is based on three stages (1) Geing access to land, (2) post-land purchase farm
development and (3) financing mechanism. He also establishes the failure of market-led
reforms in Colombia, South Africa, and Brazil. Regarding the land market, the land
sold is of inferior quality. Evidence from Brazil, Colombia and South Africa puts into
serious question the MLAR assumption of lower price of land. The unrecognized power
equation, between the two actors - buyer and the seller, favors the more powerful in
seing the price of land and bargaining. The willing buyer and willing seller principle of
the market led reform is dubious to say the least, as it does not recognize the inherent
imperfections in the nature of market mediating the transaction between the two. Power
and money plays a role in financial assistance too, which is more affordable by the rich
class than the poor peasants. This power is likely to be more captivating at the local
level as Griffin warned that, it is conceivable, even likely that power at the local level
is more concentrated, more elitist and applied more ruthlessly against the poor than
at the center (1980, 225).
Agrarian reform one that is truly redistributive, and based on the twin foundations
of economic development and social justice remains urgent and necessary in most
developing countries today. But the market, as advocated in the MLAR model, cannot
carry out a redistributive function in the way that the state can. Empirical evidence from
the initial implementation of the MLAR model in Brazil, Colombia and South Africa
suggests that the model simply does not work in the manner predicted by its proponents.
Altering the legal framework of land relations causes great inequity; those with knowledge
or access to knowledge of the new legal regime and finance can rapidly acquire land at
the expense of those who suddenly find that they have no recognized interests in the
land any more. Security of livelihood for them disappears along with equity, and the
basis is laid for a disaffected, landless peasantry and an unemployed urban proletariat,
hardly a recipe for a stable society (Alamgir, Jazaivry, and Pannucio, 1992).
The impact of state-led land reforms on landlessness is much more profound than
market-led reforms. Even here, state-led land reform has taken many forms. These
include successful one-time state interventions to create egalitarian peasant ownership
(Republic of Korea), and expropriation to create collectivized agriculture (Cuba). In
countries such as India, intermediary rights in land tenure were abolished but with due
compensation. A token of equity too was bought from the landed segments in the form
of ceiling act, and security of tenure was sought to be provided to the under-raiyats
by recording their rights. The success of reforms has varied: Japans reform was highly
17

successful, Bolivias was less successful and the Philippines is somewhere in-between.
In India, while abolition of intermediary rights in land was successful, recording of
rights and acquisition of ceiling surplus had only a very marginal success, that too in
certain pockets. The state-led model has been criticized for being market distorting and
inefficient. It is true that if successful, such reform would disrupt normal and unequal
market relations. But once the transfer of land is completed, it would lay the foundation
of a vibrant production system with remarkable economic and political stability on the
basis of a more equitable distribution of wealth.
Japan was the first Asian country to transform a tradition-bound agricultural
economy based on subsistence farming and hierarchical social relationship into a
dynamic system, contributing to the process of modern economic growth. The effort
for it goes back to the Mei era. Provisions like land tax for large landholders, and low
interest rates for peasantry etc prepared the path for a relatively radical land reform.
This urgency came aer food shortages during and aer the world war period (1946).
It started with the review of all tenurial arrangements. Within a short span of two
years, the appropriated land was distributed to farmers. As a result 94 % of all Japanese
farmers now own land and cultivate their own land. The socio-economic-political effects
of this rural revolution were dramatic.
Exceptional historical circumstances allowed Japan to reduce dependency on
agriculture and transition to an industrial economy. Needless to say, the circumstances
itself cannot be replicated. What can however be learnt is that a strong political will
pushes through dramatic changes in land inequalities. The critical lesson is that land
redistribution is a pre-requisite to full-scale development. The rural poor in developing
countries cannot be forced out of agriculture or pushed into low-paying wage labor
for private corporations in special economic zones. If land, stolen from the rural poor,
continues to be sold to large landowners and companies, resentment and resistance
against such policies will continue to rise. The examples presented in the following
chapters illustrate constant tensions between these oppositional interests, and various
moments of victory and defeat in struggles for land reform. A cross-country look at
land reform experiences and achievements will hopefully, reveal alternative routes and
paradigms to those invested in the struggle for comprehensive land rights.

18

2
Land Reform and its
Socio-Economic Outcomes

n this chapter, we examine the importance of land reform in fostering broad based
economic growth. We try to draw on, hopefully, an interesting heterogeneous mix of
cases from South East Asia, South Asia, Latin America and Africa. The degree of success
in each of these examples varies according to the historical conditions and circumstances
of each nation at the time. Moreover, as these examples clearly show, successful and
unsuccessful redistribution of land is inexorably linked to implementation, internal
administrative and legislatives factors, pressures from external international agencies
and most importantly, political movements and pressures from below.
Take for instance, the highly successful case of land reform in Japan, where U.S.
intervention led to the systemic dismantling of the landed elite and put land into
the hands of cultivators. This broad progressive change, although administered with
American interests in mind, nonetheless ensured sustainable and equitable development.
In others, revolutionary governments as in China, military dictatorships seeking popular
support as in Philippines, popular movements and public pressure as in the late eighties
in Philippines, and responses to breakdown in centralized planning systems as in
Cambodia aer 1995, were the crucial motivators of land reforms. The most discussed
examples of successful land reform are Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia,
and Thailand. The East Asian miracle revolves round the success of eight countries in
which these six have played a lead role (Hong Kong and Singapore are the other two
which are not discussed here as they do not have significant agricultural base). These
countries grew twice as fast as the rest of East Asian countries, three times faster than
Latin America and south Asia and about five times faster than sub Saharan Africa. In the
25 years between 1960 and 1985, the real income per capita of Thailand, Malaysia and
Indonesia doubled while that of other four grew fourfold.3 Japan, South Korea, Taiwan,
Singapore and Hong Kong were the most equal in terms of income distribution. A report
of the World Bank (1993) suggests that this success is due to their ability to get the
basics right thus achieving a superior accumulation of physical and human capital.
These countries implemented extensive land reforms and the consequent smallholdings
substantially improved equity and efficiency. On the other hand, countries such as South

World Bank, 1993, 2

19

Africa and Zimbabwe have had to succumb to market-led reform program, which have
done lile or nothing to alleviate poverty in these countries.
These varied examples from around the world demonstrate the strategies and
policies, much of which will be discussed in the next chapter, that have been used to
implement land reform. This chapter is split into two parts; one shows successful cases
of land reform in East Asia and the other demonstrates mixed results from countries
in South Asia, Latin America and Africa. The laer prove that pockets of success at
the micro-level are not sufficient in fundamentally redistributing land. Therefore, the
salient and most crucial point remains that any aempt at successful land reform
must be accompanied with appropriate changes in the macro-economic policy regime.
The following examples bear witness to the fact that ground realities fundamentally
change only when accompanied with broader, systemic restructuring of the overarching
economic framework within a nation.

Successful outcomes in East Asia

Japan
The most thorough agricultural reform ever carried out through constitutional means has
been accomplished in post-war Japan. The Land reform process started in Japan with the
enactment of Farmland Adjustment Law of 1938 and the Owner Farmer Establishment
Special Measures Law in 1946. However, the real enforcement of these reforms came
with the U.S occupation forces. Here too, the implementation of land reforms had explicit
political goals. US occupation forces enforced the reforms as a means of breaking the
power of large landowners, who were the pillars of the nationalist militaristic class.
Resident landlords were entitled to retain only about one hectare. All farmland
owned by absentee landlords was to be subject to compulsory purchase by the
government. The term absentee landlord was rigorously defined so as not to allow
any loopholes for escapage of this class from the provisions of the act. Any landowner,
who did not reside in the same village of the leased out land, was regarded as absentee.
Therefore, even if the farming landlords leased out land extended into neighboring
villages, it was regarded as the land owned by absentees. All tenanted land of village
landlords in excess of 1 hectare (4 hectares in Hokkaido prefecture) was also subject
to the compulsory purchase. Owner cultivated land in excess of 3 hectares (12 hectares
in Hokkaido) was to be purchased, if their cultivation was judged to be inefficient in
terms of land productivity. These limits were applied on per household basis.
The purchase price was the same as that in the first Land Reform Law, which was
calculated by multiplying the rental value by a fixed factor. The rental value was an
officially determined figure used for taxation purposes, which was about 20-24 yen/tan
for paddy land and 10 yen/tan for upland, which was seled in 1938. The fixed factor
was calculated as the ratio of the land value to a capitalized land rent, imputed from
typical owner-farmers operation at 1945 price level. Thus, the factor was determined
to be 40 for paddy land and 48 for upland. The purchase price was to be about 760
yen/tan and 450 yen/tan, respectively in paddy land and upland. The additional bonus
20

payment was made to the landowners for first 3 hectares (12 hectares in Hokkaido),
which were 220 yen/tan for paddy land and 130 yen/tan for upland.
However, these purchase prices were extremely low when the purchases were
done due to the rapid inflation of the postwar disarray. The payment to landlords
was to be made in National Bonds bearing an interest of 3.6 percent and redeemable
within 30 years. The purchase price of tenants was the same as the landlords selling
price. Payments could be made in cash or in annual installments within 30 years at 3.2
percent of interest. The Land Commiees were set up at three levels: Village (or Town),
Prefecture, and Central Land Commiees. Ten members of a Village Land Commiee
were elected separately by three different groups - 5 from tenants, 3 from landlords and
2 from owner farmers. Purchase plan was to be drawn by Village Land Commiees
with the approval of the Prefecture Land Commiee and purchased directly by the
government. Besides the above provisions, various regulations were introduced to control
tenancy relations and the tenants rights were strengthened. For instance, all rents were
to be paid in cash and the level was frozen. Tenancy contracts could not be terminated
nor refused for renewal without assent by the Land Commiee.
The Land Reform Law was hard to execute, since it involved changes in the
property rights of some 6 million families of whom over 2 million had every motive
for trying to obstruct its purposes (Dore 1959, 149). More than 400,000 persons were
engaged in the execution of the program. Just aer the enactment of the Law, 16,781
personnel were involved in this program (Hewes 1950, 792-6). The program, however,
required the employment of a considerable number of personnel in both national and
prefecture level. Fortunately, there were fairly well trained individuals in the Ministry of
Agriculture and at the prefecture level, such as Tenancy Officers, who were specialists
of tenancy problem appointed under the tenancy program based on the Land Tenancy
Conciliation Law of 1924 (Tobata 1966, 309-11). By the beginning of 1947, 415,000 persons
were mobilized, including 32,000 secretaries of the Commiees and 116,000 commiee
members. The figure also included about 260,000 assistant staff for the Commiees, who
worked for the program without pay (NKTG, 156-7). The total costs of the program
reached more than 1 billion yen during the first three years from 1946 to 1948, of which
about 60 percent were used for the operation, while the rest represented institutional
costs. A well developed extension service, well maintained land records and an efficient
bureaucracy had a crucial role to play in the successful implementation of land reform
program.
As the first step of the execution of the program, members of the Village Land
Commiees were elected in December 1946 and those of at the prefecture level in
February 1947. As the Occupation Forces ordered that the reform had to be accomplished
within two years, the first compulsory purchase was done in March 1947, just aer the
elections of the commiees. The purchase was successively executed over ten times
and 1,630,000 hectares of the farmland was acquired by the government by the end of
1948. The acquired land was immediately sold to cultivators. During the period, the
land price paid to landlords, fixed in 1945 price level, was reduced to a negligible level
in the process of rapid inflation. In fact, prices of consumer goods in black markets in
21

Tokyo increased about eight times from October 1945 to the middle of 1949 (Bank of
Japan 1949, 178). The price of good paddy land of 1 tan (=0.099 hectares) in 1939 was
equivalent to over 3,000 packages of cigarees or 31 tons of coal. In 1948, however, it was
equivalent to only 13 packages of cigarees or 0.24 tons of coal. On the other hand, the
inflation enabled the tenants to pay up within a year or two of their purchase. Through
the five years of drastic reform, most of the farmland under tenancy came to cultivators
hands. Before the reform, in 1941, tenant farmers cultivated nearly half of the farmland.
Ownership of these lands was drastically transferred to former cultivators of the land.
When the land reform was almost accomplished in 1949, only 13 percent remained as
tenanted land. In 1955, It further declined to only 9 percent of the farmland. Accordingly,
number of owner cultivators increased from 31 percent in 1941 to 70 percent in 1955,
and the number of landless tenant farmers decreased drastically from 28 percent to
only 4 percent during the same period. Number of tenant cum owner farmers, whose
land ownership was less than half of their total cultivating area, also decreased from
20 percent to 5 percent.
On the other hand, absentee landlordism almost disappeared as 80 to 90 percent
of their land estimated to be about 560,000 hectares was transferred (NKTG, 1951,
783). About 70 to 80 percent, i.e., over one million hectares of the leased out and own
cultivated land by village landlords was also transferred. Thus landlordism in Japanese
agriculture was abolished for good. This reflected in an increase in the productivity
scenario with labor productivity increasing annually by 5% and land productivity by
4% between 1954 and 1968.

South Korea
Land distribution in colonial Korea was highly skewed. While nearly 60 percent of
the population was landless, landlords, who made for less than 3 percent of the total
population, owned around 64 percent of the land area. Land reforms were taken up
in South Korea for, both, economic and political reasons. A miniscule segment of the
total population thus possessed most of the agricultural land and high rental rates
seriously compromised the economic life of tenants who comprised a huge chunk of
the population. This paern of land distribution, however, also meant that once any
significant movement for land redistribution started in the country, it would have such
a mass base for it to gather an unstoppable momentum. This is exactly what happened
in postcolonial Korea.
The movement was initially sparked by a struggle of the natives against colonial
Japan - a movement against the remnants of the colonial system. With the defeat of Japan
in the war, and beginning of the US military administration, a movement of denying
rental payments, as well as, strikes demanding redistribution of the land previously
owned by the Japanese became frequent and violent in regions that were dominated
by commiees and agricultural cooperatives. And once the issue of rights over land
and cultivation had taken a cognitive value in the minds of the native population (in
howsoever limited context of land owned by erstwhile colonial rulers), it had enough
fire in the needs and life struggle of the masses, to soon engulf the land owned by the
22

Korean landlords too. On the other hand, the landlords position was compromised by the
fact that aer the collapse of the colonial system, there was no institutional mechanism
of ascertaining and punishing violations of tenancy contracts, particularly in rural areas.
All the more, suspected pro-Japanese activities of landlords added fuel to the fire of this
movement against them. The movement against tenancy had such powerful effect that
while 1500 suks of rice could be collected by the landlord as rent during the colonial
period, it fell to 100 suks right aer August 1945, seling at 400-500 suk aer 1946 for
the same acreage of sharecropped land. Transaction and law enforcement costs had risen
so high by 1945 that landlords lost the incentive to keep their land. It was finally the
inability of the government to secure socio-economic order, and a powerful movement
for redistribution that raised the costs of keeping land high enough to disincentivise
the landlords from keeping land, which made for the success of land reforms.
Land reform measures initiated had three major planks: first, it brought in the
clause of self cultivation for ownership of land, meaning that an individual could own
agricultural land only if she/he cultivates or manages it for herself/himself; secondly,
even in the case of self cultivation/management, an ownership of a maximum of
three jungbo of land was allowed; and finally, tenancy arrangements and land renting
activities were legally prohibited. However, the land reforms were not an exercise in
outright expropriation of landlords. Aer a survey of landlord-tenant relationship was
done in 1949, government purchased the land from the landlords with land securities
under the provision of the ALRAA (Agricultural Land Reform Amendment Act). Land
securities specified the compensation period of 5 years, as well as the price of land as
a percentage of annual crop yields from the land. However, actual compensation was
made by cash, and the compensation period was prolonged to more than 10 years for
some of the land under reform. Land reforms were largely complete by the beginning
of the 1960s, and 97.3% of the compensation for land lords was completed by the end
of 1961. Altogether it took well over 10 years to complete the land reform process. In
addition the government sold the land to tenants who made payments with rice, and
in fact, acted as an arbitrageur between landlords and tenants.
While the reforms had complete success in bringing down tenancy incidence to
almost zero, the number of owner-cultivating households, too, significantly increased
from 349,000 in 1949 to 1,812,000 in 1950.4 The success of this exercise also had a lot to
owe to the thorough development and support given to the local village government
to assume land administration functions. The success of land reforms soon manifested
itself in growth outcomes as agriculture achieved an annual growth rate of almost four
per cent under the impact of this reform.5

China
China has undergone three phases of land reform in the last century. First phase of
land reforms was stretched over a long period, which consisted in mainly confiscation
4

Ibid, 255

Ibid, 61

23

of lands of the landlords during the period 1945-50, followed by the Collectivization
Era of 1950s-1979. Second phase of the reforms came in late seventies also popularly
known as the period of The Household Responsibility System. The third phase, a
relatively recent addition to the legacy of land reforms is The 1998 Land Management
Law: Strengthening Individual Household Rights to Land.
A major achievement of the first phase of land reforms was elimination of the elite
landlord class in rural society. Before the land reforms, Chinas rural economy was beset
with skewed land distribution. Landlords exploited the peasants with excess rent. Rents
from land before the revolution totaled 10.7% of the value added in the economy. On
the other hand, extensive population pressure on land, exploitation of the peasants,
destruction of peasant handicras and the impact of natural disasters were building
up frustration among the masses.
While the landlord flourished having liberty to enjoy an extended family and
comfortable life, the peasants family life was in distress. Among the peasants, family
life was at the brink of subsistence level, with an ever-present threat of falling into
debt trap with slightest emergence of any contingency scenario. Family life was
deteriorating with frequent divorces, loss of sons to the flow of unemployed migrants
to the cities, increasing infant mortality, and sale of female members. Given this seing
of disintegrating social and economic life, the most significant aspect of the 1945-52 land
reform was not so much the redistribution of land, as the redistribution of economic
security, and with it the basis for a family life.
Several provisions of the reform, which came into effect in the north and east from
1945 to 1949, and elsewhere from 1950 to 1952, brought basic economic security to those
who had known none before. This process of reform was started in early 1930s by
Kuomintang. While Kuomintang relied on the policy of peaceful change of ownership
without annoying or disturbing the landlord class, the Chinese Communist Party relied
on the mobilization of peasant class. In 1927-1931, Kuomintang reduced rent without
any confiscation. The CCP reduced the rents as well as confiscated the landlords land
in the period 1931-34. Between August 1937 and May 1946, substantive reduction of rent
and confiscation of lands of those considered traitors took place. The major and bold
part of the reform came in October 1947, when land of the landlords was expropriated
and given to the peasant households for equal ownership. This program of CCP gave
every rural family a piece of cultivable land for individual ownership. The size of
this land varied from half-a-acre to two and a half acre, depending on the local land
availability and family size.
Another outstanding feature of the reform was that not only were all the debts
cancelled, but also rent deposits and excess rents were refunded, thereby wiping out
years of unpaid obligations on the part of the masses. The reduction of current rent
by 25 percent to 37.5 percent of the main crop value, gave tenants a chance to rebuild
their family economies on a new, more secure foundation. The redistribution of the
land and assets of landlords gave tenants and poor peasants small parcels of land that
could serve as safety nets when times got hard. Another facet of this reform process
was that the land reform and the concurrent anti-local bully campaign guaranteed
24

the elimination of the landlord class and its armed protectors. In the late 1940s, the
Party allowed landlords and local thugs to be dealt with seriously and, oen, violently.
An estimated 800,000 landlords lost their lives. Many of the others fled to the cities,
emptying the villages of a major source of peasant economic insecurity.
However, insufficient land coupled with the absence of complementary means of
income, le the majority of peasants hard pressed to make ends meet. This once again
provided landlordism a possible opening for a backdoor entry, as small farmers were
forced to sell their land gained during the reform process. Rich or well-to-do middle
peasants who had recovered from the reform and began expanding their economies
and bought these parcels. The result was a process of re-polarization, which threatened
to undo the gains of the reform. However, the political message was loud and clear,
emphasized at times by violent means, that landlordism and accumulation of land would
be forbidden by the new regime. In the violent phase of the reform in the mid to late
1940s, landlord property was forcefully confiscated and many landlords were killed.
With land ownership turning into a political liability, the price of land was sharply
devalued. Beginning in the mid- 1940s landlords tried to sell their property to friends
or relatives, giving it away to those they trusted before it could be expropriated. As a
result, the value of the land plummeted between the late 1940s and early 1950s.
The elimination of rigid class hierarchy with the distribution of assets for livelihood
allowed peasants to secure their future. It helped to restructure the family life too which
had been torn apart by the civil wars, chaotic divorce situation and migrant herds. The
land reform program of 1950-52 involved 43 percent of cultivated land distributed among
60 percent of the rural population, or an average of 1.7 mou (.11 ha.) per person (Wong,
1973). The redistribution of tools and draught animals was even more modest. On a
per capita basis each peasant entitled to reform assets received .0 17 head of oxen, .24
tool, .16 house, and 53 cales (23.5 kg.) of grain (Wong, 1973,164 cited in Greenhalgh,
1989) until the second land reform in the late 1970s.

The collectivization phase

By late 1953, a political decision was reached to collectivize agriculture. Collectivization
proceeded through lower and then higher-stage producers cooperatives, in which
land was collectivized, then accelerated with the formation of the super-collectivized
communes in 1958. With the formation of lower-stage producers cooperatives, peasant
family ceased to be the unit of economic decision making. This unit was raised to a
co-operative management commiee in the producers cooperatives, which was further
elevated to the commune during the Great Leap Forward of 1958-61, and then lowered
to the production team in 1962, at which level it generally remained.
The collectivization of Chinese agriculture did not work out as Mao had planned.
Aer the collectivization, production suffered due to constraints in decision-making,
and the fact that the emphasis was more on owning land than on collectives. Moreover,
the peasants were not able to identify their own ambitions of passing the land to their
children with the collective system in the absence of any security over their owned land
under this regime. Aer collectivization, peasant energies were channeled primarily
25

into agriculture and construction of basic infrastructure. Only in their spare time were
members of the rural collectives allowed to work in sidelines and on private plots.
Furthermore, since private marketing was severely restricted, sideline activities could
only enhance family consumption, but not family income. Dispersal strategies were also
discouraged and eventually forbidden.

The household responsibility system

By 1979 the central leadership made the startling announcement that rural consumption
levels in the late 1970s were no higher than they had been in 1957, the year before
the Great Leap Forward. This realization made the post-Mao leadership introduce,
in December 1978, the first of a series of agrarian reforms designed to invigorate the
rural economy by arousing the initiative of the masses. Most dramatic of these reforms
was the household responsibility system, which shied the unit of economic decision
making from the production team back to the peasant family. The reform package also
increased farm prices, encouraged diversification and specialization, reopened free
markets, permied the hiring of labor, and promoted the flow of peasant funds into
private productive assets and enterprises. The responsibility system parceled out the land
of collectives to individual households. In early 1984 the leadership extended contracts
for ordinary crops to more than 15 years, and contracts for other types of projects (e.g.,
development of orchards, forests, or wasteland) for even longer. While the state has made
it clear that ownership of land will remain vested in the collective, it has guaranteed
long term usufruct rights to the land, in some cases issuing certificates to this effect, thus
assuring peasants that their investments will be returned. The tremendous dynamism
generated by the return to the family economy can be seen in the growth rates. Between
1978 and 1984 agriculture grew by 6.7 percent a year, but animal husbandry grew by
9.4 percent and sidelines grew by 18.6 percent (Riskin, 1987, 291).
In carrying out the reform, the CCP depended much on the local people who were
acquainted with the local land problems. While Land reform commiees and peoples
tribunals were set up at county and higher levels; peasant associations were set up
as mass organizations at township levels where land reform took place. In order to
keep landlords off the way of reforms, peoples militia and special land reform police
supplemented the regular army forces. Communist Party cadres were the sinew of
the movement, tying together the mass organizations at the local level, with the Party
policy determined at higher levels. The Party guided the activities of over one million
cadres, most of who were not Party members, but who had gone to special training
programs to learn how to carry out land reform. Cadres learned to collect information
from poor peasants, to single out the few powerful local gentry, and to arrange verbal
aacks against them at mass peasant meetings. The best cadres in land reform were
not those who were conversant with land reform regulations and laws but those who
were armed with a mass viewpoint and would beer activate the peasant masses
(Wong, 109). Cadres then handled the details of computing surplus lands, determining
how much land each family would get, and assigning specific plots of land to families.

26

Inspection teams were then formed at various administrative levels and sent to check
up on the implementation of land reform.
The way in which land reform in China eliminated one rural elite and trained a
new leadership is impressive. It clearly showed that in places where an alternative cadre
of local leaders is not visible, it could be created through the process of land reform. It
also showed that education, literacy, and examinations are not the only ways of selecting
and training local officials. The Chinese land reform success was due to this integration
of central and local leadership, which is not to be found in other case studies.
Another noteworthy feature of the Chinese land reforms was that implementation
was actually carried out on a regional basis, and spread out over six years. Roughly
one quarter of China had land reform in the context of revolution during 1946-1948.
The rest had land reform from 1949 to 1952. Moreover, in regions inhabited by different
minority groups, land reform was delayed for a while. The Chinese leadership firmly
resisted the temptation of trying to do everything, everywhere, all at once. Indeed, the
Chinese may have been forced to speed land reform by the outbreak of the Korean
War, and the threat of U. S. generals to carry the war into China (Wong, 139).
While the land reforms redistributed the tangible means of upward mobility, at
the same time they transformed the nature of the mobility ladder, removing status
and profits from agriculture, and transferring them to commerce and industry. Where
the post-reform environment provided certain conditions encouraging the expansion of
family mobility strategies, the result was a virtual explosion of family entrepreneurship
that, in turn, promoted a certain paern of macroeconomic and demographic change.
This paern involved relatively rapid economic growth and diversification, rural-urban
balance, and a comparatively rapid fertility decline in response to changes in the
requirements for family socio-economic success. The reform and its policy environment
were an indivisible package that produced a certain set of effects, some traceable to
the reform itself, others aributable to the combination of reform and policy climate.
Examining the impact of the reform alone would be informative but uninspiring, the most
interesting and important consequences stem from the joint operation of the two.
Chinese peasants were motivated by both security and mobility goals; which goal
dominated depended on the level of economic well being, both that of the family and that
of the time and place in which the family lived (Huang, 1985; Skinner, 1971). Extended
to the arena of land reform, these insights direct our aention to the distribution of
security and mobility motives before the reforms, and the redistributive impact on those
motives achieved by the reforms. More specifically, given the significance of land as both
a security and mobility resource, we can hypothesize that the redistribution of land is in
effect a redistribution of security and mobility goals. The extent of the goal transformation
depends on the class structure before the reform and the amount of land distributed
during the reform when economic conditions permit, families with a secure land base
develop explicit mobility strategies stressing demographic expansion, spatial dispersal,
and sectoral diversification. For the landless and land-poor, life was a constant struggle
for security, at times even survival, in which problems of land shortage and lack of food
were exacerbated by class exploitation. Economic failure was reflected in demographic
27

failure and growing inability to maintain family life. The resulting incomplete families
lacked the full complement of members and, consequently, were unable to fully deploy
the strategies of accumulation, dispersal, and diversification. Given an encouraging
environment, the family economy can continue to prosper long aer land reform,
promoting rapid and balanced growth well into the middle stages of industrialization.

Taiwan
Colonial rule in Taiwan had seen substantive intervention by the Japanese in the agrarian
sector. Japanese colonial rule had brought a green revolution in the island, which was
basically intended to provide for the consumption of the metropolis. Right from 1895
to 1945, the island had witnessed introduction and extension of modern technology.
There was large-scale development of water resources and technological improvement
in rice and sugar cane production under the colonial regime, which had interests in
exporting the produce to meet the needs of the metropolis. The class differentials
arose as Japanese le Taiwan in 1945. Land reforms were imposed by the nationalist
government, which having been exiled from the Chinese main land, had no obligation
towards the landlords, who exploited tenants with ironclad rents, guarantee money,
advance payments, and security deposits etc.
Land reform in Taiwan was carried out in three phases: a) rent reduction in 1949,
b) the sale of public land in 1951, and c) the initiation of a land-to-the-tiller program in
1953. Land rentals were reduced from 50% to 37.5% in 1949. Contracts signed covered a
land area of 256,557 hectares and benefited 296,043 farming families. The second stage
consisted of sale of public land. A total of 139,058 hectares of land has been sold to
286,563 farming families since 1951. Stage three consisted of land to the tiller program.
Beginning in 1953, this program was designed to enable tenant farmers to own the land
they tilled, so as to increase farm production and farmers income, as well as to transfer
landlords capital towards industrial production. Land ownership ceilings were fixed
at one hectare. The former landowners were compensated in industrial bonds, which
they invested in urban-industrial zone. Between 1953 and 1960, the annual production
and consumption of inputs was of 23% and 11% respectively.
This policy of nurturing industry with agriculture and developing agriculture with
industry has laid a solid foundation for Taiwans rapid economic progress. A total of
194,823 farming families have received a land area of 139,249 hectares. The rent reduction
increased the income of the peasants threefold, while the production of rice doubled.
The productivity of land also increased. While the peak per hectare rice output was
2052 kg in the thirties, it shot up to 2322 kg per hectare aer land reform. The increase
in income in this period has also seen positive changes on the front of educational level
of the children, thereby indicating a positive causality from land reforms to income,
and further to education. The percentage of primary school graduates enrolled in junior
schools was less than 35% in 1949-50, while in 1961-62 it was 52%. For junior secondary
school graduates enrolled in senior secondary schools was 56% and 82% for those years
respectively. Land reforms in Taiwan beginning in 1953 redistributed a total of 44% of
cropland among nearly all of the non-landowning families.
28

The experiments with land reform, however, did not stop there. In 1956, equalization
of land rights program was designed to maximize land utilization, and to bring the
public to share the benefits thereof by regulating land value, taxing and purchasing
land according to the value, and giving the unearned increment to the public. The
Provincial governments verify and adjust land values by cross checking with actual
cases and prices of urban land transactions in all counties, cities, district towns and
townships. These are analyzed to ensure an accurate picture of movements in land
prices as a basis for adjusting county and city land values, seing new land values
and banding taxation levies, with the aim of making tax assessments fairer and more
reasonable, and thoroughly implementing the policy of directing price increases into
public coffers. In 1994, land value was reassessed with the total land area affected being
1,765,422 hectares. Cooperative use of land in both urban and rural areas has been
affected to maximize land utilization. By the end of fiscal year 1994, a total of 374,835
hectares of farmland had been consolidated. In 1993, among the farming population
of 3,993,051, a total of 82.5% of these citizens were farming their own land, with each
family farming an average of 1.07 hectares and each person owning about 0.22 hectares.
Currently, the government has begun the third stage of farmland consolidation, hoping
to expand the scale of farm operations and to promote joint, entrusted, and cooperative
management.

Northern Vietnam
In Northern Vietnam, there was prevalence of both fixed rent and share tenancy system.
Land rents ranged from a third to half of a normal harvest. Tenants had to pay the
agreed upon amount even in the case of a bad harvest. Shortly aer the August 1945
Communist revolution, agrarian reform was launched with the proclamation of an
immediate reduction of 25% to 35% in all land rents to bring it about one-third of the
gross yield. This was followed by a land reform program carried out in several phases
between 1953 and 1957. During this period, specially created peoples courts carried
out a thorough program of land expropriation and redistribution. Rural population was
classified into peasants and landlords based on land ownership and the number of
days of farm work performed per year. Land was then confiscated from the landlords
and transferred to the peasants. By the end of this period, 810,000 hectares, i.e., 37%
of the cultivable land in North Vietnam was distributed among 2,104,000 families, on
an average of 0.4 hectares per family.
However, land reforms did not stop at expropriation of landlords and redistribution
of land among the peasant households. The next major step of the reform program was
targeted at reforming production relations and releasing the productive forces in the
agrarian sector. The government proceeded full throle towards communizing the rural
sector. The plots of land that the peasants had received were soon taken away through
the process of collectivization.
The collectivization of agriculture was done in three phases: the formation of
work-exchange teams (1956-58); the establishment of low rank cooperatives (1958-60);
and the advancement of cooperatives from low rank to high rank (1960-72). The work29

exchange team arrangement allowed farmers to continue to own land and equipment, but
integrated production was encouraged through participation in seasonal or permanent
work teams. Members of seasonal teams undertook collective work during peak labor
periods, such as planting or harvesting of rice. There was no payment involved for
participation in seasonal teams, since this was considered mutual aid. A team would
include a whole hamlet or several families. The permanent team was an arrangement
by which the farmer continued to work on his own land, but was a member of a yearround team, such as the fertilizer team, spray team, mechanization team, and so on.
Members of a permanent team were paid according to workdays or work points. By
1958, 86% of the peasant families were members of work-exchange teams. However,
only 13% of these families belonged to a permanent team.
By 1958, the cooperative movement was initiated with work exchange teams,
organized first into low rank cooperatives and later consolidated into high rank
cooperatives. In a low rank cooperative, individual ownership of cropland, dra animals,
and farm implements was preserved. While all farm work was done in accordance with
a common plan of the cooperative, a members share of output was proportional to the
amount of land, livestock, and farm machinery contributed by him. Each member also
received part of the gross yield of the cooperative, according to his labor contribution to
seasonal and permanent work teams. The high rank cooperatives resembled the Soviet
collective farm, the Kolkhoz. This was an arrangement under which members pooled
their land and tools to work under a unified management. In a high rank cooperative,
land and other factor payments were eliminated, and output was shared solely on
the basis of the amount of time spent working in production teams. Each worker was
assigned points for the quantity and quality of work done each day. Payment at the
end of the season was based on the number of points accumulated.
The movement from work-exchange teams to low rank cooperatives was
comparatively rapid; by 1960, 86% of the households with 68% of the cultivated land
were registered under such cooperative. The conversion of these cooperatives to high
rank took another 10 years. By 1971 there were 20,000 high rank cooperatives. The
advancement from low rank to high rank cooperatives was associated with declining
productivity due to a payment structure that rewarded quantity rather than quality of
work. Since differences in quality of work were costly to monitor and led to conflict
among team members, the point system quickly degenerated into a fixed point system
for the number of hours worked. With the degeneration of the work point system to a
fixed wage system, individual team members had an incentive to shirk on their assigned
responsibilities; hence, productivity declined. Collectivization of agricultural production
in Northern Vietnam suffered the fate of similar systems in other socialist countries,
such as China and the Eastern Bloc countries.

Southern Vietnam
The experience of the southern provinces of Vietnam with collectivization (1975-81)
was different from that of the Northern provinces, and accounted at least partially for
the souths superior performance in production and productivity. The difference was
30

aributable to the following factors: 1) the completion of land reform prior to reunification
in 1975; 2) the widespread adoption of modern technology in paddy cultivation; and 3)
the existence of a flourishing private enterprise economy up until 1975.
A series of land reform measures implemented between 1956 and 1974 allowed
South Vietnam to overcome successfully the problems of skewed land distribution and
high land rents. By 1955, the end of the French period in Vietnam, about 40% of the
rice land areas in South Vietnam were held by some 2,500 individuals i.e., by 0.25% of
the rural population. Rent rates were commonly 50% of the crop or more, and tenure
security was nonexistent. A rent control and land ownership ceiling program was
implemented in 1956, and land redistribution and titling program was implemented
in 1970. The laer program generally referred to as the land to the tiller program
enabled the redistribution of 1.3 million hectares of agricultural land to over one million
farmers, an average of 1.3 hectares per farmer. This program, completed by the end of
1974, compares favorably with the land reform program in the north, where 810,000
hectares were redistributed to 2.1 million farmers by the end of 1957, an average of 0.4
hectares per farmer.
Land reforms had a visible effect on agricultural productivity in the south, as it was
carried out in the larger perspective of agrarian reforms. Rice production in Southern
Vietnam increased substantially during the decades 1955-65 and 1966-75. Increase in
the first of these decades could be aributed to yield increases in both the irrigated
and the flood prone areas of the Mekong Delta. In the irrigated areas, a doubling of
rice yields was achieved by switching from a cropping system of one rice crop of 68 months duration per year to a system of two consecutive rice crops per year of 4
months duration each. In the flood prone areas, which account for 1.5 million hectares
of rice lands in the Mekong Delta, the introduction of Cambodian deep water and
floating rice varieties in the late 1940s and 1950s resulted in a 15 percent to 20 percent
yield increase. In the decade of 1966-75 rice output growth was achieved through both
an increase in yield and expansion in cultivated land. Completion of the land reform
and land redistribution program allowed small farmers to bring back into cultivation
land abandoned by landlords during the war. Rehabilitation of irrigation infrastructure
during this decade also contributed to the expansion in cultivated area. Increase in yield
during this period mostly aributable to the rapid adoption of modern high yielding
rice varieties, especially in the Mekong Delta. The area with high yielding rice varieties
grew from 500 hectares in 1967 to approximately one million hectares in 1975.4 The
widespread adoption of modern seed-fertilizer technology allowed farmers to grow two
rice crops per year in the irrigated lowlands and to obtain higher yields per crop relative
to traditional rice varieties. Yields rose from 1.5 metric tons per hectare for traditional
varieties to 4-5 metric tons per hectare per crop for modern varieties.
Until 1975 southern Vietnam was a private enterprise economy. Even 2-3 years
aer reunification, the Mekong Delta farmers were allowed to operate under a relatively
free system. In 1976, the fourth National convention of the Communist party adopted a
resolution, which urged all party leaders in the provinces of Southern Vietnam to move
gradually toward collectivization. The Central Coastal provinces and the Western Plateau
31

provinces moved very rapidly toward collectivization: 90% and 52% of the farmers in
each of these regions, respectively, joined the cooperatives (table 3). Collectivization in
these regions was seen as a means of rebuilding their agriculture aer the war. Farmers
in the Mekong Delta provinces, however, resisted efforts at collectivization. Even in
1986, less than 6% of the Mekong Delta farmers belonged to agricultural cooperatives.
Those that did join, joined the low rank cooperatives.
This does not mean that collectivization efforts did not affect the Mekong Delta
farmers. Land was further redistributed and farmers were organized into production
groups. Households were assigned land in the following manner: each adult was
given 0.1-0.15 hectares of land; each child under 16 years old and adults over 60 were
assigned 0.08-0.1 hectares of land. Differences in land allocations per head were based
on differences in land quality and irrigation water access. There was no long-term
security of tenure on the assigned land, and it could be reallocated at the will of the
management of the collective. Such reassignments were common and impeded land
investments for sustaining the productivity of the land. Unlike in the north, however,
agriculture in the south continued on a family farm basis despite collectivization. Farmers
continued to be the primary decision makers for all input and technology decisions on
their assigned land, although sharing of labor and production resources became more
common. Sharing of labor became especially important for power-intensive operations
such as land preparation and threshing, since individual ownership of tractors, tillers,
threshers, pumps, and dra animals were abolished. All such capital assets had to be
sold to the province at an assessed value that was substantially lower than the market
value of the assets. This equipment was then distributed to the cooperatives or districts
for use in equipment pools. The net result was a sharp decline in dra power supply
in most of the Mekong Delta provinces. All but two of the southern provinces had
dra power shortages while only two of the Northern provinces exhibited similar dra
power shortages. Toward the late 1970s, input supplies to the Mekong Delta provinces
declined because they were being assigned on a priority basis to farmers who were
organized into cooperatives.
A comparison of per capita rice output from 1942 to 1986 reveals the depressed
state of rice production in Vietnam (table 2). During this 45-year period, rice output
per capita in the northern regions remained stagnant at around 200 kilograms (un
milled rice). In the southern provinces there was a steady decline in per capita rice
output during the same time period. Output per capita was around 420 kilograms of
paddy in 1942, and is currently around 330 kilograms. During the period immediately
following reunification (1976-81), rice output per capita was around 270-290 kilograms.
At the national level rice output per capita had been stagnant during this period at
260-80 kilograms. A comparison with the Philippines and Indonesia is illustrative. Rice
is also the staple food in both of these countries, and their agro-climatic conditions are
similar to Vietnam. Between 1950 and 1986, per capita rice output rose by 33 kilograms
and 110 kilograms, respectively, for the Philippines and Indonesia. The growth rate
of aggregate rice output was at its lowest level during the 1976-81 periods, primarily
because of a sharp decline in production in the southern provinces. During the years
32

immediately preceding reunification, the southern provinces were producing around 7

million tons of paddy per year. For the years immediately aer reunification, southern
rice output dropped to around 6 million tons, returning to 7 million tons only towards
1980. This drop in rice output in the southern provinces during the 1976-81 period
can be directly aributable to uncertainty caused by the aempted collectivization and
socialist transformation of southern agriculture.

The contract system

Faced with rising food deficits and growing farmer unrest, the Central Politburo of
the Communist party issued a directive in 1981 that introduced Contract System in
Vietnam (Directive 100 CT, April 1981). As per this directive, all farmers enter into a
contract with the cooperative to produce a certain level of output on their land. The
cooperative would furnish each farmer adequate inputs for achieving that output
level. While production teams were expected to continue to provide land preparation,
irrigation, and input distribution services on all farms, each farmer was responsible for
crop management and husbandry on his own land. The contracted output had to be
sold to the state at a fixed price. All output beyond the contracted amount could be
kept for home consumption or sold to private traders. The introduction of the contract
system had a significant impact on food output growth between 1981 and 1987, and
then began to level off. Aggregate rice output grew annually at the rate of 2.8% during
1982-87 as compared with 1.9% for the 1976-81 period. Most of the output growth can
be aributed to an increase in yield rather than an expansion in area cultivated. In the
southern provinces aggregate rice output grew by over 2.5 million tons from 1980 to
1987. The corresponding increase in the Northern provinces was around 2 million ton
for the same time period. The success of the contract system could not be sustained over
long term due to the following reasons: 1) land use and crop choice decisions were still
done by the State Planning Commission in the traditional top-down approach, without
consideration of farmer preferences and local market conditions; 2) the government oen
failed to procure all the grain it had contracted to procure at harvest time due to financial
difficulties; 3) seasonal surpluses at the farm gate led to a crash in the private rice price
in several regions, which, while benefiting the urban poor, had severe incentive effects
on farmers; 4) the persistence of centralized input supplies resulted in inadequate and
untimely provision of inputs to farmers; and 5) lack of security of land tenure resulted
in inadequate farm-level investments for maintaining long-term land productivity.

The latest reforms in Vietnam today

Until 1988, local party officials and the local agricultural officer carried out land
assignments to individual farmers. Favoritism in allocation of the best quality land
was inevitable in such a system. Moreover, since the farmer had no long-term right to
a particular piece of land he could be reassigned at will by the agricultural officer. Such
reassignments were particularly common for farmers who invested in land development.
This frequent reassignment of land resulted in under investment in maintaining land
productivity.
33

In 1988, the Central Commiee of the Communist party passed resolution number
10, which assigned land to the tiller for l0, 15, and 20 year terms on the basis of
renewable leases. The assignment of land now was to be made to the family rather
than the individual, making bequests of land possible within the family. This resolution
mandated that the farmer couldnt be displaced from his land without his consent, and
without fair compensation for the cost of land development. Moreover, it indicated
that farmers would be entitled to assignment of the land they owned prior to 1975.
The last two clauses, however, have also become source of substantial conflicts on land
assignments among farmers. Annual growth in rice yield per hectare was the highest
during the period 1982-87, relative to the period 1950- 81. By 1984, average rice yields
relative to 1980 yields for the northern and southern provinces were 32% and 24% higher,
respectively. Likewise, during the same period, annual rice output per capita increased
by approximately 40 kilograms for both the northern and the southern provinces.
Thus, breaking up of large collective farms into tiny family units has given rise
to productivity gains. It has transformed Vietnam form a food importing country to
a food surplus country. Rice production has increased from 12 million tons in 1981 to
22 million tons in 1992. In addition, there has been a significant increase in the areas
under industrial/commercial crops including rubber, coffee, tea, coconut etc while the
land under staple foods like cassava and sweet potatoes has decreased.6

Philippines
In the Philippines, the first historic agrarian legislation was the agricultural land reform
code in 1963, which abolished and replaced the share tenancy system with the leasehold
system. It paved the way for the creation of the Agricultural Credit Administration (ACA),
and the Agricultural Productivity Commission (APC). Both were tasked to provide
adequate support services to the land reforms program, but due to mismanagement and
outright gra and corruption, these entities failed to accomplish their mandate (Adriano,
1991). The major step towards land reform came with the imposition of martial law in
1972, when all rice and corn lands in the country were placed under land reforms; all
tenants and lessee in lands above the 7 hectare ceiling became amortizing owners, who
would own their farms aer a 15 year amortization payment scheme.
The agrarian reform program of the Marcos administration (1972) had four major
program components: 1) The strategy was to overcome various constraints in agrarian
reform such as administrative, financial, as well as managerial constraints, the agrarian
reform activities were to be carried out in such a way that productivity and income
of small farmers could increase, and the private sector was to assist the government
in modernizing agricultural sector to complement the agrarian reform program 2) a
continuous flow of agricultural credit to various priority projects of agrarian reform,
and towards small farmers to induce them to participate in and to promote social equity
3) a focus on intensified modernization program centered on the formation of compact
farms, and 4) development of reselement areas. Compact farming, complemented with
6

ANGOC policy discussion paper, prepared by A. Quizon.

34

land consolidation of big landed estates, was intended to bring about beer management
and eventually result in the formation of cooperative farms. It was also conceptualized
to provide wider access to modern farm technology, and maximizes the benefits of
economies of scale.
The development of reselement areas, on the other hand, was to be done through
total community planning, giving more emphasis on effective land usage with beer
market linkages. The provision of various support services was also a major concern,
among which were the improvement of marketing system, farm-to-market roads,
irrigation and post harvest facilities, extension, research and institutional development
received prime aention.
The third landmark agrarian reform legislation followed the ouster of the
Marcos dictatorship, and restoration of democratic processes in 1986. The land reform
programmes agenda, which stood out, was that of Land to the Tiller. Congress enacted
the 1988 Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL), based on a land to the tiller
principle. CARP recognized as beneficiaries of the agrarian reform program not only
farmers but also all workers in the land, given that they were landless and willing to
cultivate. The program had a total target area of 8.1 million hectares. About half of this
consisted of agricultural lands for distribution to landless farmers and farm workers,
while the other half consisted mainly of classified forestlands that were to be covered
by tenurial user rights to upland dwellers. As of 2003, government data claims that 76%
of the total target area has already been redistributed. However the lands remaining to
be redistributed consist mainly of private lands, haciendas and large plantations, where
landlord resistance is strong.
The two agencies mandated to do the tasks of land acquisition and distribution
are the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) and the Department of Environment
and Natural Resources (DENR). The program used variable retention limits: seven
hectares for rice and corn lands, five hectares for non-rice and non-corn lands, and
three hectares for each of the heirs, 15 years old and above, of the landowner given
they are actually cultivating or managing the land. Aside from land acquisition and
distribution, which is the very essence of CARP, it also provided for the delivery of
support services, such as, rural development projects, human resources development
activities and infrastructure facilities. It also ensured the tenurial security of farmers
and farm workers by giving options like leasehold arrangement, stock distribution
option, and production and profit sharing scheme. It also provides legal assistance
to beneficiaries to help resolve agrarian disputes. To effectively channel these support
services to the Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries, CARP adopted the strategy of creating
Agrarian Reform Communities.
The CARP has been generally able to aain its land distribution target for the year
1987-1992. For that same period, a total of 898,420 landless tenants and farm workers
became legitimate recipients of either land titles or free patents and support services.
The successor of Aquino administration also stressed on the CARP, and in many ways
contributed to strengthen its administration. However, CARP had inherent bias in favour
of the landed gentry by its various provisions, which limited its reach and effectiveness
35

at once. It was inherently favorable to neo-liberal ideology, which favors the market as
an efficient redistributive mechanism.
As mentioned earlier, the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP)
was the third aempt at agrarian reform since 1962, and was the centerpiece of the
Aquino governments land reform program. It covers the distribution of rice and corn
lands (which is basically a continuation of the Marcos land reform program), idle and
abandoned lands, lands under the voluntary offers to sell (VOS) scheme, sequestered
lands of Marcos and his cronies, and government-owned agricultural lands.
The CARP was supposed to run on a ten-year period such that by 1998, the target of
10.3 million hectares would have been distributed, benefiting around 3.9 million farmers.
But implementation of the CARP continues to lag behind the target. Department of
Agrarian Reform figures show that as of June 2002, CARP distributed only 5.7 million
hectares or 71% of its already reduced scope of eight million hectares. From 1972 to
June 2005, lands distributed totaled only 6.46 million hectares.
The CARP was flawed from the beginning. It allowed retention limits that defeat the
principle of land to the tiller. CARP inherently favors landlord interests, through such
provisions as the land retention right of landlords and their children, compensation for
land acquired by government for agrarian reform, amortization by beneficiaries of lands
granted under the program, and CARPs acceptance of arrangements alternative to the
physical distribution of lands such as production or profit sharing, labor administration,
and the distribution of shares of stock.
Through the voluntary offer to sell or the voluntary land transfer scheme,
landowners can negotiate the price directly with farmers. CARP also defers coverage
of commercial farms. Because of CARPs many loopholes, landlords have engaged
in massive land use conversions, and cancellation or confiscation of land certificates
already issued to beneficiaries. The recommendations of the World Banks 1975 Land
Reform Policy Paper are clearly enshrined in the CARP. It relies on sales operations to
distribute private land to the farmers. It prioritized the titling of public lands and
selements already occupied by farmers or the privatization of communal lands instead
of breaking up and distributing big private landholdings.
The World Bank did not directly support land acquisition, but channeled its funds
to CARPs extension programs that only benefited the landed elite and agribusiness
corporations. During the Aquino administration, the Bank funded the nucleus estate
management system, a plantation set-up centered on a corporation with small farm
holdings dependent on the center for financing, inputs, management, marketing,
processing facilities and other technological support.
Not satisfied even by an overtly biased programme favoring landed gentry; the
official response is loud at pointing toward the constrained rural land markets and
restricted trading of agricultural lands as the downside of the reform. They decry the
law that prohibits lands acquired by beneficiaries from being sold, transferred or
conveyed except to through hereditary succession or to the government for a period
of ten years. The official opinion drowsed on the neo-liberal overdose is also seeing
red in the law prohibiting banks from foreclosing and owning properties secured by
36

emancipation patent or certificate of land ownership award, it gives. If an agrarian reform

beneficiary is unable to pay the bank loan, the bank has to turn over the emancipation
patent or certificate of land award to the government, which in turn will give the land
to another agrarian beneficiary.

Land Reform in the Philippines today

A decade of the CARP did not even make a dent in the monopoly control of landlords.
According to the 1998 Annual Poverty Indicator Survey, 68% of the households who
had at least one member working in agriculture did not own land other than their
residence, and only about 3% acquired land through CARP. In the 2002 APIS, the
number of families that acquired lands other than residence through CARP is 376,000
or 11% of families with lands other than residence. Since almost all public and other less
controversial lands were already covered, CARP was supposed to start distributing the
more contentious estates of landlords and corporations. But the World Bank advised the
government to stop compulsory acquisition schemes, and focus on the market-oriented
provisions of CARP.
In its 1996 Philippines country report A Strategy to Fight Poverty, the Bank
observed, Comprehensive rural land reform, as currently structured, is bound
to remain contentious, expensive, and administratively complex and concluded
that the administrative complexity of land reform probably cannot be resolved in
the context of a government-administered program executed in a democratic society.
The Banks 1997 report Philippines: Promoting Equitable Rural Growth made
more concrete recommendations, including the completion of CARP through a process
of market-assisted land reform for holdings below 24 hectares. The CARP was
already market-friendly by design, thus it required just a lile fine-tuning to
align it with the World Bank model. As market-oriented land reform was compatible
with the framework of the existing program, the World Bank did not even have
to create pilot programs like in Brazil and Colombia. Since 1998, land distribution
through compulsory acquisition has been almost nil. Instead the Department
of Agrarian Reform advocates negotiated selements in the context of a demanddriven approach.
In the mid-1990s, the country was again witness to a renewed effort by the
international institutions at creating a favorable land market scenario. President Ramos
brainchild, the Agrarian Reform Communities (ARCs) was supported very strongly by
the World Bank. The ARC concept encourages partnership with agribusiness. ARC is
defined as a cluster of contiguous barangays, where there is a critical mass of farmers
and farm workers awaiting the full implementation of agrarian reform. As of June 2005,
there are 1,697 ARCs in 6,307 barangays. ARCs are geared towards production of High
Value Crops (HVCs) such as tropical fruits, vegetables and rubber, rather than staple
crops such as rice and corn for domestic consumption. DAR encourages ARCs to enter
into partnerships with agribusiness companies through such arrangements as contract
growing and lease-cum-profit sharing. These arrangements, needless to say, intensify
the control of transnational corporations and big local agribusiness firms over CARP
37

land while allowing them access to cheap farm labor force, thereby reinstating very
powerful counter-reform forces in the rural-agrarian setup
Aer the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Programs extension in 1998,
Administrative Orders issued by the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) have
watered it down even further by diluting the land reform concept and strengthening
the rights of landlords. For example, AO 9, issued in December 1998 provided guidelines
for Agribusiness Venture Arrangements including contract growing, lease arrangements,
management contracts, build-operate-transfer schemes and joint venture arrangements.
This arrangement, also known as a corporative scheme, was further outlined in AO 2
of 1999.
More recently, President Arroyos former socioeconomic planning secretary proposed
Plan 747, a dra framework of strategies supposed to address the perennial problem
of poverty in the Philippines. The plan introduced the concept of land stewardship
that upholds the landlords right to own and control vast tracts of agricultural land,
provided he is a responsible steward of it. The plan also admits that governments
land reform program has failed to solve poverty in the countryside, and says that
encouraging private investments in the agricultural sector will make it more productive
and reduce rural unemployment and poverty. It proposes consolidating agricultural
production of specific crops, such as rubber and cacao, into nucleus farms. It calls
for more private investments particularly among agrarian reform lands. Clearly, the
concept of land stewardship encourages the continuing land monopoly of landlords,
landowners evasion of land reform and wholesale land use conversion.
According to Arroyo, to put social justice character to job creation, we have to
make sure that we promote micro-finance and agribusiness. In her inaugural address,
the President unveiled her vision of creating three million entrepreneurs through micro
financing, and the conversion of two million hectares of land into agribusiness hub.
She said asset reform involves three areas of land reform agrarian, urban and
ancestral thus, there is a need to move to the new land reform, which is to make
farms qualified as collateral.
The Farmland as Collateral bill seeks to provide farmers access to credit facilities
through the use of Certificate of Land Ownership Award (CLOA) given under the land
reform program as collateral for loans from government financing institutions (GFIs).
The basic principle behind the bill a liberalized agrarian reform is essentially antifarmer as it would lead to the re-consolidation of agricultural land in the hands of a few.
The bill seeks to remove the ten-year prohibition on the sale, transfer or conveyance of
distributed lands (whether unpaid, partially paid or fully paid). The World Bank, Asian
Development Bank and a number of landlord-legislators have long been lobbying for
the removal of this provision on the pretext that they would want to see small farmers
gain access to formal credit. If passed, the proposed law will also strip away the basic
protection supposedly accorded to ARBs, thereby opening them to abuse.
It will not only force small landowning farmers and many cash-strapped ARBs
to sell or give up their lands, it will also legitimize the illegal and extra-legal deals
that have been taking place on disadvantageous terms to farmers. These include the
38

widespread practice of pawning of lands, EPs, CLOAs, CLTs, homestead patents,

usufruct or farming rights, etc. in exchange for farm capital. The government will also
be freed of its obligation to provide, or even encourage credit lending to small farmers
and ARBs. Bankruptcy in the countryside, on the other hand, would be compounded
by governments policy of curbing spending for direct support programs to farmers
including infrastructure, subsidies to crops, farm inputs and equipment, as well as price
support through direct procurement and marketing. With its adherence to globalization
policies of trade liberalization and deregulation of key economic sectors, the government
has le local farmers to be drowned by the influx of imported agricultural products.

Mixed results in South Asia, Latin America and Africa

India
Colonial India witnessed brutish exploitation of its peasantry at the hands of colonial
masters. The sweat and blood of the peasantry in colonial India was a major contributor
to the primitive accumulation needed to feed industrial revolution in Britain. Land
revenue had formed a very significant component of the drain of wealth and resources
from the country. This drain from such local levels could not have been possible for an
alien administrative setup without the local and native connection. This was achieved
by the colonial regime by creating intermediary rights on land between the state and
cultivators.
Land reforms were one of the prominent goals of the nationalist movement in the
pre-independence India. While there was a consensus on the need for these reforms,
conceptualization of agrarian reforms varied greatly among different segments within
the Congress, so did the commitment to it. This is reflected in the fact, that even by the
late 1920s, the Congress had not established a definitive agrarian policy. It was finally in
1936 that the Congress Party as a whole produced an election manifesto, which included
a statement advocating a reform of the system of land tenure and revenue and rent,
and an equitable adjustment of the burden on agricultural land, giving immediate relief
to the smaller peasantry by a substantial reduction of agricultural rent and revenue now
paid by them and exempting uneconomic holdings from payment of rent and revenue.
However, when the Congress formed ministries in 1937, a much diluted agrarian reform
legislation was introduced; in a fashion typical to Congress, its inner contradictions
were covered up by allowing the language of radical economic and social change to be
incorporated into its policy resolutions, while assuring that no action would be taken to
unduly upset conservative landed and industrial interests within the party. Even aer
independence, radical language on land policy, followed by conservative action, became
standard practice within the Congress throughout India. This invariably showed up in
achievements of land reforms in the country.
The land reform policy in independent India was based on three pillars: 1) abolition
of intermediary tenures, 2) regulation of size of landholding and, 3) selement and
regulation of tenancy. The central idea behind the abolition of intermediaries was that
ownership of land should be clearly identified with management and operation of land.
39

The owner was to be established in direct contact with state authority. Ceiling on land
holdings were designed to offset the extremely uneven distribution of agricultural land.
The tenancy reform was to grant security to the tenant, which besides offering a security
of livelihood would also incentivize him to undertake investments in the land.
The success of land reforms, however, was predicated on political will, which was
at best, ambivalent; and this reflected in the outcomes of the reform measures. While
abolition of intermediaries was quite successful, achievement regarding the other two
programmes is disappointing to say the least. Even where intermediary rights were
abolished, the intermediaries were duly compensated by the state. Unlike China, the
rights of intermediaries and landlords were not expropriated by the state, but bought out
by the government. The state compensated zamindars and landlords for acquisition of
their intermediary rights and land. Taking country as a whole, by 1992, ownership rights
had been conferred on (or tenancy rights had been recorded) some 11 million tenants on
14.4 million acres of land, which constituted no more than 4% of the operated area. It is
interesting to note that the seven states of Assam, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka,
Kerala, Maharashtra, and West Bengal account for 97% of the beneficiaries.
Practically no benefits accrued to the tenants in other states. In fact, tenancy reforms
led to large-scale eviction of tenants across the country. Except in West Bengal where
Operation Barga was successful in recording and giving rights to the sharecroppers, and
to some extent in Kerela, tenants by and large remained beyond the reach of tenancy
reforms everywhere else in the country. The rights of some 14 lakh share-croppers were
protected in West Bengal and in Kerala some 2.84 lakh rural poor, mostly agricultural
labourers, became owners of tiny homesteads.
As a result of tenancy reform, as the official estimates show, there has been a sharp
fall in the area under tenancy. From over one-half of the operated area on the eve of the
reform, the area under tenancy has come down to about 15% of the operated area now.
The tenants acquired ownership rights or were made secure in only about 4% of the
operated area. This means that either the reforms led to the rural poor losing access to
some 30% of the operated area, or there being a concealed tenancy of similar extent in
the post reform period, thereby creating further avenues of exploitation of the peasantry
due to the oral/informal nature of arrangement between the landlord and the tenant.
The achievement on the front of puing a ceiling on land holdings also draws a
very gloomy picture. By 1992, only about 2 million hectares of surplus land had been
distributed to some 4.76 million beneficiaries. Thus, the efforts spread over a period of
three and a half decades to enforce ceilings and take-over surplus land from landlords
for redistribution among landless, led to the redistribution of less than 2 percent of the
operated area. Among the states, the area distributed as a percentage of the total area
operated was 17.4 percent in Jammu and Kashmir, 6.36 percent in West Bengal and 5
percent in Assam. In all the other states only less than one per cent of the operated
area could be distributed. Thus the achievement of land reform measures in India on
the front of redistribution has been 6% of the operated area, confirming no impact
on agrarian structure in most of the states. However, there is a regional variation in

40

achievements on the front of land reforms in India, in which West Bengal stands out
as an achiever.

The case of West Bengal

The post-independence aempt towards land reform started in Bengal in 1953. Since
then it has seen three phases of land reform. The first phase (1953-1966) was the period
of stepping towards basic legislation. There was lile progress in redistribution of land,
rather a deterioration in the security of the rights of bargadaars. The second phase (19671976), West Bengal made impressive achievements in above-ceiling redistribution of land,
but lile progress was made in protecting the rights of bargadaars. The third phase
from 1977 onwards saw Operation Barga directed towards recording tenancy rights of
bargdars. The land reform act of 1955 was the basic law followed by the government
in carrying out the process. In this, the bargadaars tenancy right was secured through
wrien records. The share of rent was set at a reasonable level. The landlords right
to evict a bargadaar at will was tackled by bringing in very stringent provisions of
self-cultivation by the landlord, and that too subject to a certain minimum remaining
with the bargdar for cultivation. Thus landlords rights were kept in check in order
to give security to the bargadaars. It also protected the ST community in prohibiting
non-tribals from gaining protected bargadaar status on land owned by the members
of former community.
While ceilings-surplus legislation in Indias various states had only redistributed
about 1.3% of Indias cultivated land to about 4.3% of the rural households. Tenancy
legislation in various states had protected tenancy right or in some cases conferred
ownership rights on another 3.8% of Indias cultivated land. West Bengal has made
an impressive contribution to the achievements of land reforms process in India.
Comprising only 3.3% of Indias arable land, it accounts for 20% of all ceiling-surplus
land redistributed in India, and 4.65 percent of all recipients of above-ceiling land in
India. In terms of distributing land, West Bengal had declared 1.732 million acres of
land for redistribution, and reallocated 1.04 million acres of this to 2.54 million relatively
land-poor households, representing about 8% of arable land and 34% of agricultural
households7. As of September 1999, 1.49 million bargadaars had been recorded on a
total of 1.1 million acres, representing about 20% of agricultural households and 8% of
net area cultivated.
Governments land policy in India has changed over the years. In the early years
of Independence, land relations were explicitly recognized as structural bolenecks in
agriculture which needed to be addressed if the economy was to cruise on a development
path. Therefore, till fourth five year plan the land policy had a distributive orientation.
However, this distributive focus was lost when the country faced with food shortage
sacrificed equity goals at the altar of speedy growth. The new policy can be famously
characterized as being on the strong horse. The governments concern, henceforth,
turned towards watershed development, management of degraded land, drought prone
area management, desert area management, land and water management, soil and water
conservation, and wasteland management.
41

While the Indian planning, with passing years, has seen an increasing focus on
poverty alleviation programmes, ironically, it has shown uer insensitivity towards
landlessness. The very development projects, which were vouched to be temples of
development, supposed to be venerated by the masses, have led to dispossession and
displacement of the weakest sections of the society. An estimated 40 million people
have lost their land since 1950 on account of displacement due to large development
projects.
While the inequality and the landlessness are growing, the government is
apathetic towards the suffering of the poorest people. There is an increased tendency
of marginalization of landholdings in India due to increased population pressure, which
is finally absorbed, in agricultural sector in its capacity of a residual sector. 60 percent
of the population is dependent on agriculture and allied activities. Almost 80 percent of
farmer population subsists as near landless, owning only about 17 percent of the total
agriculture. On top of that, an estimated 40 million people have lost their land since 1950
on account of displacement due to large development projects. Between 2002 and 2004,
forest dwellers have been forcefully removed from 1.52 lakh hectares of forestland.
As Jha (2003) suggests, landlessness is the major cause of poverty and land is
the most important structural correlates of economic well being of masses. A recent
World Bank (1997) study shows that landlessness is, by far, the greatest predictor of
poverty in India, finding the incidence of poverty to be 68 per cent among landless
wage earners. In India a variety of regional and sub-regional politico-economic paerns
have emerged since independence and here too, it would appear that, although there
are contrasting styles, the relatively successful agricultural performances have oen been
via the peasant route: for instance, the early green revolution belt in India, i.e. Punjab,
Haryana, Western Uar Pradesh and some other pockets can be described as a version
of the capitalism from below, where the middle and rich peasants played a leading
role; more recently, in West Bengal the Le Front Governments land reforms initiatives
empowered small and marginal farmers who have played a key role as growth agents
in the states agricultural performance. Aer the Le Front government assumed power
in 1977, within a couple of decades more than 9,13,000 acres of land was redistributed
benefiting 19,93,660 households, of which a large proportion happened to be either
landless or land-poor to begin with. Through Operation Barga, tenancy arrangements
were secured giving the much-needed relief and incentive to close to 1.44 million sharecroppers in the state.
These initiatives contributed to creating an environment, which resulted in the
most impressive agricultural performance for West Bengal, among major states of India,
in the 1980s and 1990s; and creditable reduction in the incidence of poverty over the
same period. Gradually, a variety of other positive spin-offs have also unfolded over the
years. A study by Vikas Rawal on two villages of West Bengal shows the following: the
distribution of land through land reform, Operation Barga, and higher wages contributed
to improving although to a limited extent- purchasing power among the poor. Second,
peasant movements during the late 1960s and the process of land reform convinced
a number of large landowners that land reform was in the villages to stay and that
42

it would be advantageous to sell some ceiling surplus land. Third, the West Bengal
Land Reform (Amendment) Bill of 1977 has specific provisions that aempt to monitor
and restrict absenteeism, from the empirical evidence; it appears that these provisions
impelled absentee owners and non-residents to sell a part of their ownership holdings.
This sets an example for other states.

Recent policy changes and consequent landlessness

In the era of economic reforms, India is witnessing another effort at land reforms, only
this time, it essence and character are completely different from what it was in the early
years of independence. True to the dictates of the neo-liberal policy regime, the new
generation of land reforms is to be market-led; and here too, it is not the weak and the
peripheral that is the target of reforms, rather it is the motive of facilitating corporate
takeover of land which is the driving force. In effect, these reform efforts are targeted at
countering/watering down the extant reform legislations, put in place during the early
years of reform period. While the masses peripheral to the development process over
last sixty years of independence have seen pauperization in the name of development,
the second-generation reforms are only expected to add millions more to the folk of
deprived and marginalized.
Policies on land and also the causes of landless can be studied under the
following four heads: 1) Common Property Resources 2) Forest Land, Disputed Land
3) Dispossession of lands due to industrialization, and 4) Development projects.

Common property resources

Common property resources include resources to which people have equal right like
fuel wood, fodder, tendu leaves etc. Despite the major contributions of CPRs in the local
economy, the area under CPRs is under pressure and has declined over the past few
decades. One of the main reasons of this is a large-scale privatization of community
land and common property resources. This privatization might be due to encroachments
by big landholders and powerful vested interests at the village level, policy induced
appropriation of common lands for public purpose largely given for commercial and
industrial use and distribution to poor landless and agricultural laborers. However, in
areas where CPRs were distributed for private cultivation to poor or landless farmers,
they ended up in the hands of the rich in the absence of adequate complementary inputs
or agriculture support. Many experts feel that in this way the rural poor collectively
lost a significant part of the source of their sustenance.

Forestland
From 1970s onwards, the State and its forest department started moving from production
oriented forestry and forest management to conservation. This formal and exclusive
conservation approach was implemented with the help of legislations like the Wildlife
Protection Act (WLPA) 1972, and the Forest Conservation Act, 1980. Under the provisions
of the WLPA, large forest areas were brought under the Protected Area Network of
National Parks and Wildlife Sanctuaries, which were to be human-free wilderness zones.
43

Today, the MoEF figures say that 13.43 lakh (1.3 million ha.) of forestland is under
encroachment in the country. The encroachers are, invariably, tribals and forest dwellers
who have been there for generations. State governments in the past had passed orders
for the regularization of encroachments on forest land, but no time bound action plan
was followed In his 29th report (1987-89) to the President of India, the Commissioner
for SCs and STs brought to the governments notice the different disputes related to
forest land between tribal people and the State and proposed a framework for resolution.
Based on these recommendations, the MoEF issued a circular addressed to the secretaries
of forest departments of all states and union territories; some of the directions in the
circular included: a) Review of encroachments on forest land, b) Review of disputed
claims over forest land arising out of forest selement, c) Disputes regarding paas/
leases/grants involving forest land.
The circular only highlighted the need to distinguish between encroachers and
those with disputed claims. The fact that no effort was made to implement these orders
became evident in May 2002 when the MoEF directed all states to evict encroachers
from forestlands. The forest department promptly obeyed this order and the forest
dwellers were made to pay for the failure of the State in performing its long pending task
of surveys, selement and regularization of land. Based on a Ministry of Environment
and Forests (MoEF) order dated May 3, 2002, the forest departments in some states
brutally carried out eviction drives. According to the MoEF, between 2002 and 2004,
encroachments on 1.52 lakh hectares of forest area were removed. The lands in question
are those that have been brought under the jurisdiction of the forest department, and
which constitute 22% of the total land area in the country.
An interesting fact is that 60% of these lands that have been declared as forest
under the colonial Indian Forest Act (IFA) 1927 lie essentially in the adivasi dominated
regions (in 187 districts) of the country. The policy of declaring areas as reserved forests
to serve British commercial interests under the Indian Forest Act (IFA), led to systematic
colonization of adivasi forest habitats. The process of land acquisition continued even
aer the British le, and between 1951 and 1988 the colonial IFA was used to bring an
area of 26 million hectares under the forest departments regime. Without even following
the required procedure of selement of rights under Sec (3) 29 of the IFA, or doing any
paperwork, non-private lands of princely states and zamindars were declared as forest
reserves. No surveys were carried out and the rights of existing occupants and users
was not recognized or even seled. This period was also characterized by exploitation of
forest and mineral resource rich areas by the State for large-scale development projects,
urban habitations and timber production.
According to the Forest Survey of India, between 1951 and 1981 a total of 4.238
million ha of forestland was diverted for purposes like river valley projects, highways
and industries. In most cases, people who had no legally recorded rights in the first place
inhabited these forests. Aer displacement and with no rehabilitation, these communities
were forced to shi into different forest areas, yet again as encroachers. A big problem
in the country is land rights being denied because of the disputed status of the land
and land stuck in litigation. According to rural development statistics of 1996, 48% of
44

all ceiling surplus land that is not available for distribution is unavailable because it is
under litigation in various courts (K N Raju - Occasional paper NIRD, 1999). The most
striking example of disputed lands is the where there is complete confusion between
the revenue department and the forest department about the legal status of almost
12,000 sq km of land in Chhaisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. An estimated 40 million
people have been displaced since1950 on account of development projects and power
projects, dams, mines and industries). Of these, nearly 40% are adivasis and 25% are
dalits. And 75% are still awaiting rehabilitation. In the post independence period, some
of the large acquisitions led to massive displacements, such as those for the Hirakud,
Machkund, and Sileru dams, the Rourkela steel plant in Orissa, the different units of
the Damodar Valley Corporation in Bihar and West Bengal, the Nagarjunasagar and
Sriramsagar dams in Andhra Pradesh and numerous large and medium-scale industries,
mines, roads and railways.
With the onset of globalization in the 1990s, the country has seen further industrial
growth, a complete transformation of land use paerns, and more displacement of
rural and natural resource-based livelihoods. In Orissa, Jharkhand, and Andhra Pradesh
foreign direct investment in mine-based industries has led to acquisition of land on an
unprecedented scale. For example, between 1951 and 1995, the Orissa government had
acquired 40,000 ha for industries; in the next decade, it doubled that amount. The same
is the case of Andhra Pradesh, which has acquired in five years half as much land for
industries as it did in the last 45 years. Most of the acquisitions in the country were,
and are, done using the Land Acquisition Act of 1894. This hundred-year-old legislation,
which has been amended several times, has been the single most effective instrument
empowering governments to acquire land for anything that they think constitutes public
interest. The Act gives very lile scope to the project-affected families to challenge
the process of land acquisition or even to 19. Quoted in the comments on the Dra
National Rehabilitation Policy circulated at the Consultation on Rehabilitation Policy
held at TISS on 28th-29th December 2004 demand fair compensation and rehabilitation.
Apart from this, other aspects like the purpose of acquisition, the extent of acquisition,
and the probable use of the acquired land are also problematic. A stark example of
this is the case of industrial estates throughout the country, where state industrial
infrastructure development bodies acquire land, set up an industrial estate and then
search for entrepreneurs interested in using the facilities. Because of this, many a time
industrial estates have remained vacant for years.

Displacement due to large development projects

Nehru, Indias first Prime Minister, while laying the foundation-stone for Indias first
major river valley project, the Hirakud Dam in Orissa in 1948, said to the tens of thousand
facing the grim prospect of displacement: If you have to suffer, you should do so in
the interest of the country (quoted in Roy 1999). The same sentiments were echoed
thirtysix years later by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, in a leer to one of Indias most
respected social workers, Baba Amte. She wrote: I am most unhappy that development
projects displace tribal people from their habitat, especially as project authorities do
45

not always take care to properly rehabilitate the affected population. But sometimes
there is no alternative and we have to go ahead in the larger interest (Quoted in
Kothari, 1996,1476)
There is painful irony, and possible design, in the fact that there are no reliable
official statistics of the numbers of people displaced by large projects since Independence.
Many researchers place their estimates between 10 and 25 million. In an influential
1989 study, Fernandes, Das and Rao provide an estimate of some 21 million displaced
persons (see also Fernandes 1991). The present Secretary of Indias Planning Commission,
Dr. N. C. Saxena, places his estimate of persons displaced by big projects since 1947 at
nearly double this figure 50 million. This is also the figure quoted by celebrity writer
Arundhati Roy in a recent essay The Greater Common Good: The Human Cost of Big
Dams. It is worth quoting her persuasive reasoning: According to a detailed study
of 54 Large Dams done by the Indian Institute of Public Administration, the average
number of people displaced by a Large Dam is 44,182. Admiedly 54 Dams out of 3,300
is not a big enough sample. But its all we have lets err on the side of abundant
caution and take an average of just 10,000 people per Large Dam. 33 million Thats
what it works out to What about those that have been displaced by the thousands
of other Development Projects? Fiy million people. (Roy, 1997, 7)
The central government has no policy for rehabilitation. The governments of
Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka have enacted laws for rehabilitation
and reselement of project-affected persons. In 1994, the first dra was formulated
at the national level. The irony was that the dra clearly stated that this was done in
view of the new economic policy, and the expected rise in the demand for more land
and hence displacement! This dra was widely debated amongst different groups
and an alternative dra was proposed. However, the government never pushed the
policy. In 1998, the Ministry for Rural Development prepared a dra Land Acquisition
Bill as well as the dra National Rehabilitation and Reselement Policy for displaced
persons. This met with severe opposition from voluntary groups, and another set of
meetings was organized to discuss this dra. In 2000, aer several consultations, an
alternative civil society dra - The Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Reselement
Bill was formulated. Aer nearly two decades and several dras, the government in
February 2004 announced the National Policy on Rehabilitation and Reselement. The
dra policy has yet again met with major criticism on the grounds that it continues to
accept displacement as given, and has a welfare approach rather than a rights approach.
The biggest problem with the policy is that while allowing flexibility for private sector
to acquire land, it continues to ignore the issue of acquisition of land and the intrinsic
problems there in.
In the post independence period, poor and subsistence farmers were dispossessed of
their lands in another form too, apart from direct displacement due to state acquisition
of land for public purpose. The green revolution, which promoted high cost, largescale commercial farming based on external inputs (chemical/ fertilizers/pesticides,
hybrid seeds) completely changed the face of agricultural economy in the country and
further alienated a large population from their lands. Over the years, much research has
46

gone into establishing how this farming paern affected fertility, productivity of land,
ground water resources, and health of the people in the long run. The new economic
reforms have aggravated the problems started by the green revolution. The Agreement
on Agriculture has meant opening of agriculture to the global market, which needless
to say is on substantially inequitable terms, making the Indian farmer more vulnerable.
Low import tariffs, slashing of already miniscule agriculture subsidies in comparison to
what agriculture and farmers get in the developed world, genetically modified seeds;
biotechnology and corporate farming are the order of the day and have literally spelt
doom for peasants who have thrown caution to wind on seeing volatile world price
signals. The suicides by farmers in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra are
a clear indicator of this. NGOs and voluntary organizations all over the country have
been raising these issues at various fora, bringing in the questions of traditional farming
systems, seeds, the patent bill, biodiversity rights, and the right to food. At the second
National Consultation of the Right to Food Campaign in Kolkata, in November 2005,
Dalit groups raised the issue of land rights for right to food, indicating that the issue
of food security and agriculture are intrinsically linked to ownership of land. At the
international level, there have been massive protests against the trade and agriculture
related policies of the WTO as they relate to developing countries. The recent WTO
ministerial in Hong Kong in December 2005 saw tens of thousands of protesters from
all over the developing world. A delegation of farmers and activists from India was
also present.
It is no more a secret that international financial institutions like the World Bank
go all the way to influence land policies in developing countries. This can be seen in
the fact that the Bank has put land reforms back on the international agenda. In fact,
way back in 1975, the World Bank published its Land Reform Policy Paper where it
spoke of doing away with communal tenure systems and privatizing these to promote
production of cash crops. This paper was revised in the 1990s. The new version spoke
of market-assisted land reforms where land would be redistributed with the help of
the market and aid agencies. Under the World Bank scheme, loans and credits would
be granted to the landless to buy land at market rates from large owners, and also for
purchase of technical inputs and marketable crop seeds.
In India, these reforms have not been directly initiated, but there has been World
Bank assistance for various large-scale development projects for almost three decades
now. Apart from this, agricultural reforms that focus completely on cash based intensive
agriculture have been carried out since the green revolution under the World Banks
agenda. Post-1990 trends like corporate farming and land renting have also been
emerging. All these have had a direct impact on land use and rights of communities.
In June 2004, the World Bank released the dra Country Assistance Strategy (CAS)
for India that spells out the Banks assistance to India for the fiscal years 2005- 2008. As
per this, the World Bank plans to double loans to India, with most of the additional
money earmarked for infrastructure projects, including dams. It proposes an expansion
of investment lending notwithstanding the severe shortcomings of the environmental and
social policies and compliance therewith of our government authorities. In a National
47

Consultation held in Delhi on August 7, 2004, several civil society organizations,

including major national alliances on mining, forestry and dams and hydropower,
rejected the World Banks Country Assistance Strategy. They questioned how and why
the Government of India could succumb to the banks strategy of promoting large-scale
privatization in important sectors such as power, water, agriculture and other basic
services, going much beyond the mandate of the tenth five year plan and the Common
Minimum Programme adopted by the United Progressive Alliance government at the
Centre.
In view of the present situation, some of the opinion is for legalizing tenancy
markets, land markets, allowing contract farming and giving homestead plots to each
and every landless people. However, what should not be missed that mere needs do
not transform in entitlement in the market. Needs have to be backed up by purchasing
power to take the shape of effective demand in the market. Market forces do not lead
to equity, and the sale of land by landlords does not mean that the poor people can
afford to buy it. Development projects have contributed a lot to the inflated land price.
Tenancy market legalization also does not rule out the possibility of exploitation of
the tenants. Contract farming brings with it the indebtedness of the farmers. So, these
things have to be well regulated otherwise the socio-economic well being of the masses
would be severely compromised.

Nepal
Nepal was largely under a feudal system, where a small number of landlords held most
of agricultural land. The state extended its control over the land by the administrative
device of making land grants and assignments and raising revenue. Most of the landlords
who were granted state lands were not directly involved in farming but contracted
with tenant farmers on a customary and hereditary basis. The basic purpose of the
reforms was to protect the tenant farmer, take away excess holdings from landlords,
and distribute property to farmers with small landholding (holdings of one to three
hectares) and landless agrarian households.
Land Reforms so far undertaken in Nepal concern mainly three aspects of
agricultural system: 1) insecurity of tenure, 2) excessive rents, and 3) privileged forms
of landownership and use. Efforts at land reform began with enactment of Land and
Cultivation Record Compilation Act in 1956, and continued with the Lands Act in 1957
when government began to compile tenants records. Although these acts facilitated land
reforms, the lot of the small farmer did not improve. The Agricultural Reorganization
Act passed in 1963, and the Land Reform Act, passed in 1964, emphasized security of
tenant farmers and put a ceiling on landholdings. Loopholes, however, allowed large
landholders to control most of the land. While, there was some success in providing
security to tenant farmers, not much has been achieved in redistribution.
As of 1990, average landholdings remained small. A confluence of the traditional
inequality in the distribution of cultivable land, and extremely limited scope for
expansion of the cultivated land, excessive dependence on subsistence agriculture
for livelihood, failure of the non-agricultural sector to create significant employment
48

opportunities all amidst fast growing population, over a long period of time is at the
heart of the widespread poverty, especially in the rural areas of Nepal.
To reduce inequality in the distribution of agricultural land, Lands Act 2021 (1964)
is being implemented from as early as 1964. This act fixes ceilings on the land an
individual can own, protects the right of tenants by registering his or her name in the
owners deed itself, fixes rent on agricultural land and does away with the traditionally
very high interest rates on rural loans. This law has been amended six times. Most
important among them are the fourth and the fih amendments. The fourth amendment
has made a provision of apportioning 50% of the land hitherto cultivated by a tenant
between the tenant and the landowners to ensure that the tenants become the owners
of cultivated land. In the same amendment a provision has also been made to provide
credit facilities to the tenant, should she/he be interested in buying the owners share
also. It came in to force in January 1997. The Fih Amendment that came in force in
2001 has reduced the ceilings as summarized below, while retaining the provision of
the Fourth amendment.
Two-thirds of Nepals total geographic area consists of rugged hills and snow capped
mountains. The country has almost no scope to bring new areas under cultivation
without serious environmental risks. Even if all the cultivated land of a lile over 2.5
million hectares is equally distributed among the nearly 3.4 million farmer households,
a family will not have more than 0.8 hectares. This, in itself, is a serious constraint. The
above constraint vis--vis the skewed land distribution which continues in the face of
various reform measures, have meant dependence of the rural households on forests.
Considering these realities also, policies have been made to allocate parts of forestlands
as Community and Leasehold Forests for creating forest based income and employment
opportunities. The Forest Act, 2049 (1993), which continues to hold forests as state
property, has made provisions to hand over management of some of the potentially
productive forests to the near-by communities themselves. In addition to this, patches
of forests are allocated to specifically targeted groups of poor households residing in
the nearby areas on a long-term lease of 40 years.
These initiatives have been undertaken with intent of increasing access of peasants
to land. In addition, the Country has enacted some very significant laws, which can go
a long way in ensuring livelihood capabilities of a huge section of population dependent
on agriculture, and weaker sections including women. Examples of such initiatives are
the following.

According priority to agricultural uses over electrical, industrial, navigational,

recreational and other uses and recognizing water users groups as legal entities
in the Water Resources Act, 2049 (1992).

Enactment of a law to prohibit the use of Kamaya (bonded laborers) and

provisioning for fixation of minimum wages for agricultural laborers in 2001.

Devolution of authorities on a number of development issues including some of the

quasi-judiciary authorities to the self-governing entities at the village and district
levels through a Local Self-Governance Act, 2055 (1999)

The Countrys Civil Code has also been amended to enable women to have share
in parental properties.
49

The objective of these legislative initiatives was to reduce inequality in the

distribution of agricultural lands, improve access to other natural resources and
ultimately, to contribute to poverty alleviation. A number of specific programmes are
under different phases of implementation to translate the above legislative and policy
initiatives into reality. A Community Forestry Development Programme is under
implementation for nearly three decades. Similarly, a Leasehold Forestry Programme
is also under implementation for over a decade now. The users of these systems
themselves are managing an overwhelming majority of the existing irrigation systems
in Nepal. Programmes with different nomenclature and geographic and technical scopes
are also under implementation in support of this traditionally existing practice, apart
from giving it legal backing. To improve access to energy in the rural areas, a Biogas
Support Programme that provides cleaner energy while supplying organic fertilizer is
also under implementation.
In terms of their effect and impact, the available evidence indicates that the
proportion of people below poverty line decreased in the eight-year period from
nearly 42% in 1995/96 to 31% in 2003/04. There is a general decrease in the level of
inequality despite the fact that implementation of the provisions of the Fourth and the
Fih Amendments of the Lands Act still has a long way to go. Over 1.5 million rural
households, which is almost half the total number of agricultural holdings of the country,
are participating in the management and benefits sharing from the community managed
forests in varying degree. Since the Leasehold Forestry Programme is still to expand and
intensify the number of specifically targeted poor household is expected to gradually
increase. Yet the available evidence suggests that this programme has been successful
in contributing to poverty reduction apart from improving the environment.
However, Nepals experience in the implementation of the various programmes
related to agrarian reform and rural development needs to be read with caution. For a
least developed country like Nepal, where the budgetary resources of the Government are
limited, support of external institutions come to play an important role in materializing
national commitment and efforts. The experiences of the Community and Leasehold
Forestry Development Programmes, the Biogas Support Programmes are good examples
in these aspects. And if the observation that there are no free lunches available in the
market is to be taken seriously, any aempt to deliver goods on the land and livelihood
issues of masses on shoulders of external funding agencies which count their returns
before investing needs careful analysis.

Latin America
The agricultural paern of most Latin American countries is characterized by very large
properties (latifundia) on one hand, and minute properties (minifundia) on the other.
Latifandia are oen extensively used ranches, while others are rented or sharecropped
under conditions exacting to the tenants or sharecroppers. The indigenous population,
especially in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru, has been forced on to the high plateau, where
they endeavor to farm very limited and poor marginal land. While smallholdings are
intensively cultivated, but can hardly afford their owners subsistence, let alone a surplus
50

for the market, the very large holdings are not intensively cultivated and include large
areas of land held idle for speculative purposes. The large holdings pre-empt most of
the good land, squeezing the minifundistas into the hills or onto poorer land. Threefourths or more of all farms in Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Paraguay, the Dominican
Republic and Haiti are less than five hectares. Their possessors lack not only land but
also other productive resources. Land in most of the countries is over-valued in relation
to the income that is derived from it, partly because of the traditional prestige of land
ownership, partly because of its usefulness as a hedge against inflation.
In the backdrop of a highly inequitable land ownership paern, expectedly, the
most urgent demands for land distribution, in the region, came from the most densely
populated rural areas, in which there is not enough land to give each family a plot
of economic size. Latin American countries have different dates of land reform. For
Mexico land reform started in the 1920s, Bolivia in the 1950s, Cuba at the end of the
1950s, Nicaragua, in the 1980s. However, the commonality was that these efforts at
land reform came as a response to the social revolution aer colonial rule. In the 1960s
and 1970s, land reform ceased to be regarded as an extremist vindication, and began
to be promoted in an aempt to forestall revolutionary outbreaks, such as the one
that erupted in Cuba in 1959. The reform programmes were aimed at reducing the
concentration of land ownership through redistribution of estates and plantations among
peasants and workers. It also aimed to restructure the feudal relations that characterize
rural societies, which had long undermined efforts to promote democracy, to accord
peasants their proper status as citizens, to modernize agriculture and the economy to
build the nation-state.

Venezuela
Early in the 19th Century Venezuela was a fairly typical Latin American country, except
that during the period of colonization it was generally considered a backwater because
the Spaniards did not believe Venezuela had much mineral wealth. As a result, early
on agriculture became the main economic activity of the country, with the production
of cocoa, coffee, sugar, coon, and tobacco leading the way.
At least 70% of the population lived in the countryside at that time. Land tenancy
during was mostly divided up between a handful of caudillos (strong men) who had
fought during Venezuelas war of independence (1821-1839). This unjust land distribution
was not accepted quietly in Venezuela, though. In fact, Venezuelas post independence
civil wars were fuelled by this oligopoly over land. Ezequiel Zamora (1817-1860) was
a prominent leader of the voice of protest being. His famous slogan called for: Land
and free men, respect for the peasant, and the disappearance of the Godos [Spanish
colonialists]. With this slogan he led numerous popular uprisings against the oligarchy.
Even though he was ultimately unable to reverse Venezuelas unequal land distribution,
today he is one of President Chavezs main historical reference points and sources of
inspiration, especially with regard to agrarian issues.
Later on, a number of military rulers like Guzman Blanco (1880-1890) distributed
land among their loyal supporters. One of the most notorious dictators in this regard was
51

Juan Vicente Gmez (1908-1935), who appropriated tremendous amounts of land as his
personal property. Aer he was overthrown his land was expropriated, thus becoming
state property again. A major shi that took place during the Gmez dictatorship was
Venezuelas conversion from a predominantly agricultural economy into one based
primarily on mineral exploitation - especially oil exploitation, which was discovered
in Venezuela in the early 20th century. This shi would eventually have devastating
consequences for Venezuelan agriculture. By the end of the Gmez dictatorship in 1935,
agriculture made up only 22% of Venezuelas GDP, though it still occupied about 60%
of the workforce. Meanwhile, Venezuela had become the worlds largest oil exporting
country.
By 1960 the percentage of the population living in rural areas had declined to just
35%, and by the 1990s this number had dropped to a mere 12%, making Venezuela one
of Latin Americas most urbanized countries. Another result of this is that Venezuela is
the only Latin American country that is a net importer of agricultural products, and it
has the smallest percentage of GDP6%that comes from agricultural production.
In addition to the overall decline of agriculture, Venezuelan farmers had to cope
with the tremendous inequality in land ownership. In 1937 land ownership was so
concentrated that the larger haciendas, with land holdings of 1,000 hectares or more,
were held by only 4.8% of the landowners, but constituted 88.8% of all agricultural land.
Small farmers, though, with land holdings of 10 hectares or less, constituted 57.7% of
all landowners, yet occupied just 0.7% of agricultural land.
Venezuelas first real experience with state-sponsored land reform began with
a land reform law that was passed in 1960, shortly aer the defeat of the Marcos
Perez Jimenez dictatorship and the 1958 introduction of liberal democracy. The socialdemocratic presidency of Rmulo Betancourt realized that Venezuelas land distribution
was unsustainable and introduced the Agrarian Reform Law of 1960, which set up the
National Agrarian Institute. This reform effort, over the course of 20 years, distributed
state land to over 200,000 families. Most of this, though, came in the first few years
aer the law was passed, while subsequent governments ignored the institute and the
land reform program.
The intensification of Dutch Disease, especially during the countrys oil boom years
of the 1970s, made agricultural production quite unprofitable, and urbanization nearly
unstoppable. It has been estimated that the dropout rate from this reform effort was as
high as one third of the beneficiaries. Also, as many as 90% of the beneficiaries never
obtained full title to the land. The land reform was thus essentially a reform in land
tenancy, from state to small farmer, but not in land ownership. According to a 1997
agricultural census, land distribution remained almost as unequal as it was prior to the
1960 agricultural reform law, with 5% of largest land owners controlling 75% of the
land, and 75% of the smallest landowners controlling only 6% of the land. This only
goes to highlight the fact that success and failures of land reform initiatives are very
substantively conditioned by the macroeconomic policy regime and its outcomes.
What did change, though, first, was that a market for land ownership developed,
but mostly among middle to large land holdings, as these landowners began purchasing
52

and selling their land, oen for speculative purposes. Second, the larger land owners
were also increasingly inclined to expel campesinos from the land, either as a result of
the introduction of new technologies, or because they had to stop production due to
the incompetitiveness of their agricultural products, thus contributing to the already
serious pressure on urbanization. Finally, a third change was that the landowners were
increasingly companies rather than individuals.

Land reform under Chavez

When Hugo Chavez came into office in 1999, it was fairly clear that one of his first
priorities would be land reform. Although his political platform, aside from his emphasis
on developing a new constitution, was far from clear, Chavez repeatedly stressed that
one of his main heroes was Ezequiel Zamora. Also, once the new constitution was
approved by referendum in December 1999, it became even clearer that land reform
would be a constitutional mandate. Article 307 of the 1999 constitution states: the
predominance of large idle estates (latifundios) is contrary to the interests of society.
Appropriate tax law provisions shall be enacted to tax fallow lands and establish
the necessary measures to transform them into productive economic units, likewise
recovering arable land. Farmers and other agricultural producers are entitled to own
land in the cases and forms specified under the pertinent law. The State shall protect
and promote associative and private forms of property in such manner as to guarantee
agricultural production. The State shall see to the sustainable ordering of arable land
to guarantee its food-producing potential
Likewise, the constitution specifies that it is the States obligation to promote the
development of agriculture in Venezuela: The state will promote conditions for holistic
rural development, with the purpose of generating employment and guaranteeing the
peasant population an adequate level of well-being, as well as their incorporation into
national development. Similarly, it will support agricultural activity and the optimal
use of land, by means of the provision of infrastructure works, credit, training services,
and technical assistance
Despite his clear interest in promoting a land reform, it was not until three years
into his first term in office that Chavez presented his governments land reform law,
which was passed as part of a set of law-decrees in November 2001, and went into full
effect a year later, on December 10, 2002. The law-decrees were part of an enabling
act, where the National Assembly allowed Chavez to pass a set of 49 laws by decree.
When Chavez passed these 49 law-decrees, the oppositions uproar against them was
immediate and resounding. As a maer of fact, it was these laws, but especially the
land reform, that galvanized the opposition for the first time since its devastating defeats
at the polls in 1998 and 2000. Eventually, the land reform and the other laws would
provide one of the main motivations for the April 2002 coup aempt and the 2003
shutdown of the oil industry.
The reasons the opposition was so opposed to the land reform law were varied,
but principally had to do with their objection that not only state-owned land, but also
privately held land could be redistributed. Despite the oppositions uproar, the land
53

reform law of 2001 is not all that radical, when compared to the history of land reform
around the world. The law clearly states that large landowners are entitled to their land.
Only if the land is idle and over a certain size, depending on its quality, may a portion
of it be expropriated. In addition, if the government expropriates it for redistribution,
then it must compensate legitimate landowners at current market rates for this land.
A change in the land reform law, which was enacted in early 2005, changed the size
of idle land that landowners may own. According to the law as it was first passed, the
largest tract of idle low quality agricultural land that could be held was 5,000 hectares.
The 2005 reform of the land law, though, made the permissible sizes of idle agricultural
land more flexible, leaving the extent up to the National Land Institute, which is in
charge of land redistribution. The land institute decided to reduce the largest expansion
of idle high quality land an owner may own from 100 hectares to 50 and the largest
expansion of low quality land from 5,000 hectares to 3,000, with another four categories
of land between these two extremes. Aside from the possibility of idle large estates
being expropriated, the new land law specifies, just as required by article 307 of the
constitution quoted above, that such estates would be taxed as long as they are idle.
The rate of taxation would depend, just as with the maximum size of the land holding,
on the lands agricultural quality. This measure, of course, provided landowners with
another reason for opposing the new land law. The government, though, decided to
pass a moratorium on this tax, not requiring landowners to pay until 2006. Part of the
reason for this is probably because the government does not really know who owns
how much land and needs time to sort out the land title registry.
The reform measures stipulate that any Venezuelan citizen who is either the head of
a family household or is single and between 18 and 25 years old may apply for a parcel
of land. Once the land has been productively cultivated for three years, the applicant
may acquire full ownership title to it. However, even the full title does not mean that
the owner can sell the land, only that it can be passed on to his or her descendants.
The prohibition against selling titles acquired through the land reform, derives from
the belief, and rightly so, that land should not be a commodity to be bought and sold,
and that a market in agricultural land inevitably leads to greater land concentration
and inequality, and thus to rural poverty.
The reform measures also created institutions for implementation and management
of the land reform. The first is the National Land Institute (INTI), which replaced the
previous National Agricultural Institute (IAN), is supposed to manages all lands held
by the central government and administers all land titles. The second institution is
the National Institute for Rural Development (INDER), which provides agricultural
infrastructure, such as technology and roads, credits, and training for farmers. The third
institution is the Venezuelan Agrarian Corporation (CVA), which helps farmers and
cooperatives that benefited from the land reform to bring their products to market.
The reform measures have also had to face legal hurdles. Shortly before the
land law entered into full effect, the Chavez governments land reform efforts were
dealt a serious blow, as on November 20, 2002, Venezuelas Supreme Court ruled
that Articles 89 and 90 of the Land Law were unconstitutional and annulled them.
54

The annulled article 89 had allowed INTI to authorize peasants to pre-emptively occupy
expropriable land (ocupacin previa), while the landowners appealed their right to the
lands ownership in court. Since such court proceedings generally take many years, not
allowing the pre-emptive occupation of disputed land allows landowners to hold on to
the land far longer than would have been possible with Article 89 in effect, and seriously
slows down the entire land reform process. As a point of comparison, it worth noting
that ocupacin previa is the principle tactic used by the Landless Workers Movement
(MST) in their relatively successful land reform from below in Brazil. To prohibit
ocupacin previa, then, is to seriously weaken the peasant movement on land reform
issues.
Article 90 stated that the government did not have to compensate landowners for
investments they made in the land, such as buildings, roads, waterways, etc, if a finding
was made that this land had been acquired illegally, as many large estate were. In other
words, the articles annulment required the state to compensate those large landowners
who had made investments even on land they had essentially stolen.
As an achievement, the official sources claim that the end of 2004 had distributed
a total of 2 million hectares of state-owned land. However, Venezuelan peasant
organizations argue that the progress that these figures measure is not that of a
comprehensive land reform, because most of it apparently involves the legal
recognition of already existing informal peasant land selements, rather than the
redistribution to the landless of previously idle, or of true latifundio, land. So while that
certainly can improve the security of land tenure for beneficiaries, and while Venezuela
may have relatively fewer landless peasants than some neighboring countries, this still
represents a significant pending task for the land reform.
While all of the land that had been redistributed was state-owned land until
2004, it was not until early 2005 that the Chavez government turned its aention to
privately held land. Of the 2 million hectares slated to be redistributed in 2005, 1.5
million were to come from estates that are privately owned. The first effort to engage
in the redistribution of private land began in March 2005, when the INTI declared that
five estates currently in private hands were to be recovered, i.e., were to belong to
the State. That is, rather than declaring the land as a latifundio and expropriating it on
the basis that too much of it is idle, the land institute is saying that all or part of these
lands actually belong to the government because the current occupants cannot properly
prove their ownership of it. This has, of course, generated much controversy, especially
since some of the owners claim to be able to prove their ownership with documents
dating back to the mid 19th century. The government, though, says that some of these
documents are false.
One of the roots for this controversy is that land ownership in Venezuela, just as
in most of Latin America, is an extremely murky affair. Historically, large landowners
oen expanded their territory far beyond its original boundaries, claiming land that
either belonged to the state or to absentee landlords. Part of the reason they could do
this is that the descriptions in old land titles are very vague about demarcating the
territory. Also, sometimes a landowner might have legitimately bought land, but the
55

person who it was bought from did not have a legitimate title. A main task now for any
effective land reforms program would therefore consist in development of a coherent
and accurate register of land titles. This is an extremely difficult, time-consuming, and
conflictive process, though. In the end, this task could prove to be so difficult and
conflictive that it will be easier to simply declare any land holding over a certain size
as illegal, regardless of the land title documentation a landowner might have, or even
perhaps, whether or not it is actually idle. The INTI, under Otaizas brief leadership,
appeared to be interested in taking the former approach. Cuba, faced with a similarly
confused situation at the beginning of the revolution, eventually opted for the laer.
In many cases already, landless peasants have challenged the ownership of large
landowners on their own, saying that the laer are not the rightful owners and have
illegally acquired land that historically belonged to the peasant communities. For
example, in one controversial case, a large group of peasants decided to occupy the El
Charcote estate, which belongs to the British cale ranching company of Lord Vestey.
This has seen an increased violence against peasants and their leadership over the
years. Already over 130 peasants have been killed in the past four years over land
disputes. According to peasant leaders such as Braulio Alvarez, who is the director of
the National Agricultural Coordinator Ezequiel Zamora (CANEZ), which is a coalition
of pro-government peasant groups, assassins hired by the landowners killed these
peasants. PROVEA, Venezuelas most important human rights group, confirms that
the killers have been hired assassins, and notes that this is a distinct change from preChavez years, when most of the killers were from the governments security forces.
Despite all of the protests from large landowners and the opposition, who say the
Chavez government is engaging in an assault on private property, by 2004 less than
1% of the land reforms land titles had been challenged judicially. Despite the advances
that have been made with the land reform, relative to the enormous expectation raised
by Chavezs Bolivarian Revolution, and based on the countrys past experiences with
the issue and relative to experiences in other countries, Venezuelas peasants know that
a long bale lies ahead.

Brazil
Since its return to democratic rule in 1985, Brazil has been one of the main Latin American
countries actively pursuing agrarian reform. In that year, the Plano Nacional da
Reforma Agrria-Nova Republica (PNRA-NR) was approved, affirming the
governments commitment to expropriate land with compensation in the interest of
social justice. Productive properties, irrespective of size, were exempt from expropriation.
This commitment to agrarian reform, and limitation on expropriation to properties that
do not serve a social function was maintained in the 1988 Federal Constitution.
Agrarian reform was placed on the nations agenda once again largely as a result
of the growing number of land occupations that began in the late 1970s. The landless
movement, the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST), was officially
constituted in 1984, and by the end of that decade was organizing peasants in 22 of
Brazils states. Its efforts have been supported nationally by the Comiso Pastoral da
56

Terra (CPT), an NGO of the Catholic Church. The other main advocate of agrarian
reform has been the rural workers union, Confederao Nacional dos Trabalhadores
na Agricultura (CONTAG), made up of agricultural wage workers, tenants and family
farmers, who have been organized at the municipal, state and national level since 1963.
By the mid-1990s, it too was organizing land occupations and collaborating/competing
with the MST to accelerate the pace of the agrarian reform. In addition, there are
currently from 60 to 70 smaller organizations engaged in the struggle for land at the
regional and state level.
What is different about the issue of agrarian reform in Brazil compared with other
Latin American countries is that it has strong support in urban areas and among the
middle class. High rural-urban migration combined with the inability of industry to
absorb new entrants, has resulted in exceptionally high rates of under-employment and
unemployment in urban areas, an explosion of crime, and deterioration in the quality of
urban life. Given Brazils extremely high concentration of land, and the fact much of it is
unproductive, agrarian reform has the potential to create more direct and indirect rural
jobs at lower cost than comparable investments in industry. Thus an agrarian reform of
sufficient scope and depth, by raising rural incomes and reviving rural municipalities, is
expected to reduce rural-urban migration, and contribute to more balanced and equitable
growth. The main opposition to agrarian reform has been the landlords lobby, the
Unio Democrtica Ruralista (UDR), which began as the anti-reform lobby within the
national congress in the mid-1980s and later became a national organization. It is allied
on most issues with the Confederao Nacional Agrria (CNA), the national association
of state and municipal unions of agricultural employers. As a result of their combined
influence, until 1995 efforts at agrarian reform were minimal.
Largely in response to an escalation in land occupations by the social movements
and of rural violence, during the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (19952002), the pace of land expropriation and organization of agrarian reform selements
increased substantially. While the extent of his governments accomplishments has been
a point of contention, there is lile doubt that during the Cardoso period, more land
was expropriated and families benefited than during the whole thirty years of agrarian
reform that preceded it. According to official data between 1995 and September 2002,
635,035 families benefited from its various land reform efforts; in contrast, between
1964-94 only 218,534 families were beneficiaries. The area expropriated, representing
on the order of 20 million hectares, corresponds to approximately six per cent of the
farmland reported in the 1995-96 agricultural census.
The goal of the Cardoso government was to create viable family farmers. It pledged
to provide each beneficiary family with a financing package that included a selement
grant and three credit lines under PROCERA (the agrarian reform credit program) for
working capital and investments in social and productive infrastructure. The average
costs of expropriation per parcel were initially quite high but, as a result of macro
stability as well as concerted efforts to reduce the overvaluation of properties in the
expropriation process, the average cost fell by over 50 percent by 2001. In addition,
in order to encourage the sale of unproductive land and its more efficient use, the
57

government increased the land tax on unused land, with the precise rate depending
both on farm size and the degree of land utilization. This measure was complemented
by efforts to modernize the rural land cadastre and institute a national land registry.
These efforts have also allowed a more precise identification of illegally titled national
lands.
The Cardoso government also experimented with various means of de-centralizing
the agrarian reform. The most important initiative was the Cdula da Terra, a US$
150 million pilot project in market-assisted land reform partially funded by the World
Bank in five of the northeastern states. In 1998 the Banco da Terra was also created
in expectation that the market-assisted program would be expanded nationally. The
central idea behind the market-assisted land reform program is that by replacing state
expropriation of land with direct negotiations between buyers and seller the process will
be less confrontational and the price of land would be lower. The laer, it is argued, since
landowners are paid fully in cash, rather than partly in government bonds, and because
beneficiaries will aempt to buy land cheap since they must repay the governments
financing of the purchase.
The Banco da Terra differs from the Cdula da Terra program in that fighting
poverty is not one of its objectives. Thus potential beneficiaries with higher household
incomes than allowed under the laer program are allowed to participate. Moreover, all
financing is in the form of loans. The Cdula da Terra program has a flexible loan-grant
financing scheme whereby each beneficiary receives a fixed sum; whatever portion goes
to purchase land is a loan, with the remainder constituting a grant. The grant portion
is to cover selement costs, the purchase of technical assistance and infrastructure
investments. It is this portion that was funded by the initial World Bank loan of US$
90 million. The governments financing for the land purchase is to be repaid over 20
years at an interest rate of four per cent. The Cdula da Terra aimed to benefit 15,000
families over three years (1998-2000) with 400,000 hectares of land.
The market-assisted land reform program provoked major controversy with the
social movements. They accused the federal government to be absolving itself of
responsibility for land redistribution by de-centralizing the process, and feared that
the market-assisted program would eventually replace state expropriation of land. The
MST, in particular, considered this a travesty, since it would reward landlords for their
unjust concentration of land. Moreover, given the power of the landlord class at the
state and local level, such devolution of responsibility would put land reform in the
hands of precisely those who have traditionally opposed it and strengthen patron-client
relations.
In addition, the Cdula da Terra program was created at a moment of escalating
tensions between the social movements and the state. Land occupations were at an
all-time high between 1996 and 1999, reaching an average of around 500 annually. The
state seized the initiative in 2000 by placing a two-year moratorium on investigating
whether properties so occupied were eligible for expropriation and by automatically
disqualifying participants in occupations as potential beneficiaries of the reform. This
was accompanied by, what the MST considered to be, persecution of the movement,
58

with a number of its leaders jailed on various charges and it being accused of the
misappropriation of credit provided to the land reform selements. Moreover, in order to
reduce the role of the social movements in the selection of agrarian reform beneficiaries,
the government launched a new beneficiary selection process, whereby those seeking
land could apply directly to INCRA by filling out a form at the post office. The social
movements responded by urging their members to apply for land and over three quarter
of a million people signed up.
The governments divide-and-rule strategy included persuading CONTAG to
participate in a new variant of the market-assisted land reform strategy. In partnership
with the World Bank, a US$ 400 million program, the Projeto de Crdito Fundiario e
Combate a Pobreza Rural (PCPR) was designed to target the rural poor in 14 states.
It differs from the Cdula da Terra program in that potential beneficiaries must be
organized in legally recognized associations, such as CONTAGs municipal-level unions.
The program aims to benefit 50,000 families between 2002-04, and is administered by
the state and municipal Sustainable Rural Development Councils in which CONTAG
participates. In the face of government cajoling, CONTAG maintained its opposition to
the idea of market-assisted land reform, especially the Banco da Terra. Along with the
MST it is calling for a constitutional amendment that would set a maximum size limit
on all farms, with those above 35 fiscal modules subject to expropriation. The laer
demand has become the focus of a national campaign, one that is supported by the
Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT).
The need for a massive and relative quick agrarian reform was always part of the
campaign platform of Lula (Luis Incio da Silva) in his four bids for the presidency
as the candidate of the PT. With his taking over the seat of the President in 2003,
expectations ran high that an expanded agrarian reform would be among his first
initiatives. Instead, during his first six months in office, Lula chose to concentrate on
the poor and on family farmers. In mid-2003, initiatives were announced to increase
food production for the internal market, expand rural employment and income, and end
hunger. The anti-hunger program (Fome Zero) aims to provide up to 44 million people
with a food subsidy by 2006. Their increased demand for basic grains is to be met by
unprecedented support for family-based agriculture. A R$ 5.4 billion program, the Plano
Safra 2003-04, includes a 50 percent increase over previous years in the availability of
credit for foodstuff production and the expansion of a number of credit lines under
PRONAF, including one for women farmers. In addition, the state marketing agency is
to guarantee the purchase of all the production of land reform selements and other
family farmers at a guaranteed minimum price, with these food supplies to be made
available directly to the Fome Zero program.
While this initiative of the government was welcomed by all quarters, the fact
that NCRAs budget for land acquisition has been reduced during is indicative of
weakness (financial or otherwise) of the government in its efforts to push through the
land reform programme. In a proposal presented to Lula in July 2003, MST called for
one million families to be given land between 2003-06, as well as the immediate selement
of the 120,000 families currently in encampments. The government responded by
59

promising for 2004 the largest budget for land acquisition in the history of the agrarian
reform.
Brazil has also seen a significant movement towards production co-operatives. In
fact, a special feature of the Brazilian land reform move is that the decision to form
production cooperatives has not been imposed by agrarian reform planners from
above as in the agrarian reforms of the past. Rather, their promotion has been at the
behest of the MST with relatively lile special assistance from the state. Moreover,
besides facilitating the provision of infrastructure and other public goods, a number
of production cooperatives have successfully developed agro-industrial activities, thus
diversifying incomes and generating employment opportunities for family members
such as women and youth.
Brazil is also unique in carrying out a market-assisted land reform programme,
alongside traditional agrarian reform efforts. Even though the impact of the negotiated
model has not been properly evaluated, the experimental Cdula da Terra project was
expanded nationally soon aer its initiation. One of the positive outcomes of this model
thus far, according to the World Bank PRR, is that land purchase prices are lower than
under the traditional agrarian reform and that the program has expanded the range of
land available for redistribution as well the potential beneficiaries and improved their
welfare. However, studies based on an analysis of the same documents available to the
World Bank, challenge these conclusions - particularly with regards to the welfare of
beneficiaries. One of the main points of contention worthy of further research is the
beneficiary selection process. Advocates of the decentralized model argue that one of
its benefits is self-selection, since only those with the skills and dedication to farming
will come forward to buy land and take on a mortgage. Potential beneficiaries, however,
are required to form an association to negotiate for the purchase of land and it is this
association that is responsible for the mortgage as well as deciding upon the collective
investments to be undertaken. Lile aention was paid in the Cdula da Terra project
to how these groups would be formed and whether they would have the internal
cohesiveness to function as a community. In many cases the beneficiary selection process
was manipulated by local elites, and many of these groups were formed instrumentally,
to get access to the resources of the project, with lile chance of sustainability. In the
design of the second stage of the project (the PCPR) this was recognized as a potential
weakness, and CONTAG and its municipal-level unions were given a prominent role
in beneficiary selection and in organizing the associations.
Brazil thus offers a unique opportunity to study different kinds of agrarian reform
selements according to the way that they were formed, and how this relates to their
social cohesiveness and sustainability, e.g.: traditional selements formed by strong
grassroots participation in the struggle for land under the leadership of the MST and
CONTAG, as compared to those organized for the purpose of purchasing land at the
behest of either local-level elites (the Cdula da Terra) or CONTAG (the PCPR). Such
a comparative framework would also be useful for answering the question of whether
beneficiaries of the market-assisted program will be able to repay their land debts and
the impact of doing so on the welfare of beneficiary households.
60

Guatemala
Land distribution and agrarian scenario could not have been worse in Guatemala. Less
than 1% of landowners hold 75% of the best agricultural land, 90% of rural inhabitants
live in poverty, and over 500,000 campesino families live below subsistence level. At
the same time, Guatemala has one of the most historically stable rural populations
in Latin America; currently comprising 69% of the population, while over half of all
labor force is engaged in agriculture (FAO, 1988). The historical consolidation and
expropriation of indigenous lands has had serious consequences for sustainable land
use, smallholdings self-sufficiency, food security, and health. In some areas, land
pressures no longer allow traditional practices of shiing cultivation as a result of
which intensive cultivation practices on marginal land have led to severe soil erosion,
lower yields, and dependence on seasonal and permanent migration for remiances
to support family income. In addition to problems related to distributional inequity,
Guatemalas skewed land regime also results in credit, loans, and other resources being
channeled disproportionately to urban areas and the agro-export sector, and chronic
underinvestment in the countryside.
The story of exploitation and repression of landless masses in Guatemala goes back
to the time of Spanish invasion, and it still continues. Export oriented agriculture had
forced the masses to marginal areas. The recognition of importance of land issues came
in the year 1825 in the first agrarian law of the land, wherein the transfer of public
land for the enhancement of private holdings was mentioned. The period 1871-1885 saw
the expropriation of land from churches, removal of legal status from the communally
held land, and churches, and incentives for export oriented crops. By 1890 coffee was
the single largest export crop. The small farmer sector, i.e., campesinos suffering under
the export policy regime, shied to highland areas and got into cultivation of the low
quality lands. Ultimately, as the campesinos sectors production declined, the livelihood
conditions of the people involved in it deteriorated.8 The Agrarian Law of 1894 allowed
the sale of state land to individuals up to 678 hectares. Until 1921, hundreds of thousands
of hectares were given to about 3,600 people (Hernndez, 1998).
When Arvalo became president in 1945, a new constitution was brought in, that
provided for the social property of land and called for the eradication of latifundios
(at this time the twenty two biggest latifundistas owned more land than 249,169 peasant
families) (Handy, 1998, 102). A titling law was passed, providing that the squaers who
farmed land for ten years could obtain title to it (Thiesenhusen, 1995, 75). Arvalos
legislation, and the increasing prominence of worker and campesino organizations
during the period of 1944-1954 laid the foundation for the reform program of Jacobo
Arbenz, who was elected president in 1951. Faced with a land distribution in which
the 88% of farming units, surviving at subsistence level, held only 14% of agricultural
land, and among which the average large landowner cultivated only 19% of his personal
8

(Thiesenhusen, 1995; Hernndez, 1998) as cited in Land Research Action Network Country
Background Paper, 2002 The Agrarian Question in Guatemala Laura Saldivar Tanaka and
Hannah Wiman

61

holdings, an Agrarian Reform Law Decree 900 was passed on June 17, 1952. The main
objectives of the Decree were to: (1) eliminate feudal states; (2) obliterate all forms of
indentured servitude; (3) provide land to the landless and land-poor; and (4) distribute
credit and technical assistance to small landholders. The new reform initiative laid
out land holding limits for expropriation between 1953 and 1954; approximately 1002
decrees of expropriation were issued, affecting 603,615 hectares of land, in addition to
the redistribution of 280,000 hectares of state farms. An estimated 78,038 and 100,000
families benefited respectively. Between 33-40% of rural households and 31-40% of the
landless labor force received at least some land in parcels ranging from 3.5 to 17.5
hectares from the Arbenz reform.
The reform was carried out through the expropriation of idle land and redistribution
of uncultivated state farmland. Only uncultivated holdings larger than 90 hectares were
available for expropriation, and farms between 90-270 hectares that were at least twothirds cultivated were exempt, as were farms engaged in cash-crop cultivation. Land
expropriated from private owners was compensated by beneficiaries giving 5% of the
value of crops harvested to the government; beneficiaries of state land received land
with lifetime usufruct rights, and paid a rental fee of 3% of production.
Opposition to the Arbenz regime and the land reform enactment, however, was
swi and decisive, ending the reform on June 27th, 1954, with the overthrow of Arbenz
by Colonel Castillo Armas. Landed elites, the Catholic Church, the middle-class business
sector, foreign plantation owners and expropriated landowners, opposed the top-down
reform. In spite of its short life span, the reform achieved the redistribution of about
20% of total agricultural land to the benefit of some 24% of the population.9
Aer 1954, the Government of Guatemala developed a program for the distribution
of government owned land as a measure of counter-reform. The program was essentially
aimed at pacifying the indigenous and peasant population. Very few of the peasants
who owned lile or no land benefited from these programs; most of the best land
fell into the hands of rich landowners and army officers as a result of the registration
of national and unused land. Due to the deterioration of the level of life that most
rural communities experienced, guerilla organizations emerged in the 1960s with the
aim of mobilizing the peasant population in order to create a radical restructuring of
Guatemalas economy and polity. During the 60s and the 70s the only response of the
governments to the peasants and indigenous demands was repression. The army and
related death squadrons were responsible for eliminating not only guerillas but also
hundreds of villages. In 1978, the repressive policy was intensified, and a scorched
earth policy was pursued, whereby, soldiers razed entire communities to the ground
and murdered peasants and indigenous leaders. Expelled from their former villages,
the surviving population had to flee to the mountains or was relocated to new villages
controlled by the army. According to the Historical Memory Report, 36 years of armed
confrontation le 200 000 murdered 100,000 widows, 420 destroyed villages, and a
million internal and external refugees.
9

Land and peace in Guatemala, ARC fact sheet. January 2003 Editor: FIAN International,
LRAN

62

The outcome of reforms and counter-reforms is starkly reflected in the figures that
some studies have churned out. Hough, et al. (1982) report a highly skewed 1979 land
distribution in which 88% of productive farm units were less than family subsistence
size, holding 16% of arable land, while 2% of units held 65% of arable land (See Table
1). While there have apparently been few reliable studies since 1979, the Guatemalan
Ministry of Agriculture and Food (MAGA) estimates, that in 1998 approximately 96% of
farm units, holding 20% of agricultural land were in the subsistence or below subsistence
categories.
The peace treaties, especially the Socioeconomic and Agrarian Treaty, the Identity
and Rights of Indigenous Peoples Treaty and the Reselement Treaty, underline the
fundamental role that land has in the peace process. The treaties establish that an
integral strategy must be created in order to facilitate peasants access to land and
other productive resources and that changes in land use and ownership are necessary.
During negotiations related to the Peace Treaties, the government of the date imposed
its neo-liberal proposal in the definition of agrarian policies and programs and planted
land market as the central mechanism for achieving the transformation of land use
and ownership. The market-assisted land reform model, promoted by international
institutions such as the World Bank, evidently influenced this proposal. It includes
several elements of which the following stand out: strengthening of property rights
(registration, regularization, and legal reform), the resolution of conflicts, land access
through voluntary buying and selling, property and unused land taxes, decentralized
training and technical assistance incorporated into the private sector. The only elements
in the Peace Treaties that diverged considerably from the land market policy were
the demands for restoration of lands that had been appropriated by the military and
politicians in the Transversal Strip of the North and Peten.

Cuba
Reliance on one export commodity sugar, led to concentration of land holdings in
sugar plantations in Cuba, as well as to the misery of the small holders who could not
compete with the large exporters. Foreign owners of cale ranches also contributed
to a great extent in concentration of land in few hands.10 Thirteen American sugar
companies owned 117 million hectares of land, accounting for an estimated 25 percent
of total arable land under foreign control. Of the rest, just nine large Cuban sugarcane
plantations covered more than 620,000 hectares, which together with the agricultural
bourgeoisie controlled more than 21 percent of the land (1.8 million hectares). The rural
middle class, lower middle class, and campesinos together accounted for approximately
2.5 million hectares. Overall, 9.4 percent of landowners had 73.3 percent of the land
(Acosta 1972).11

10

Surviving Crisis in Cuba: The Second Agrarian Reform and Sustainable Agriculture Mavis
Alvarez, Martin Bourque, Fernando Funes, Lucy Martin. Armando Nova and Peter Rosset

11

ibid

63

Corrupt governments, monopolization of land by few in the domestic arena

together with foreign and corporate entities were only preparing ground for a mass
unrest of peasants class.12 The first effort at land reform in Cuba came in 1959, backed
by the revolution based on the support of peasants, intellectuals, and professionals.
The revolution was an important step towards demolition of the landlord class, as
large landholdings were expropriated from the landlords. Under a second agrarian
reform law, all holdings over 67 hectares in size were taken over by the state. Three
quarters of the countrys agricultural land had been expropriated by 1964.13 Under the
first and second Agrarian Reform Laws, the Cuban state took control of more than 70
percent of the arable land, and created the state sector in agriculture. The total land
area nationalized reached 5.5 million hectares, of which 1.1 million were turned over to
those working the land, leaving the state in control of approximately 71 percent of the
total area.14 Most estates were first turned over to their resident workers as cooperatives.
These were soon converted into state farms. Over one fourth of the agricultural land,
however, was held by individual peasant farmers or by the small holders production
co-operatives.15
The first land reform divided the land ownership into 60 percent private farms
and 40 percent state farms. Given the characteristics of the nationalized plantations and
ranches, two systems were created to organize production in the following way: former
cale ranches and virgin lands were brought under Peoples Farms, and sugarcane
plantations were brought under cooperatives. Aer the 1960 harvest, a large portion of
the expropriated sugarcane areas was transformed into sugarcane cooperatives, wherein,
the state still owned the land and other means of production, while the workers tilled
the land in usufruct. In late 1962, policy makers decided that these cooperatives were
not working out, and they were transformed into Peoples State Farms.16 Credit and
Service Cooperatives (CCSs) and agricultural communities were introduced for the help
of these cooperatives. However, agricultural production started declining in the 1980s,
due to excess dependency on imports for inputs.
The decline of former USSR, and the continuous blockade of USA towards Cuba
due to revolution, which had caused huge losses to USAs sugar enterprises in Cuba,
had made the reform task of the government all the more difficult. In fact, the steps
taken by the Cuban government to effect drastic changes in the production sector in
face of such a crisis situation are very revealing. Major steps were taken in form of
use of bio pesticide, use of donkeys instead of vehicle to reduce fuel consumption,
and extensive research on increasing agricultural productivity. Initiatives were taken
for decentralization of land ownership. Many of the state farms were broken up into
12

Solon l barraclough, land reform in developing countries: the role of the state and other
factors, UNRISD. JUNE 1999.

13

ibid

14

Surviving Crisis in Cuba: The Second Agrarian Reform and Sustainable Agriculture Mavis
Alvarez, Martin Bourque, Fernando Funes,, Lucy Martin. Armando Nova, and Peter Rosset

15

Ibid, 11

16

Ibid, 13

64

smaller scale farms called Basic Units of Cooperative Production (UBPCs), and the
agricultural sector was opened to foreign investment in joint ventures with the state.
Furthermore, unused lands were distributed in usufruct to new farmers. These changes
represented a broadening of the land tenure matrix, generating a new mixed economy
which was based primarily on individual farmers on the one hand - with both private
and usufruct tenure, and private cooperatives and collective farms with usufruct tenure
on the other (Figueroa 1996). During the nineties, land management decentralization
has taken place in Cuba, wherein three types of land administration have been put in
place i.e., State sector, non-states sector, and mixed farming.

Colombia
Colombia has taken the market route to land reforms. The Agrarian Law 160 was
adopted in 1994, which codified reforms to liberalize land markets while fostering
land ownership by poor peasants and agricultural workers through traditional means.
Beneficiaries were slated to receive subsidies to purchase lands they had selected or
lands whose transfer was negotiated with the intervention of the Instituto Colombiano
de Reforma Agraria (INCORA). Aer 12 years of working the land and paying back
their loans, beneficiaries would receive titles. Innovative elements included provisions
for joint titling to couples, and giving priority to female household heads and other
women displaced by violence.
The outcomes of this legislation have been mixed. The government obtained a
U$ 50 million loan from the World Bank to finance de-centralized implementation in
five municipalities. This and other nationally supported local initiatives led to an increase
in the number of land reform beneficiaries by 1996-1997. Yet some analysts argue
that since then there has been a marked increase in the sizes of property of more
than 200 hectares, and a decrease in medium sized properties. By and large, evidence
points out that reforms have been unable to transform the agrarian structure in any
significant way Moreover these processes have not had an appreciable impact on the
armed conflict. Demand for more comprehensive land reforms continues unabated
by the Fuerzas Armadas Revolutionarias de Colombia (FARC), and by most rural social
movements.
One set of factors undermining land reform and rural development has been the
spread of narcotics production in the countryside, the dramatic increase in appropriations
and land purchases by drug barons to launder money from the drug trade, and the
related expansion of paramilitary and guerrilla activities. A Colombian expert estimates
that since the early 1990s, drug traffickers and their paramilitary allies have appropriated
three to four million hectares of arable land more than the government redistributed
in the previous 35 years. In 1996 the government responded to this emerging challenge
by passing Law 333 authorizing the forcible expropriation, without compensation, of
lands and other assets illegally acquired by drug traffickers. The U.S.- financed Plan
Colombia also aims to reverse the growth of the narcotics sector through a combination
of aggressive eradication, security measures, governance reforms and alternative rural
development.
65

Whether that strategy is working or is aggravating the situation is a maer of

intense debate. What is clear is that devising a policy mix that might effectively reverse
the agrarian counter-reform and the drug trade, address uneven rural development
and resolve the armed conflict are profound and enduring challenges. In the meantime
Colombia will be a terrain on which to observe the outcomes of market-oriented and
more traditional land reform measures, and their coexistence with counter-reforms, the
drug trade and violent conflict.

Bolivia
The paern of land distribution in Bolivia prior to 1950 was highly iniquitous. A semifeudal system prevailed in the highlands, whereby a small stratum of large landowners
held the majority of smallholder indigenous peasants in relations of extreme servitude.
Large haciendas displacing the indigenous population prevailed. The reform program
was started in 1951 when MNR, the nationalist revolutionary party came to power. This
party has gained support from the powerful militant miners unions, urban workers,
nationalist military officers and some sections of peasantry.17 What distinguishes the
Bolivian Agrarian Reform is its endogenous character, its strong roots in the indigenous
identity, its outwardly redistributive orientation and the lack of clear public policies to
support rural development. This lacking led to the failure of the process in terms of
achieving a sustainable improvement in rural family incomes and a strengthening of
national food security.
However, the Bolivian agrarian reform was a notable success when seen as an
economic and social process, which historically restored indigenous territorial claims. In
addition to freeing the labor force, it led to a dynamic economic expansion for the first
generation of peasant land reform beneficiaries until the early 1960s, and in particular the
strengthening of their communal organization. The indigenous population, on gaining
free and direct access to the land, to their own forms of organization under the rubric
of agrarian trade unions and to political hegemony over rural territorial space, was
transformed into the central actor of revolution, organizing armed militias to consolidate
and defend its recently recovered land. But the rapid abandonment of the agrarian
reform of 1953 by public institutions and by the very party which had propelled it, the
MNR (Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario or National Revolutionary Movement)
condemned it to failure in terms of achieving a form of inclusionary and sustainable
rural development.18
The Bolivian land reform was borne of the revolution led by the Nationalist
Revolutionary Movement (NRM) in the 1950s. In 1952, peasants, who comprised
three-fourths of the countrys population, seized the highland haciendas they had been
17

Land reform in developing countries: the role of the state and other actors, by Solon L
Barraclough, paper 101,1999

18

ISS/UNDP Land, Poverty and Public Action Policy Paper No. 3, Bolivias Unfinished Agrarian
Reform: Rural Poverty and Development Policies by Cristbal Kay, Miguel Urioste , October
2005 ,ISS/UNDP Land Policies, Poverty Reduction and Public Action Research Project

66

working on and made the land part of their communities. Given the political fallout
that was bound to follow any reprisal, the government did nothing except to legalize
the land seizure. This event marked the end of the traditional semi-feudal haciendas
in that region.
Unfortunately, the peasants had neither the capacity nor the numbers to profitably
manage the land, which they now controlled. Thus, notwithstanding the partitioning
of the haciendas through land reform, production subsequently fell, with disastrous
financial results for the new owners. As agrarian reform was being implemented in the
highland haciendas, a gradual occupation of the land in the eastern part of the country,
the low lands, began to take place. Vast forested areas were cleared and converted into
agricultural land, portions of which were acquired legally, others, illegally. As a result,
this region, which used to be sparsely populated, began to be inundated by waves of
selers migrating from the saturated highland areas. These peasant migrants thereaer
became assimilated into the community of salaried workers at the new haciendas or
selement s. this increasing demographic pressure on the land in the eastern part of
the country is making land reform an urgent concern.
In the 1980s an intense debate emerged on the modernization of the 1953 law,
against the backdrop of broader governmental economic liberalization measures. It was
under this pressure from neo-liberal forces that Law 1715 was created in 1996, which
amounted to a certain extent a retreat from the 1953 law. The 1996 INRA Law, however,
has been criticized from several quarters. Some indigenous leaders, inspired by the 500
Years of Resistance Campaign in the early 1990s, are demanding an even more radical
return to traditional norms and forms of social organization. Others are demanding
greater emphasis on the land to the tiller principle of the 1953 agrarian reform. All
advocate more state support for integrated rural development in the highlands. The
Bolivian Movimiento Sin Tierra (MST) is demanding that excessive or illegally occupied
lands in the eastern plains be redistributed to landless peasants. At the other end of the
spectrum large landowners are demanding the regularization of land holdings obtained
during the 1970 and 1980s (in some cases under legally dubious circumstances), the
reduction of property taxes and the provision of cheaper credit for their enterprises.
Some landowners have formed private security forces to protect their assets against
MST-led occupations. Deep divisions over the treatment of coca growers have added
fuel to this debate.
The stalemate between these positions is one factor that contributed to the social
protests and the change of government in October 2003. The challenge for the Mesa
government and its successors is to develop a viable strategy to address the situation
of indigenous peasants in the highlands and the conflictive mix of competing land
policy demands in the east. Population pressure and subsistence agriculture have set
in a trend of fragmentation of landholdings in the highlands.

Peru
Rapid urbanization, peasant movements demanding grater access to land and beer
working conditions, and the waning influence of landowners all led to the Peruvian
67

land reform. Aer frustrated aempt by a civilian government (1963-1968, agrarian

reform was finally carried out by a military government (1968-1980). Agrarian reform
had a big impact on the prevailing land ownership structure; the large estates, which
concentrated land ownership, were abolished; semi-feudal relations in rural society
were eliminated and new ways of managing agrarian production were adopted. All
estates that were larger than 150 hectare were expropriated, along with smaller ones
whose owners were absentee, which were being used inefficiently, or whose managers
violated labor law.
The fact that these reforms were completed within five years is indicative of
the political will of the military, as well as a weak opposition put up by the former
landowners. The estates were transformed into production cooperatives, their new
owners being the workers of the former haciendas. However, aer a few years, the
majority of these cooperatives failed due to a combination of problems: unprofessional
management, lack of adequate policies to support agrarian activity, among others. In
the end, the estates were divided by the cooperatives members into family plots. Three
decades aer agrarian reform was implemented in Peru, the countrys agrarian scenario
is dominated by small farmers and peasants, on whom the country depends for its
food needs, but whose productivity remains low for want of government support. In
contrast an incipient entrepreneurial agriculture sector operating from the coastal strip
is thriving, mainly oriented towards international markets.

Land Reform in Africa

Land is more abundant in Africa than in other continents, taking into account the land
man ration, but most Africans have only very small plots and an increasing number are
landless (Raikes, 2000, 66). Though many countries of this continent have made efforts
to remove inequality in accessibility to assets, the efforts have not yielded encouraging
results. Many of the African countries were on a similar footing with the third world
countries in terms of development. When Ghana gained independence on March 6,
1957, it stood at the same level of development as South Korea, having same per capita
income of $200. With rich endowments of minerals, gold, diamonds, bauxite, manganese,
cash crops, well-educated population, and relatively larger number of professionals than
many other African countries, it had more hope than the other African countries. But
40 years later South Korea has gone ahead of it having per capita income $4400, while
Ghanas per capita income stood at $420.19
To quote Human development report (2003): Unless things improve it will take
sub-Saharan Africa until 2129 to achieve universal primary education, until 2147 to
halve extreme poverty and until 2165 to cut child mortality by two third, for hunger
no date can be set because the regions situation continues to worsen (Financial Times,
July 9, 2003).20 The report noted that while most of the worlds economies expanded in
the 1990s, people in 54 developing countries had become poorer; the majority of them
19

In Africa unchained, edited by George B. N. Ayiey, 2001

20

Ibid

68

were in Africa. The number of poor in Africa, defined as those making less than one
dollar a day, has increased sharply in both relative and absolute terms. The absolute
number of poor in Africa has grown five times more than that figure for Latin America,
and twice that for south Asia. With it the HIV/AIDS pandemic has killed at least 20
million people, more than 60 million people it has infected thus far, leaving 14 million
orphans worldwide.
African socialist economies have experienced agrarian crises similar to, but in most
respects more intense than, those in other sub-Saharan countries. While some of the
countries such as Ethiopia, and Tanzania aempted ambitious projects of rural economic
and social transformations, others (Benin, Congo, Madagascar, and Somalia) adopted
Marxist or quasi-Marxist ideological stance to a large extent. It has biases against exportoriented production inherent in macroeconomic and pricing and marketing policy, which
have, as elsewhere in Africa, been the decisive feature of the policy environment for
agriculture.

Zimbabwe
The government of Zimbabwe inherited, in 1980, a highly dualistic economy, which was
most visible in the agricultural sector. The division of land was extremely inequitable,
with some 700,000 smallholders occupying 16.4 million hectares (49 per cent of all
farming land), generally in the less-favorable parts of the country, while some 5,0006,000 large-scale commercial farmers occupied 15.5 million hectares (46 per cent of the
total) of generally prime land. Small-scale commercial farmers and state farms held the
balance of farmland. In comparison with other voluntary reselement programmes in
Sub-Saharan Africa, Zimbabwes programme dwarfs all prior efforts. Some 3.5 million
hectares of land, 84 per cent of it acquired from the large-scale commercial farming
sub-sector, had been commied to the programme between 1980 and late 1996.
Nevertheless, according to a National Human Development Report (Zimbabwe
NHDR, 1999), 60 per cent of Zimbabwes population was earning less than US$1 a
day, 80 per cent of whom live in the rural areas, while 25% were unable to meet basic
needs, mainly as a result of the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP).
Due to frequent droughts between 1.5 and 5 million people require food relief every 3
to 5 years. Zimbabwe ranks 130th on the Human Development Index21. Rural poverty
was exacerbated by reduced remiances to the rural areas from urban relatives due
to retrenchment of urban workers. Still categorized as a medium-income country,
Zimbabwe is among 16 sub-Sahara African countries that experienced reversals in
human development since 1990 (Economist Intelligence Unit, 3rd quarter, 1999).
Poverty is predominantly rural given that 70% of Zimbabwes population resides
there (CSO, 2002). Rural livelihoods are mainly agricultural and depend on access to land
and related resources (e.g. water, woodlands, etc). About 65% of the population lives in
communal areas, as a differentiated peasantry, facing the second highest poverty levels
21

This measures quality of life, using real GDP per head, adult literacy rate and life expectancy
(which in Zimbabwe dropped due to HIV/AIDS related deaths)

69

surpassed only by rural farm laborers (comprising 12% of the population) until 2000.
This laboring class (now reduced to about 5% of the population) depends heavily on
smaller scale food crop cultivation in both communal and commercial areas, given their
low wages and insecure land rights. But a large part of the urban population mostly
with incomes below the poverty datum line, straddles the rural-urban divide, and also
depends on land for their livelihoods within the rural, peri-urban and urban areas.
Rural-urban income and food transfers, define livelihoods strategies intended to secure
precarious social conditions. Thus, over 80% of Zimbabwes rural and urban populations,
have continued since 1980 to depend on farming and therefore have led to increasingly
overcrowded communal areas, given the stagnation and decline of employment in the
secondary and tertiary sectors, and the slow land redistribution process. Small farming
incomes remained low as a result of low productivity and poor returns to sold outputs,
reflecting a long legacy of biased allocations of economic incentives towards large
farmers. Land policies since 1980 had failed to redress the need among the poor for
the effective control of productive assets, such as fertile land and related access to public
irrigation water infrastructures, and of natural resources for consumptive and productive
use. This relationship between landholding structures and poverty in a predominantly
agrarian economy was shaped by racially unequal (agricultural) landholdings in terms
of area allocated and farm sizes, until 2004 (table 2-1).
Considerable differentiations of land size holdings have been typical of Zimbabwe.
On the upper extreme are the transnationals and landed gentry, mainly comprising
whites (Mayo, 1998), holding large estates and multiple farms with sizes of between
10,000 and over 100,000 hectares, pied against black kulaks holding between 10
and 100 hectares. On the lower extreme were the black landless and land poor, with
dry land holdings of below 3 hectares, pied against their relatively fewer large-scale
white landowners holding on average between 500 and 2,000 hectares. On the margins,
numerous squaers in various rural and peri-urban areas tended to occupy small plots
of less than 1 hectare, including former farm workers who had informal access to land,
at land short (Sukume and Moyo, 2003).
Land reform since 1980 gradually shied the land distribution and holdings size
paerns over time, as the comparative figures of 1980, 1996 and 2004 show the mercy
of landowners. The share of the incomes of the smallholder farmers and of investments
into rural social services, infrastructure and credit has consistently been the lowest.
Rural communities capacities to reverse poverty and their livelihoods have tended to be
precarious and dependent on small scale external welfare transfers from the state, urban
workers remiances, and aid dependent NGOs. Seler colonial rule from 1890 to 1979
was characterized by racial land dispossession and, political and economic discrimination
(see Mlambo, 2000; Moyana, 2002), which defined Zimbabwes land question and mass
nationalism. The seler colonial state sought to turn most of the peasantry into full-time
industrial workers disconnected from the land (Yeros, 2002). The development strategy
was structurally imbalanced and discriminatory, seeking to secure mainly the domestic
markets for the white minority and exports, while providing minimum incomes for
the subsistence of the black poor and the reproduction of migrant labor. The uneven
70

allocation of economic infrastructures in rural areas was integral to this strategy, which
emphasized import substitution industrialization.
Under these conditions, nationalist struggles mobilized extensive militancy in the
rural areas. The United States and Britain facilitated a negotiated selement towards
majority rule in 1979, (the Lancaster House agreement and constitution). This provided
critical parameters to protect property rights, proscribing land reform within a market
oriented liberal democratic governance framework, and brought unequal parliamentary
power sharing with the white minority.
Land reform in Zimbabwe, between 1980 and 1996, was pursued within a
predominantly market-based approach, whose main mechanism of land transfer
was a willing-seller-willing-buyer process, agreed to at Lancaster House. The state
played a dominant role in acquiring the land for the poor and supported reselement
schemes. Private agricultural land market transfers meant reallocation of land to mainly
big farmers (white and black), while land concentration among a few existing large
landholders continued (Moyo, 1998).
The Government of Zimbabwe had placed emphasis on agricultural and rural
development within the peasant sector during the 1980s, based largely on raising
productivity and, improving inputs and commodity markets. Agricultural research,
extension services, roads, and marketing depots, education and health became the
focus of reforms rather than extensive redistribution of land and national agrarian
restructuring. Yet, when the Lancaster House constitutional safeguards for marketbased land transfers expired in 1990, legal instruments for state land expropriation were
introduced but not fully used. The implementation of the ESAP, instead reinforced the
market-based character of land reform, reduced state interventions in support of small
farmers and perpetuated inequity in the agrarian economy.
Market mechanisms for land transfer limited the redistributive efforts in various
ways. First, landowners led the identification and supply of land available for
reselement, while central government was a reactive buyer choosing land on offer
(Moyo, 1995). Until 1996, the amount, quality, location and cost of land acquired for
landholders rather than the state or the beneficiaries in accordance with their needs and
demands drove redistribution. The lowest quality land was redistributed. Land prices
grew dramatically throughout the period, spurred also by the growth of demand for
land by a growing black elite.
About 70% of the land acquired on the market was procured during the 1980s,
through the Normal Intensive Reselement programme. The rest was purchased on
the market, following its illegal occupation by peasants (see Tshuma, 1997; Moyo,
2000; Alexander, 2003), through an official Accelerated Land Reselement Programme,
complementing the normal programme. Thus, land occupations significantly
challenged the market driven land transfers during the early 1980s, although these were
regularised into the market procedure. As a result, the pace of land reform between
1980 and 1996 was slow. Between 1980 and 1985 about 430,000 hectares were acquired
each year. Between 1985 and 1992, the pace of acquisition fell to about 75,000 hectares
per year, while between 1992 and 1997; approximately 158,000 hectares were acquired
71

per year. Thus by 1996, about 3,4 million hectares of land had been transferred, reducing
the white commercial farming area by 29 percent to 11 million hectares, leaving the
large land holdings with approximately 35% of the total agricultural land, most of
which was prime land.
About 70,000 families were reseled, far short of the targeted 162,000 families (Moyo
1995). Moreover those on official waiting lists for land far exceeded this target. By the
end of the market-based land reform in the late 1990s, about 9,000 black capitalist farmers
had established themselves in the former small scale and new large scale commercial
farming areas, through land purchases, leases and inheritance, on about 19% of former
large scale commercial farmland. New private land bidding paerns had emerged, as
the prime lands were now a source of intra-capitalist (black and white) competition and
inter-class conflicts. Aspiring black capital called for the state to set-aside commercial
land for them in the interest of indigenisation, even as they were directly being coopted by local white and transnational capital, including through linkages promoted
by donor-funded enterprise development programmes. While these pressures unfolded,
the squaer control policy continued to be implemented. Subsidies were reduced, and
a major impact was on structure of the agricultural production. A shi towards nontraditional export took place such as horticulture, ostrich etc.
The state driven land reform approach began in earnest in 1997, based on state
expropriation of land, driven by widespread and nationally organised land occupations.
Both the state and land seekers allocated land to beneficiaries on a large scale. While the
poor gained extensive access to land, natural resources and infrastructure, the effects on
poverty reduction of this approach to land reform has been mixed, and limited during
the short term. The process entailed numerous political and land conflicts, aroused by
worker strikes and illegal land occupations, in a context of economic decline. By 1997,
the Zimbabwean state faced political challenges from within and externally. In a racially
divided agrarian structure, facing an economic crisis, nationalistic land policies were
remobilised, and state led land reform strategies gained significance. The land question
also grew significantly in intra-ruling party succession politics and social discourses.
Zimbabwes development strategy and macro-economic policy context had shied, and
a new correlation of social forces had emerged to mobilise the rural and urban poor
into two movements aligned with two main political parties (Zanu PF and the MDC).
A deepening conflict between the international community and the Zimbabwean state
had taken significant proportion by 1998.
In 1990, a new bifurcated land policy, which sought to redistribute land to the
poor, and to create more commercial indigenous farmers was introduced, alongside
constitutional amendments to the property rights clause. This was followed by a new
Land Acquisition Act introduced in 1992 to enable the state to expropriate land. The
government started acquiring land compulsorily on a small scale (targeting only 130
out of 7,000 properties), from then until 1995, but without renouncing the market land
acquisition method, which it continued to use. The new compensation formula obliged
the government to pay a fair compensation within reasonable time (rather than on a
prompt and adequate basis) and in local currency (not foreign exchange), as pertained
72

in the 1980s. A craed compromise on non-justifiability, was also sought by the

government to deny the courts the power to declare land acquisition unconstitutional,
only for it to accept the principle of legal recourse. In 1993, the government appointed
a Land Tenure Commission (LTC), which produced inadequate alternatives on land
redistribution.
State driven land redistribution was driven by popular land occupations, led by
war veterans from 1998, building upon scaered and loosely organized illegal land
occupations, which persisted between 1980 and 1996 (Moyo, 2001). This community
led approach to land transfer, entails groups of households leading the identification of
land for redistribution by squaing on it, with the expectation that the government
would regularize the transfer, either by purchasing such land at market prices or
by expropriating it. Local squaer communities self-selected themselves as
beneficiaries for redistribution, oen supplanting official beneficiary waiting lists.
Abandoned and under utilized land, most of which were in the liberation war frontier
zone of the eastern highlands, as well as state lands and sparse communal lands in the
Zambezi valley were the targets of land occupations. The high profile intensive land
occupations, occurred on a national scale from 1997, aer the GoZ had acceded to the
war veterans demands to expropriate land (Moyo, 2001; 2003). In these occupations, a
vanguard of war veterans, numerous rural peasants, some traditional leaders and spirit
mediums, elements of the urban working class and elites, including largely Zanu PF and
GoZ officials, were gradually mobilized towards direct action for land reform, challenging
the entire state apparatus and its land reform instruments. Interestingly, between 1995
and 1996 the government and Zanu PF had initiated provincial land commiees to
begin an extensive process of identifying land which could be compulsorily acquired,
suggesting that the legal bureaucratic-technocratic route to state led land reform was
geing ensconced in the dominant state and political institutions. Parallel to this,
negotiations with the UK (ODA) to fund land redistribution had been stalled by various
differences.
The full-scale state driven approach thus started with the designation of 1,471 farms
(about 4 million hectares) for expropriation in 1997, using the new compensation rules.
About 641 farms were de-listed by the state from its acquisition agenda in 1998, while
the rest were never acquired because of court challenges in 1998 and 1999. Revisions
to the constitution and land act in 2000, led to new land expropriations land, in the
face of numerous court challenges, but these were now backed by extensive illegal
occupations condoned by the state during 2000 and 2001.
The land redistribution outcome from 2000 was extensive. By November 2004,
smallholder allocations were granted to 140,866 families, while new commercial
beneficiaries amounted to 14,500 new farmers, on 4.2 and 2.3 million hectares respectively.
The number of commercial farm units (including old and new units) increased by
64 percent, although their area dropped by 42%. Smallholder land increased from 56
percent of the total land area to 70%. The quality of land redistributed varied across
the provinces depending on agro-ecological potential and the distribution of water and
irrigation resources. About 2.5 million more hectares were still under expropriation
73

procedures and unallocated. Some irrigated land went to small farmers (7,618 hectares
or 6% of national irrigable land), while the commercial beneficiaries received 12,448
hectares (10%), and communal area smallholder irrigation schemes retained 11,861
hectares (10%). The rest remained in the unacquired large-scale commercial farms.
The paerns of land distribution in this state led land reform programme, in terms of
wealth, gender and class were diverse. Urban households gained access to about 34% of
the land allocated by 2003. These included working class groups and rich and influential
rural people. The laer included rural businesspeople, teachers, civil servants, political
leaders, and chiefs among others, and constitute about 10% of the urban beneficiaries.
About 400 influential individuals had allocated themselves more than one A2 plot, while
about 145 black and white farmers still owned multiple farms which were acquired on
the open markets (Buka Report, 2002; PLRC Report, 2003).
The rural poor, including communal area farmers and some former farm workers, as
well as a number of the urban poor, constituted about 87% of all beneficiaries, and they
had access to 66% of the land so far redistributed, mainly through the A1 scheme intended
for the of landless, land short and congested rural households. However, a section of the
needy communal farmers, women, and former farm workers did not adequately benefit.
Women (as individuals) gained an average of between 12 and 24% of the smallholder
land allocations and an average of between 5 and 21% of the commercial land allocated,
across the provinces. War veterans on average gained about 20% of the land.
Land redistribution has reduced land pressure in crowded communal areas, by
increasing the smallholder land areas by 21% (Moyo and Sukume, 2004), although
only 9% of households of communal area households were reseled. The proportion of
landless households was reduced from around 30% in the pre-2000 period to below 20%,
except in Manicaland, where only about 24% of the households remain landless(Moyo,
1995, Chasi, et al. 1994). In general, reselement le a significant numbers of households
in communal areas with relatively more arable land per family, as more remaining land
short families gained extra land, increasing smallholder household access to on average
of about 1.5 hectares.
However, agricultural production has shown a decline in volume, and value
terms since 2000, when compared to average output during the 1990s; but this decline
was confined to eight of the 15 key commodities produced in Zimbabwe, and these
exhibit varied rates of decline. This type of transitional production decline has not been
uncommon where extensive land reforms were affected, although in Zimbabwe the
transition has been longer for various reasons. Agricultural production fell because
of the interrelated decline of the macro-economic conditions and their constraints on
agricultural inputs supplies; the reduced production from LSCF land transfers, sustained
droughts, economic isolation and the unwillingness of some LSCFs to produce under
downsized landholdings.
Thus, the long run trend of growing poverty levels in Zimbabwe, especially since
the ESAP period, has been compounded by the recent economic decline, including the
loss of agricultural export revenues, inputs shortages in communal areas, increased staple
food insecurity, the reduced national capacity (including of the urban poor) to invest
74

in agricultural recovery, and the debilitating effects on household labour of HIV/AIDS

has affected smallholder agricultural production. The extent to which state policy and
civil society advocacy promote the land reforms and poverty reducing farm production,
rural employment and rural off-farm income earning opportunities could determine the
longer term benefits to poverty reduction of the fast track land reform.

South Africa
From the founding of the ANC in 1911 in response to the threat of the 1913 Land
Act, to the rise of the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU) in the 1920s,
to SACP organizing drives in the Northern Transvaal, to current struggles to organize
the countrys one million farm workers, land and the agrarian question has been a key
political issue and a central component of the struggle in South Africa.
With the enactment of the 1913 Land Act, African land ownership was initially
restricted to African reserves that made up less than 10 percent of South Africas land
surface. The Land Act was directed specifically against the small class of successful,
market-oriented African farmers that had emerged over the preceding 50 years, as well
as against the numerous African sharecroppers who rented white-owned land outside
of the reserve areas. The effect of the Land Act was to force sharecroppers into labor
tenancy, to increase the pool of migrant workers for the cheap labor mines, and to
undermine the basis for an independent African peasantry.
With the collapse of the ICU in the late 1920s, no mass rural organization remained
to organize workers against ruthless exploitation by farmers. Rural resistance continued,
although its locus shied in the 1940s and 1950s to the reserve areas, where peasants
took up arms against beerment schemes and taxes in 1956 and 1958. In the 1960s,
forced removal policies led to further emmiseration as an estimated 4 million people
were relocated into segregated urban and rural areas.
By the early 1990s, when the apartheid government finally unbanned and entered
into negotiations with the ANC, ownership of arable land was concentrated into the
hands of an estimated 55,000 capitalist, mainly white, farmers holding 102 million
hectares of land. In the former reserves, renamed homelands, 1.2 million micro farmers
shared about 17 million hectares. In 1994, apartheid ended officially with the electoral
victory of the ANC, backed by grassroots community, labor, and student movements. Yet,
the new South Africa began with 86% of the land remaining under white ownership,
and an enormously impoverished rural population, of which an estimated 70 percent
earned less than R300 a month per household. The condition of the rural working
class was even worse as they were largely bypassed by labor movement that emerged
in the 1970s, and expanded throughout the manufacturing industry in the 1980s and
the public sector in the 1990s. Moreover, almost the entire agricultural sector had been
exempt from labour law prior to 1995.
The land reforms initiated by the post-apartheid regime led by ANC rested centrally
on a restrictive and neo-liberal policy framework that had been lied directly from
a World Bank Report on land reform in South Africa titled the Rural Restructuring
Programme. According to this framework, land reform in South Africa rested upon
75

two central pillars termed restitution and redistribution. Restitution referred to

the establishment of legal channels to allow claims to be lodged with a Land Claims
Court for the return of, or compensation for, land lost through racial laws or through
illegal means aer the passage of the 1913 Land Act. Redistribution referred to a
process whereby the government would help communities and aspirant farmers buy
land from existing land holders on a willing-buyer-willing-seller basis by providing
grants of R15,000 to households.
These two pillars were incorporated into official government policy aer ANC
came to power in 1994. And to this, a third pillar was added, that of the reform of
land tenure. In an effort to regulate the evictions of labor tenants, the 1997 Extension
of Security of Tenure Act set in place procedures governing how evictions would take
place. Previously, tenants could be removed at the whim of the farmer. Evictions were
now be regulated by court orders, taking into consideration factors such as length of
residence on the farm, and the reasons for the eviction. The law, however, was criticized
by organizations such as the National Land Commiee and COSATU for doing too lile
too late, for regulating rather than ending evictions.
In practice, the land reform programme implemented by the ANC massively fell
short of achieving its stated goal of redistributing 30 percent of South African land by
the 1999 national elections. Despite the fact that the Land Claims Court was supposed
to have finished its work and disbanded by then, less than 800 claims out of nearly
64,000 had been processed, and that too, mostly in urban areas. Evictions continued
apace, and overall employment in the agricultural sector fell by 10 percent between
1989 and 1999. Leaving aside the injustice of restricting land restitution claims to the
post 1913 Land Act period, the land restitution process, which relies heavily on research
and documentation, has foundered as the result of neo-liberal budget cuts. Infighting
within the DLA itself as well as between national, provincial, and local structures, and
underdeveloped land reform procedures compounded these capacity problems. Research
in Mpumulanga showed that government has provided no real post-transfer support
to reseled farming communities.
The market-driven willing-buyer-willing-seller approach championed by the World
Bank, and incorporated into the RDP had continually shown its inability to deliver
real land reform across Africa. The basis for the failure of the policy is its inability to
address the underlying class relations that produce and reproduce unequal paerns
of ownership. Simply ignoring the skewed power relations in the market, the ANC
government dressed up a process of actually buying back land originally acquired in
highly unjust circumstances as a program of redistribution to the poor, rather than a
radical retreat from popular demands.
In addition, strict limitations on state expenditure also provided an incentive to
government structures to hinder the allocation of grants and ensure that sufficient funds
would never be available for buying back 30 percent of land in South Africa. The limited
size of the grants, which were wholly inadequate to purchase farmland in most areas,
also encouraged people to band together as communities in order to pool enough
resources to gain access to land. In several cases, this has effectively meant the invention
76

or reconstitution of tribal groups under authoritarian chiefs who subsist on rent paid
by other community members. In some instances, community members were under the
impression that the land that they had purchased was actually owned by the chief. In
other cases, they recognized the unfair nature of the situation, but accepted it as the only
way of accessing land. The reconstitution of the chieaincy - and the aendant dangers
of tribalization and ethnic division that this portends - may have been unexpected by
the formulators of the land reform policy. But it certainly underlines how a process
meant to benefit the poor has not only failed to challenge existing power relations, but
also laid the basis for the development of new exploiting classes.
Poor rural women, who constitute one of the most oppressed layers in South African
society, are also set to be losers. The lot of working women on the farms has oen been
to provide cheap and oen seasonal labor, with access to land typically dependant on
employment in the homelands. In addition, traditional institutions such as the chieaincy
have limited womens access to land. The ever-increasing centrality of the market to the
governments land reform programme is set to reproduce these paerns, as poor rural
women lack the money necessary to set up as independent farmers.
The land reform process in South Africa underlines how paerns of class, gender,
and racial inequality have been reproduced in the New South Africa. The achievement
of a non-racial parliament was an enormous advance for ordinary people. Yet in the
wake of this accomplishment, there has been a steady consolidation of the power of a
newly deracialized capitalism. The class agenda of the Mandela and Mbeki governments
may be seen in the implementation of GEAR; in the drive to privatize; in cuts to social
services; in the deregulation of capital and commodity flows; in aempts to discipline
labour; and in a land reform programme that has moved from bad to worse. In the
twenty-first century, the struggle for a new South Africa continues.

Uganda
Uganda has emerged from a period of considerable confusion in land policy. At
independence, the country had relatively extensive areas of land under registered
freehold and mailo system of tenure, but these were nationalized and converted to
long-term conditional leases by the 1975 land reform decree enacted under Idi Amin.
The same legislation weakened the position of customary landholders. A system of 99year leases from the state on condition of development was introduced. It also allowed
for relatively easy eviction of tenants.
The 1975 Land Reform Decree of the Idi Amin government declared all the land
public land, and vested the same in the State. The decree abolished all freehold interests
in land, except where these were vested in the State in which case it was transferred
to the Land Commission. The public land now was to be administered by the Uganda
Land Commission. It also abolished the Mailo system of land tenure, and converted them
into leasehold of 99 years where these were vested in public bodies, and individuals
held leaseholds of 999 years. All laws that had been passed to regulate the relationships
between landlords and tenants in Buganda, Ankole and Toro were also abolished.
Elsewhere customary land users became tenants at sufferance of the state.
77

The Decree, though not fully implemented on the ground, persisted until 1995 when
a new Constitution was enacted which impacted tenure systems and tenure Security.
While in the new act, mailo and freehold estates were reduced to leasehold and no
compensation was paid for this reduction, customary tenants on public land were
declared to be tenants at sufferance and the land they occupied could be allocated to
other people. Tenants became liable to eviction by lessees on conversion aer a notice
of not less than six months. Contrary to the intended objective of facilitating use of land
for economic and social development, the decree aggravated the previous landlord and
tenant impasse. There was social tension caused by actual or threatened land grabbing
and evictions from land. This state of affairs did not encourage or facilitate economic
activities. It should be noted, however, that in relative terms few cases of actual land
grabbing and evictions from land were recorded. Cases of grabbing were few but the
threat of losing the land caused enormous tension.
The current land tenure reforms were essentially introduced by the 1995
Constitution and operationalized by the Land Act, 1998. The 1995 Constitution abolished
the Land Reform Decree of Idi Amin government, and restored the systems of land
tenure that was in existence at independence. These were re-stated as customary land
tenure. It made new ? freehold, leasehold and Mailo tenures. The new act declared that
land in Uganda would, henceforth, belong to the citizens of Uganda and vest in them
in accordance with the land tenure systems outlined above. It set up a new system of
land administration consisting of Land Boards in every district. Although the Uganda
Land Commission was re-established, the Constitution made it clear that District Land
Boards were to operate independently of that Commission, and was not subject to the
direction or control of any person or authority. They were, however, ?expected to take
account of national and district council policy on land. Constitution further provided for
establishment of land tribunals, the jurisdiction of which would be to determine disputes
relating to the grant, lease, repossession, transfer or acquisition of land by individuals,
the Uganda Land Commission or any other authority with responsibility relating to
land, and the determination of any disputes relating to the amount of compensation
to be paid for land acquired.
It should be clear from what has been stated above that at least until 1995, the
characteristics of the land question in Uganda were no different from what they were
during the colonial period. First, the feudal system of land tenure remained a feature
of land relations; secondly, customary land tenure systems remained unregulated and
completely outside the statutory framework of land law of the country and, thirdly, the
system of land administration was in no way integrated into the land tenure framework
of the country. The 1995 Constitution and a new law passed in 1998 did not entirely
deal with the fundamental issues underlying these characteristics. The primary reason
for this was not simply that the Constitution had set the parameters for the new land
laws; it was also because no clear policy principles existed to inform legislators in the
enactment of that law.

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Botswana
In Botswana freehold land covers only about 5% of the land area. It originated in the
colonial period and still offers the only exclusive rights of agricultural use in Botswana.
Tribal land comprises about 70% of the total land area. However, government continues
to make purchases to augment tribal land as freehold becomes available. The Tribal
Land Act of 1968 transferred the authority over land from the chiefs to Land Boards,
with the aim of reducing discrimination between tribes. District Land Boards were
placed under the nominal political direction of the District Councils, and comprised
representatives of both traditional leaders and councilors. Freehold titles, originally
granted by the Protectorate Government to European farmers, were excluded from the
jurisdiction of the Land Boards.
The conditions endured by farm-workers employed on freehold farms and cale
posts in the CAs were miserable. Many of them are drawn from the Basarwa (San or
Bushmen), who have been consistently denied their traditional rights by other races
occupying their ancestral lands. This failing apart, the land policy that has been pursued
by Botswana may be described, as one of careful change responding to particular needs
with specific tenure innovations.
The Tribal Land Act, 1968, provided for the establishment of representative Land
Boards, and transferred all the land-related powers of chiefs to these boards. The
functions of the boards included allocation of land; imposing restrictions on the use
of land; authorizing change of use and transfer; and the resolution of land disputes.
Although landholders did not own land, they had exclusive rights to their holdings,
which could be fenced to exclude others. Grazing land and unallocated land was used
communally. The Land Boards could grant land rights under both customary and
common law. The holders of customary rights for residential and cultivation purposes
enjoyed a variety of rights guaranteed by a customary land grant certificate that was
exclusive and heritable. Common law leases for non-customary land use (i.e. residential,
commercial and industrial) were limited in time and subject to eventual reversion to
the community. They could be registered under the Deeds Registry Act and were
mortgageable and therefore transferable without the Land Boards consent.
Key changes have been introduced since 1970. A provision was incorporated for
the exclusion of other peoples animals aer harvesting and the fencing of arable lands.
Restrictions on land allocation were relaxed to allow independent allocations of land
to all adults. Now, a price agreed between seller and buyer was to be charged for
transfer of developed land. Also a common law was introduced for residential leases
for citizens, foreign investors, commercial grazing and for commercial arable farming.
In recent periods aempts have been made to privatize the pastoral land.

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3
Social and Political Processes
Underlying Land Reform

he examples in previous chapters demonstrate the centrality of land not only in

the livelihood and well being of the masses, but also in gaining social and political
power. Inevitably then, land reforms lie at the center of struggles for social and economic
justice. Access and ownership of land decides the terms of social, political and economic
relations of exchange and also shapes and sustains power structures society. It is not
coincidental that the political elites are also landed elites in most of the developing
world. Motivation and momentum for land reforms, thus, derives in a major way either
from the interests of those in power or the needs of those without power.
Agrarian unrest and peasant movements have been prime movers behind land
reforms in developing countries. These movements have invariably been a response to
extreme inequities in the rural agrarian scenario. The character of these inequities and
processes shaped the content and direction of the peasantrys response. For example,
where foreign interests in land were the generators of these inequities, peasant
revolutions and movements took a nationalist character. Peasants and farmers lent body
and soul to nationalist movements against colonial rule. Aer dismantling colonial rule
and in response to these mobilizations, the governments of newly independent nations
delivered land reform packages. Unfortunately, these promises remained exactly that,
promises.
Similarly, the institutions and processes through which land reforms were carried
out in these countries had a defining effect on the outcome of reforms, reflected in the
success of meeting the basic objectives of reforms. However, even the cases that can
be classified as successful, the success is not without qualifications. The qualifications
come out in form of the actual effect of land reforms on the masses, the costs they had
to pay, and final outcome of the reforms. We also notice the temporal character of the
successes, in which we see peasant movements bring forth and force radical land reforms
and then sadly, witness their complete reversal. In this chapter we consider as successful
cases, those experiences, which saw peasant mobilization effective enough to force and
carry through a package of land reforms. We classify the experiences wherein reform
measures were le halfway or were reversed aer initial success as limited success cases.
In this chapter, we try to read the essentials of some successful experiences, as well as
some not so successful cases of land reforms among these countries.

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Successful experiences
Russia
Peasant mobilization played a major role in the transformation of Tsarist Russia into the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. At the time of the 1917 revolution, the peasantry
made up about 80 per cent of the population, and although the most spectacular aspects
of the revolution occurred in the cities and were brought about by intellectuals, workers
and soldiers, the revolution was only consolidated into a new regime aer the peasantry
had joined in a massive way.
The first phase of reforms in Russia was a classic case of reforms from above. The
peasants in Russia lived under appalling semi-feudal conditions until their emancipation
in 1861. They lived under a system in which they had to pay, over the course of a number
of years for their liberation and a plot of land. As Wolf noted, in 1861, the serfs were
freed in a major agrarian reform stimulated by the fear voiced by Tsar Alexander II,
that it is beer to liberate the peasants from above than to wait until they took their
freedom by rising from below (1969, 55). Aer emancipation, peasants became subject
to the demands of the village commune, the Mir. Though viewed as a kind of collective
superego, with a religious aura (Wolf, 1969, 62), the Mir showed considerable internal
tension, with a minority of beer-off peasants oen dominating the rest, as well as
most of the land. Thus, during the last decades of the nineteenth century, a group of
wealthy farmers was able to grow considerably at the cost of the old nobility and the
poor peasantry. This trend created new rural contrasts and conflicts; since, most peasants
continued to cherish egalitarian communal ownership.
One consequence of the dissatisfaction among the mass of poor peasants was the
emergence in 1905 of the Peasants Union. Intellectuals as well as peasants participated
in the preliminary meetings. Because peasants believed they had a natural right to the
land, a radical agrarian reform program based on land expropriation was proposed.
Peasant assemblies in the villages spread, and this idea was increasingly discussed.
Many peasants had worked at times as migrant workers in more developed areas, or
in the mines, and they brought new and sometimes revolutionary ideas back to their
villages. The unpopular war between Russia and Japan, in the Far East, added to the
dissatisfaction. In 1905 there began a general peasant rising, which during October,
November and December embraced 300 districts of 47 provinces. More than 1,000
manorial houses were ravaged and burned. In many places, tax payments were withheld
and the cantonal authorities were displaced (Owen, 1937, 20).
The movement was, however, crushed at the beginning of 1906, aer concessions
had deprived it of some of its impetus. One major concession was participation in
the legislative process by representatives of the people, including the peasants. It was
hoped that the peasants views on property rights would be changed by means of the
individualization of property through the dissolution of the communal villages, via Land
Selement Commissions. Minister Stolypins legislation of 1906 formed the framework
for this approach. The various stages of legislation enacted by Stolypin represented
an effort to strengthen the government by supporting the wealthier farmers (Owen,
81

1937, 49). The peasants who cultivated small plots on communal lands could become
proprietors of these plots through the new laws. Farmers who cultivated larger plots
could become owners of theirs. As a result of this process, a certain amount of protection
of the weak that had resulted from communal cultivation and from common grazing
lands was lost.
During this period, four million people le their villages looking elsewhere for
work. Beer-off farmers were able to survive this change and benefit from it, but for the
majority of small peasants, securing a livelihood became more difficult. This increasing
insecurity and dissatisfaction found expression in the acute unrest of March-October 1917.
Furthermore, in many areas there was not enough land outside of the estates to supply
plots sufficiently large to sustain individual peasant families. These developments were
a key reason why most of the peasants, especially the peasant-soldiers who returned
from the war, supported the 1917 Revolution.
In the early years of post-revolution period, Russia, particularly rural Russia was
the laboratory of land reforms from below. Aer the fall of the Tsar in February 1917,
local (village and cantonal) commiees took over national power, and either staged or
tolerated seizures of estate land, oen by violent means. In some areas, actions were taken
against farmers who had separated from the communal villages. Peasant assemblies, also
called agrarian soviets, and their executive commiees began taking control over most
of rural Russia. In March 1917, in some areas, the cantonal commiees were mainly
composed of local intellectuals, but within a month they were exclusively of peasant
membership. Elections were taking place in the villages and in cantons nationwide.
In the province of Penza, a peasant congress accepted a resolution to expropriate all
privately owned land. The commiees enforced the resolution. Similar actions took
place in other provinces, for the central government had lile authority and was unable
to undertake counter-measures. Peasant soldiers who deserted and came back to their
villages oen had a radicalizing influence in the cantonal commiees. In many areas,
seizures of estates, and at times of smaller private plots, continued, sometimes led by
the cantonal land commiees. Elsewhere, small landowners and efficiently cultivated
estates were not touched. In general, any authority except the villagers themselves, who
became increasingly radical and violent, could not limit the initiatives of local peasant
commiees. Soon cantonal commiees were in control of virtually all of rural Russia.
However, the revolutionary regime was quick to realize the importance of coopting these local peasant commiees in the framework of national political authority.
Assemblies and conferences were held frequently to decide on local policies and to
consider candidates for the Constituent Assembly or the Second All-Russian Congress
of Soviets of Workers, Soldiers, and Peasants Delegates. At this congress, in November
1917, Lenin proposed the Land Decree and thus obtained the massive support of the
peasantry for his government (Reed, 1977). This was a decisive occurrence in the Russian
Revolution. The Land Decree confirmed what was already effective in many areas of the
country - private property of the estates was abolished. Land could no longer be sold,
bought, leased or otherwise alienated. It would be distributed according to local needs
among those who desired to work it with their own hands. This distribution would be
82

by local commiees, the soviets of peasants delegates, who would effectively control
land use. This approach rallied the peasantry behind the government during the crucial
years of the Civil War (1917-21), and foreign intervention.
However, once the peasant commiees were co-opted, brought in the line of
order of the revolutionary regime, Russia was once again witness to land reforms from
above. The collectivization process was pregnant with possibilities of breaching the
alliance of the peasantry at the local level with the central political authority. As Wolf
Ladejinsky (1977, 25) has pointed out in an essay on collectivization of agriculture in
the Soviet Union, Lenin was well aware that the continuous support of the peasantry
for the social revolution was crucial. However, this support became problematic aer
a decade, as agricultural production was not able to keep pace with the requirements
of rapid industrial growth. The relatively low price paid by the state for grain was an
important reason. Also, agricultural exports (to pay for imports of machinery) declined
precisely when the new Five-Year Plan required an increase. The Communist Party
Congress thus decided that small-scale agriculture had to be replaced by large-scale
mechanized agriculture (Ladejinsky, 1977, 27). In effect, all agriculture was collectivized
by a decree in support of extremely rapid industrialization. And under Stalin, popular
participation was not only abolished but also effectively destroyed at the cost of many
lives. Although there was considerable resistance, highly oppressive measures prevented
any kind of social mobilization of the peasants. And in this exercise of reforming the
forces of production on land, more lives were lost than the causalities of the two world
wars taken together.

China
Though the struggle for land between small peasants and landlords has been endemic in
Chinese society for centuries, in the second half of the nineteenth century and the first
decades of the twentieth century, the influence of world markets exacerbated existing
contradictions. While European traders and missionaries had for centuries respected the
sophisticated political and religious structure of the Chinese Empire, through the Opium
Wars (1839-42) British trading interests broke Chinese resistance to the free import of
opium and textiles. This forced opening of trade not only sucked the Chinese ruralagrarian economy in the trap of colonial exploitation through export of silk, but also
had a very negative effect on the labor power in the countryside due to its forcing of
opium in the Chinese consumption basket. Furthermore, the already exploitative rural
elite made common cause with foreign businessmen involved in world trade. Peasant
movements emerged during the 1920s out of the wretched conditions of the peasantry,
about half of which was landless or semi-landless and was being blatantly exploited
because of corruption and regional power struggles between the war-lords. These peasant
movements were finally culminated into revolution.
The resistance by the peasants began in the south near Canton (now Guandong) in
the areas where the anti-imperialist Taiping Rebellion (1850-65) had originated. From the
very outset, nationalist sentiments had played a major role in these movements (Wolf,
1969,143). Considerable rural unrest and local social movements were encountered by
83

Mao Ze Dong when he returned to his home province of Hunan, aer his efforts to
rally the Shanghai working class for a communist revolutionary movement, which had
been ruthlessly crushed by Chiang Kai-Sheks Kuomintang government in 1926. Maos
report on an investigation of the peasant movements in Hunan (Mao, 1971) shows
the strength of the movements and also the surprise of its author in finding peasants
organizing on their own, while, according to theoretical Marxist conception, the urban
proletariat should be the class to take such an initiative. Mao Ze Dong followed the
age-old folk tradition of mostly Taoist-inspired peoples rebellions in Hunan, as he
helped the peasants and their secret societies to become beer organized, thus laying
the foundation of the Red Army.
One of the great feats of more than twenty years of struggle by the Chinese
peasant guerrilla armies was the Long March in 1934-35, in which the communist army
escaped total annihilation by the overwhelmingly superior armies of Chiang Kai-Shek
by withdrawing to isolated areas of Yenan (now Yunan) province. Here, the numerically
weakened but spiritually and morally strengthened communist army could establish a
base, distribute land to the tillers and build a society based on rural egalitarianism, which
served as a base for the conquest of all of China in the late 1940s (Snow, 1972).
The peasant mobilization, in order to be successful, had to use a sophisticated
strategy of alliances between different classes of peasants and other parties. As Mao Ze
Dong pointed out in his strategic writings, the peasant movement had to be developed
while taking into account a great variety of contradictions in interests. In order for
mobilization to be effective, it was necessary to study, in each local situation, the
prevailing class contradictions and to distinguish between those which were fundamental
and those of secondary importance. Mobilization could oen be achieved along the
lines of the most fundamental contradiction. The enemy could be the local gentry (rich
farmers), or the middle farmers or foreign interests. But the poorest members of society
and their interests were always the basic point of reference in a stratification consisting
of 1) rich farmers, who did not work the land themselves, 2) Middle farmers, who had
more land than they could work themselves, 3) Subsistence Farmers, who had just
enough land for subsistence, 4) Semi-landless Farmers, who did not have enough land
and had to work for others for subsistence, and 5) Landless agricultural laborers.
Such strategic study-cum-action regarding local, national and later international
contradictions advanced the cause of the Chinese peasants. Local circumstances and the
broader economic and political context (including, post-1937 anti-Japanese struggle) also
contributed to the success of the peasant movements. The leadership was aware that
if the rebellion was to become a true revolution, it had to ensure the participation of
women. Women had played a considerable role in rebellious or revolutionary movements
in Chinas past. As Wolf notes, most of the secret societies tended to accord equal status
to women. (1969, 112). These societies facilitated the growth and orientation of the
Communist Party. Judith Stacey (1979) noted that women in the liberated areas derived
significant benefits: land reform granted them equal rights to land, which was a first
condition for peasant womens economic independence.
The social movements of the Chinese peasants increasingly became a militant
84

political organization, not merely struggling for concrete benefits and abandonment of
unjust practices, but with the objective of gaining state power to achieve those goals
for the country as a whole. Thus a social movement that had resisted state power for
over two decades took up state power itself, and brought about the reforms that the
peasants and women had been agitating for. The most important results were the land
redistribution policies, giving all tillers access to land, and later, in the mobilization
initiated from above, movement toward the gradual formation of co-operatives and
collectives in rural areas to support rapid industrialization.
However, as industrialization became the main target of the communist government,
the people were victims of disastrous experiments, such as the Great Leap Forward and
famine. Because of the increasingly absolutist rule of the Communist Party and internal
policy struggles, the Chinese population suffered intensely and many lives were lost,
as described by Stiefel and Wolf (1994,117-118):
The idea that bureaucratization and routinization of the Communist Party cadres and
the state, economic and educational bureaucracy could be halted and reversed by
mobilizing the students and youth in a Cultural Revolution was a dramatic policy shi
by Mao and Lin Piao, which ultimately destroyed the lives of millions of people. History
can be made by social movements and revolutionary upsurges guided by charismatic
leaders, but overconfidence in the malleability of society can turn a liberating process
into its opposite This explains the sudden upsurge in agricultural production aer
the rigid communal agrarian structures were relaxed or abolished in 1978.

Japan
Land reforms in Japan, as in other Southeast Asian countries had a lot to do with the
international social and political processes. Wolf Ladejinsky, main advisor of the United
States occupation forces in Japan, described how in 1951 General MacArthur subdued
communist thunder in Japan with democratic land reforms. (1977,151). He referred
to the fact that even before the triumph of the Chinese peasant movements, the land
reform implemented in the areas under their control had a strong radiating influence
in Japan, where semi-landless peasants, mainly tenants, had been organizing since the
First World War to achieve beer tenancy conditions and reforms.
In Japan, the First World War had brought about changes in the rural areas that
were mainly favorable to the landlords. Rising land prices gave landowners new
opportunities for profitable speculation in land, while many small farmers lost their
lands because of indebtedness, partly as a result of inflationary tendencies. Absentee
landlordism increased and tenant farmers were forced to pay higher rents in kind.
Situation reached an end where tenants did not have enough rice for their own physical
survival. The result was a large, spontaneous peasant revolt, the Rice Riots of 1918,
which spread to more than 30 prefectures and lasted 42 days.
At the same time, rapidly increasing industrialization created greater opportunities,
causing people to migrate from the rural areas to the cities. The bargaining position
of urban labor and of the peasantry improved somewhat, and the formation of labor

85

unions accelerated along with the occurrence of strikes. Because of the relative labor
shortage, tenants were able to threaten landlords with non-cultivation of the land if
rents were not decreased.
Aer the First World War, industrial crisis led to the dismissal of many workers.
When they returned to their already overcrowded villages, rural unrest grew. Tension
increased rapidly as those who returned acutely felt the backward conditions in which
tenants generally lived. The organizing experience they had gained in industry was
soon applied to bargaining for beer conditions in the rural-agrarian seing. Formally
organized tenant unions began to develop in the areas around the new industrial centers,
particularly Nagoya.
Local unions generally grew spontaneously at the buraka (hamlet) level, around rent
disputes. Workers who had been dismissed because of union activities and had to return
to their villages were particularly influential in these activities. Several workers became
effective peasant organization leaders. The need for an organization at the national and
prefecture levels was increasingly felt but did not materialize until 1922, when a group
of intellectuals, journalists, a missionary and a labor leader took the initiative in creating
the Japanese Peasant Union (Nihon Nomin Kumiai, abbreviated Nichin).
By 1926, Nichin claimed a dues-paying membership of about 68,000 peasants. Its
chief aim was still to reduce rents, but it also had political demands, such as legislation
to protect tenants, as well as the objective of socialization of the land. Aer universal
suffrage was introduced in Japan in 1925, and the number of voters rose from 3 million
to 14 million, Nichin became politically more influential. Nichin leaders invited the
28 labor federations with more than 1,000 members to form a Workers and Peasants
Party. Such increasing involvement in political and ideological issues led to splits and
mergers among peasant organizations and political parties. One divisive point was
whether to include all peasants and small landowners, or tenants only. Another was
between those who saw the tenants struggle against the landlords as a class struggle
directed toward overall social change, and those who were more in favor of compromise
and the achievement of concrete benefits for tenants specifically.
However, it was observed that these differences were primarily differences between
leaders. Which national organization a particular local tenant union was federated with
depended more on personal connections with particular leaders than on ideological
aachment to one doctrine rather than another. And, indeed, in their practical activities
the various federations differed lile from each other. Their chief function was to assist
tenants engaged in disputes, to encourage the formation of local tenant unions in districts
hitherto unorganized, and to direct and co-ordinate the formulation of tenants demands
(Dore, 1959, 77).
Whatever occurred nationally, the main function of tenant unions at the local level
was in rent disputes with landlords. Buraku unions had taken many of these disputes
up before the national organization was created, but the local-level struggle was made
more effective through the national union and its officials. In the campaign to spread
the movement, those burakus were chosen where the most severe and acute problems
existed. Very large landowners were helped by police repression of tenant organizations;
86

smaller landowners used their traditional paternalistic control to pressure tenants against
joining a union. Kin relationships, favors and threats to force people to pay their debts
were used to exert pressure on tenants. These obstacles could only be overcome by an
organized strength of the peasants.
As peasant unions spread throughout the country and became beer organized,
their demands changed. Initially, demands were mostly for postponement or reduction
of rent payments when harvests were bad, or other emergencies. Later, demands for
permanent rent reduction of 30 per cent were increasingly heard. Landlords oen tried
to evict peasants when they started to organize unions. Rather than being solved through
negotiation, more and more disputes were brought to the courts, which generally ruled
in favor of the landlords. Peasant organizations thus became increasingly aware of the
need for political action at the national level. Radical views on the need for drastic social
structural change in order to improve the life of the peasants found an increasingly
positive response. The leist Workers and Peasants Party, on the whole supported by
the Nichin, won considerable influence during the 1928 elections to the Diet.
The government, alarmed by the rising tide of radicalism in the peasant and labor
movement, ordered nationwide arrests of movement leaders in the so-called 3.15 event
(l5 March l928). This was a serious blow to the Nichin, which had most of its top
leaders at the national and some prefectural levels imprisoned. Some, such as national
leader Tokuda, remained in jail until aer the Second World War. However, local action
continued in spite of increasing difficulties, showing the strength of the needs and
demands of the tenants.
In September 1931 an explosion engineered by the Armed Forces near Mukden in
China was used as a pretext for the occupation of Manchuria. This action considerably
increased the authoritarian tendency of the Japanese government, and the influence
of the armed forces, and marked the beginning of a period of serious repression. It is
striking that in spite of all the repressive measures, the number of disputes continued to
increase. Local buraku groups, independent of any direct support by a national peasant
or political organization, waged most tenancy disputes.
This seemingly unstoppable peasant protests prepared the way, before and during
the Second World War, for land reform that was finally carried out in 1946, which was
relatively radical as a result of the revived peasant pressure. The peasant movement
survived, in fact, was strengthened by the defeat of the Japanese army in 1945, although
many of its leaders had spent years in jail. The movement was quickly reactivated and
pressed for land tenure reforms similar to those tried in some areas in China. The
Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) pressured the post-war Japanese
government to abolish feudal-type relations in the countryside and avoid the risk of
peasant rebellion. This pressure was not without political overtones, as on the one hand,
the landed gentry was seen by the occupation forces as being closely related to the
defeated state system in Japan, and on the other, there was the threat of communism
spreading in the region on the wave of peasant discontent.
Between 1946 and 1949, almost all land property in excess of one hectare of
irrigated paddy was redistributed among the tillers, mainly through purchase and resale.
87

Organized peasants played a crucial role in this process, together with the rich farmers
and landlords. The redistribution proceeded with the close supervision and advice of
the technicians of the occupation authorities, and Wolf Ladejinsky (cited above) played
a crucial role in this process. The opposition of the landlords was largely overcome by
providing them with institutional forms of expression, and a stake in industrialization.
Village (and town) land commiees played an important role in the implementation of
agrarian reform. These commiees consisted of five tenant members, three landlords
and two owner-farmers, with each group electing its representatives. Although some
land commiees continued to be dominated by the landlords, institutionalization of the
dealings between landlords and tenants in village land commiees limited the number
of incidents involving some kind of violence during the crucial years of the reform. The
institutionalization of the peasants participation in the land reform process through
the land commiees constituted an important adult education program through which
150,000 people received leadership training (Ladejinsky, 1977,133). It has been estimated
that from 10 to 40 per cent of the village leaders aer the reform had achieved their
leadership positions thanks to the reform. (1992)

Cuba
As in other Latin American countries and the Philippines, the peasant struggle against
large estates and corporations in Cuba goes back to the colonial period. In Cuba,
peasants began mobilizing aer the introduction of railways, around 1830. This had
allowed penetration of sugarcane plantations deep in the hinterlands, thereby bringing
larger and larger areas under sugarcane cultivation, and consequent displacement of
the small peasant economy. The owners of sugar estates began to extend their lands
aggressively at the cost of the small tobacco producing farms, and through eviction of
peasants and usurpation of the plots they cultivated.
Peasant resistance was initially sporadic and isolated, but when armed struggle
for independence flared up in 1868, peasants joined the movement in large numbers.
This rebellion was repressed, but many peasants in the Mambi army participated in
the revolution of 1895 against the Spanish regime, in which 400,000 Cubans and 80,000
Spaniards lost their lives (Wolf, 1969:254). Peasants were concentrated in closed villages
by the colonial regime in order to counter their guerrilla tactics, and as a reaction to this
form of eviction, the peasants joined the liberation struggle in increasing numbers.
When the fighting ended, due to US intervention, the United States took more and
more power in Cuba, replacing the colonial forces. Instead of institutionalizing the armed
forces of the liberation as a national army, as was proposed by the Cubans, the United
States created the rural guards, members of which were not identified with the peasantry.
With the support of the guardia rural, peasants were evicted from communal lands
and small private plots, in order to create plantations for US companies or individuals.
Thus sugar production and cale rearing became the dominant activities in Cuba (Wolf,
1969:255). By 1905, there were 13,000 US-owned properties in Cuba, covering almost 10
per cent of the total surface of the country. Moreover, the promises made to those who
struggled in the liberation war to obtain uncultivated land were not kept. Many of the
88

veterans went to Oriente province and occupied uncultivated lands, which officially
was made possible by a law in 1904. However, large landowners later took those lands
from the peasant selers, who protested sporadically.
Between 1910 and 1920, the peasant struggle in Cuba was influenced by the growing
urban labor movement and by socialist and communist ideas. But it was not until large
estates began expanding rapidly between 1915 and 1925, mainly in Oriente province
and Camagey, that the peasant struggle became more effective and increasingly radical.
Thousands of peasants were evicted and pushed into the mountains, or forced to work
as laborers on estates or in sugar factories oen owned by foreign companies. These
companies collaborated closely with the Cuban government. President Garcia Menocal,
for example, was linked to the Cuban American Sugar Company, the second largest US
sugar enterprise in the country. In 1923, there was a massive mobilization of peasants
against land seizures by a US-owned company in Caujeri, Oriente province. Given
the situation, peasants proved willing to defend their lands by armed force. The same
resistance took place in Sagua de Tnamo.
Although peasants oen tried to claim their rights through legal action in the
courts, they also used more radical means, because many of them were veterans of
the independence struggle. Unrest continued for years in one part of the country or
another. In 1928, the peasants mobilized to retrieve lands or prevent usurpation by the
United Fruit Company. In several places along the north coast of Oriente province, the
company received help from the guardia rural. By 1933-34, the peasants had become more
formally organized. One outstanding leader, a veteran of the 1895 revolution, was Lino
Alvarez. Particularly at the beginning, his strategy was to try all legal means possible to
defend the peasants lands. More radical leaders denounced Alvarezs excessive legalism,
but it provided time to organize the peasants effectively and mobilize them into big
demonstrations when it became clear that the legalistic approach was failing dismally.
The peasants then felt beer prepared to initiate more radical and extra-legal actions,
such as land invasions.
During the 1920s and 1930s, the sugar workers were also organized through the
Confederacion Nacional Obrera de Cuba (National Workers Confederation of Cuba),
guided by the Communist Party, which had been created in 1925. Sugar workers and
cane-cultivating peasants worked together in the struggle against the sugar mill and
plantation owners, such as the United Fruit Company. This struggle became especially
acute when the repressive Machado regime was overthrown through a general strike
in 1933. The peasants had their own increasingly radical demands, such as land to the
tillers and schools for the children.
The struggle everywhere for concrete and moderate goals encountered strong
negative reaction from landowners and companies, leading the peasants to realize that
those forces were practically their class enemies. As a result of this awareness, the small
local groupings saw the need to become more strongly and rationally organized and
to give a more radical content to their demands. Thus an organized struggle gradually
emerged. At the Second National Peasant Congress in Havana in 1941, in which over
800 peasant delegates participated, the Asociacion Nacional Campesina (National Peasant
89

Association) was created. The chief struggle of this association and its affiliates was
against the numerous evictions of peasants by the large landowners and multinational
companies. In the following years, the efforts of estate owners and companies to evict
peasants and usurp their lands became increasingly violent. Many peasant houses
were destroyed, and several peasant leaders who headed the resistance against such
activities were assassinated. By 1944, according to the Asociacion Nacional Campesina,
about 40,000 families were threatened with eviction. In response, mass meetings and
demonstrations were organized in several parts of the country.
The peasant associations increasingly felt the need for fundamental changes in
rural social structures, such as broad agrarian reform, rather than small gains. During
the 1940s, government promises about land reform were made and some hesitant
steps in that direction were taken. Efforts to neutralize the increasingly radical peasant
movement and the increasing demands for structural change were also made through
the creation of an alternative organization, the Confederacion Campesina de Cuba
(Peasant Confederation of Cuba), led by persons related to the government. The Banco
de Fomento Agricola e Industrial de Cuba (BANFAIC, Agricultural and Industrial
Development Bank of Cuba), created in 1950, also tried with some success to give the
impression that a new reform-oriented policy had been initiated. The producers of
certain products, such as tobacco, also created another institution with that purpose,
with obligatory membership. Although at the village level small farmers sometimes led
these organizations, nationally large producers dominated them. However, members of
the radical Asociacion Nacional Campesina took over more and more leadership roles
in these organizations, rather than struggle against them.
Aer the coup that brought Batista to power in 1952, the peasant struggle became
more vocal again as a reaction to the increasing exploitation by large landowners and
companies. Pro-land reform commiees were created in many sugar-producing areas.
An aack on the Moncada barracks by young revolutionaries headed by Fidel Castro
on 26 July 1953 had a considerable effect on the militancy of the peasants and workers.
The sugar strike of 1955, which paralyzed over 100 sugar mills, was an expression of
the trend toward radicalization. The confrontation between peasant associations and
the King Ranch (from Texas) when it usurped lands for livestock rearing in Adelaide,
Camagey province, in 1954, and the Francisco Sugar Company, which seized land in
1958, provide other examples. Aer the peasants were imprisoned when they tried to
prevent these companies from taking their lands, women took over the efforts to halt
the bulldozers destroying their houses and crops. Similar activities were taking place
in Oriente province. When the small group of revolutionaries headed by Fidel Castro
started a guerrilla struggle there, they found the peasantry in the Sierra, the highlands
in the East, ready for insurrectionary action. The resistance against the violence of the
large landowners and companies had radicalized the peasants to such an extent that
they were prepared to support or even to join the guerrilla forces. The trade unions of
sugar workers and the Communist Party initially were hesitant to support the rebellion
in the Sierra (Wolf, 1969,268-273), but once the effort was succeeding, they joined it,
together with anti-United States elements of the middle classes.
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Repressive actions of the Batista regime, as it tried to concentrate the rebellious

peasants in areas where they could give no support to the guerrillas, further radicalized
peasant resistance. The careful way in which the guerrilla forces approached the peasants
in the areas they dominated, along with the reform measures they encouraged, received
immediate support from the local peasant associations. Particularly Law No. 3 of the
Rebel Forces, which gave up to 26 hectares of land to its cultivators free of charge, helped
to mobilize the peasantry behind the revolutionary forces and ensure their victory.
Soon aer the revolutionary regime came to power, a land reform law was
promulgated (17 May 1959) which prohibited the possession of land beyond 30 caballerias
(about 390 hectares). More than 100,000 tenants, sharecroppers and other precarious
cultivators thus became proprietors of their plots without any obligation to pay for the
land. The large estates (many of which were foreign-owned) were expropriated and
transformed into co-operative and state farms.
Aer the reform, about one third of those working in agriculture were small
cultivators, working some 42 per cent of all farmland. More than 150,000 small farmers
were organized into local associations and co-operatives. In 1961 these were brought
together into the National Association of Small Cultivators (ANAP), an intermediary in
the supply of credit and in the sale of products at fair prices. ANAP has been particularly
effective in channeling credits, providing loan at the rate of 4 per cent interest to small
farmers in a system, which gives the supervisory task mainly to the local organization.
Requests for credit are made to the bank through a local co-operative organization that
guides, approves and supervises the cultivation plan of each member. In addition to
organizing the peasants participation in credit and other agricultural promotion efforts,
ANAP formed a wider system of popular mobilization.
One result of the Cuban reform program was the fear of the United States that it
might serve as an example to other Latin American countries. This led the Kennedy
administration (aer the failure of its Bay of Pigs invasion to overthrow the Cuban
revolutionary government) to promote land reform programmes all over Latin America
in the context of the Alliance for Progress. Most Latin American governments were
pressured to adopt land reform legislation that stipulated measures to correct grossly
inequitable land tenure situations, mostly dominated by latifundia. This legislation, in
most cases, remained a dead leer, but in some countries it gave an impetus to grassroots
organizations to pressure or bargain for redistribution of some latifundia lands to semilandless peasants. This happened particularly in Brazil, Peru, Chile and Colombia.
However, one aer the other, these social mobilizations were blocked, frustrated or deradicalized by a variety of forces (see Barraclough, 1991; Stiefel and Wolfe, 1995).

Indonesia
One of the most spectacular peasant mobilizations in Asia was the Indonesian Peasant
Front, (BTI, Barisan Tani Indonesia) created and directed by the PKI (Indonesian
Communist Party). The communities tried to arrive at a united front policy and to build
up a mass organization, particularly among the peasants, following to some extent the
Chinese grassroots mobilization model in a generally peaceful manner.
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In the first place, the survivors of feudalism in Indonesia were denounced. Emphasis
was given to the need of organizing peasants, taking as a point of departure their most
strongly felt demands and grievances. It was suggested that local organizations be created
around such demands, adapted to particular village or area. Party cadres were instructed
to identify the most acute problems in each particular area or community. A policy of
three together was followed, whereby PKI activists had to live together, eat together
and work together with the peasants. They also helped solve all kinds of practical,
day-to-day problems, such as rent payment, etc. Such small but successful actions
were seen by the PKI and BTI cadres as the best way to be accepted by the peasantry,
and to create networks for mass mobilisation. It was emphasized, however, that such
actions should be accompanied by stimulating among the peasants the awareness that
the basic solution to their problems could come only with the end of their exploitation
by landlords, and that this had to be achieved through organized struggle. Actions
that directly affected the relationship with the landowners were not to be undertaken,
however, until local-level organizations had gained enough strength. Then demands
for joint land rent agreements, lowered interest rates on loans or lowered land rents
could be brought up.
It is surprising that the spread and development of the BTI and its activities in
Java came about in a society still dominated by tradition and respect for harmony
(rukun) and established leadership, although the first signs of a decline in customary
relations were there. It was a big step to systematically undermine the hold of traditional
wealthy leaders over their villages, and to bring the people to the point of opposing
that leadership on crucial issues such as land tenure. It would be an exaggeration to
say that clear-cut class struggle emerged, but there were certainly elements of one.
By bringing up examples of existing but hidden grievances against those in power,
people were made aware that the harmony in their villages was disappearing, or had
not really existed. As cases of abuse and usury under the modernization process and
increasing absentee ownership became known, peasants gained increasing awareness
of being exploited. The BTI used this awareness as a means to organize the peasants
as a special interest group.
Strong new local leadership was needed to rally the people against traditional
elites in addition to mobilizing them to oppose the deteriorating land tenure situation.
Identification with the fate of poor peasants was the initial step to gain their adherence
and admiration. Loyalty to charismatic, particularly able and courageous leaders brought
together the Javanese peasants in their struggle for improvement and change. Such
leaders also took on the fatherly role traditionally played by landlords and wealthy
farmers among the peasants in their village. Once traditional patronage was undermined
and new leaders enjoyed sufficient prestige, it was possible to compete successfully
with old leaders in elections for lurahs (village-heads) and even higher positions in
local government. In several areas, particularly in Central Java, BTI and PKI leaders
were thus gradually taking over official positions from the established local elite. In the
process, the activists oen used Javanese mythological elements and spiritual practices
that were cherished by the masses as the characteristics of a just society (Adas, 1979,93).
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In this effort, the activists sought to gain the collaboration of the local dukuns (healers)
and traditional wajang puppet players.
In spite of the difficulties typically faced by organizers in highly traditional rural
areas, the BTI was the most impressive of all the communist-oriented mass organizations
in Indonesia. By the end of 1953, it counted several hundred thousand members, and
8.5 million in September 1964. The growing strength of the communist and communistoriented mass organizations provoked a strong response from the armed forces. A PKI
Party Congress planned for 1959 was initially forbidden by the army, but was later
allowed, due to support from President Sukarno. However, the scheduled elections
of 1959, which could have given the Communist Party a majority in parliament or
made it the most influential party, were not held. Instead, presidential rule, or guided
democracy was initiated, and President Sukarno tried to keep a balance between the
army, the Communist Party and other forces.
The bargaining position of the BTI as a mass organization was, however, strong
enough to take up the land reform issue successfully at the national level, and obtain
the promulgation of a land reform law in 1960. According to this law, landowners who
had more than the official ceiling of five hectares of irrigated paddy land had to make
the surplus available for redistribution to the landless. But this reform was only slowly
and inefficiently implemented, leading the BTI and PKI to step up their activities and
become more militant, and risking the harmonious collaboration that existed at the
national level between them and various other political forces. In order to speed up the
reform program, in 1963 Aidit endorsed a unilateral action movement (Gerakan Aksi
Sefihak) of the peasants. The tactic most frequently used was occupation of the lands
to which landless peasants were entitled under the law. By occupying certain parcels,
the peasants involved indicated which lands were to be distributed.
It is difficult to assess whether the unilateral action movement was instigated by
the BTI or PKI leadership, or was a spontaneous response by the peasants to doubtful
practices and unilateral actions by landowners, such as distributing surplus land to their
own relatives or eviction of possible claimants. While such actions by the landowners
were an effort to avoid land distribution or prevent peasants from claiming their new
rights, the unilateral actions of the peasants were directed toward the initiation and
acceleration of the land distribution process. In August 1964 President Sukarno also
endorsed the unilateral action movement, and during the second half of 1964 drastic
steps were taken to accelerate the stagnant land reform program. This suggests that
the unilateral action movement grew to considerable proportions, and may indicate
how effectively the BTI and PKI had organized the peasants. Actually, militancy is
generally not considered a characteristic of the Javanese peasants. The fact that, in a
good many instances, local harmony was abolished shows how far the process of detraditionalization had progressed. On the whole, local people took the new course of
events for granted, with about half a million peasants benefiting from land reform in
a relatively short time during the second half of 1964.
There is evidence that during the period of rapid land distribution lile violence
occurred. A ferociously violent reaction came, however, in October 1965. Aer an
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abortive coup, allegedly by leist officers, a military regime came to power. Sections
of the army, together with the youth of the largely Islamic rural elites, assassinated
more than half a million peasants and peasant leaders, as well as other communists or
alleged communists. Aer this massacre, the BTI was virtually non-existent. According
to Ernst Utrecht (1975), an important role played by certain representatives of traditional
Javanese cosmology (shamans, dukuns) in the BTI movement, probably ensured that
the fire of resistance would smolder for decades to come.

Experiences with limited success

India
In India, social mobilization of peasants for agrarian reform was also an integral part
of the nationalist liberation movement from the beginning. Indian peasants, who lived
in scaered villages, became politicized in the wake of the nationalist movement. The
general spirit of defiance of authority generated by the nationalist movement from
1920 onwards, and Gandhis charisma promoted the growth of peasant movements
almost throughout the country (1982:28). Gandhis mobilization techniques included
meetings, processions, signature campaigns and satyagraha (soul force through passive
resistance), mostly to achieve rent reduction and abolition of feudal dues. In fact, it was
participation of peasants that gave the nationalist movement its force and mass base.
Farmers unions (Kisan Sabhas) sprung up in many areas, and became particularly strong
in Bihar. Swami Sahajanand Saraswati was one of the pioneers of the movement, and
it was at his initiative the All-India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) was formed in 1936. One of
the major demands of the AIKS was abolition of the zamindari. The Kisan Sabha had
a particularly powerful presence in Bihar, which was the hub of a powerful peasant
movement in the pre-independence period. Within two years of its formation, AIKS
had 500,000 members.
As a reaction to the 1943 famine in Bengal in which many peasants died, the tebhaga
movement emerged against landlords. The movement demanded that two thirds of the
crop be remied to the cultivator, as recommended but not implemented by the 1940
Land Revenue Commission. The tebhaga struggle was supported by the Bengal Kisan
Sabha, which organized massive demonstrations in 1946. Because of the strong influence
of Communist leaders in the movement, the Congress Party leadership responded with
severe police repression. This caused the collapse of the movement but radicalized the
peasantry even more, indirectly strengthening the Communist Party in Bengal. Thus,
the base was laid in West Bengal for the coming to power through regular elections in
1967 of a United Front government, dominated by the communists, which later carried
out moderate but effective land reform in that state. A similar transition had occurred
in 1957, through an elected United Front government in the state of Kerala.
The peasant movement was also very strong in the Telangana region of Andhra
Pradesh. In the colonial period, Nizam and Muslim elites ruled this state. The feudal
conditions prevailing in the rural areas were challenged in the 1940s when a class of
rich peasants emerged and supported the nationalist cause. When the Nizam declared
independence for Hyderabad in 1947, the Congress Party joined the radical agrarian
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struggle against the Muslim feudal elite. In areas where the Communist-oriented AIKS
had gained peasant support, the Muslim elites mobilized a paramilitary force that
killed or jailed thousands of peasant militants (Sundarayya, 1979, 545). The peasant
mobilization achieved short-lived land redistribution (of over a million acres), and local
village commiees abolished feudal servitude. In 1948, however, the Indian army moved
in to pacify the Telangana area, and integrate the state into the Indian union. This
action, as well as internal divisions over the strategy to follow whether an insurrectional
armed struggle, as in China, or parliamentary politics brought an end to the peasant
movement in this region in 1951 (Karunan, 1992,42-44).
During the 1960s, Maoist-oriented communists came to the foreground in India.
The growing contradictions between rich and poor in rural areas led them to initiate
rebellions (partly among tribal communities) under the guidance of their ideologue,
Charu Mazumdar, in Naxalbari (Darjeeling district) and Srikakulam. These Naxalite
rebellions remained rather isolated, and when they became increasingly violent they
were isolated by army and police intervention (Sen, 1982,212; Karunan, 1992, 47). But
rural unrest remained endemic in most of India in spite of, or partly as an unforeseen
result of, top-down rural development efforts.
One effect of years of agitation in different parts of India was some measure of
tenancy reform, mainly in the areas where peasant organizations had been active in
the late 1940s. However, these reform efforts remained relatively localized or were not
systematically implemented. The evaluation by the Indian government of its tenancy
reform program presented at the 1966 World Land Reform Conference (United Nations,
1968) stressed that tenants should be encouraged to organize themselves into unions or
co-operatives in order to enforce the reform measures. However, lile or nothing was
done about this in practice. In fact, aer the Tenancy Act of 1950, there was a mass
eviction of peasants in several parts of the country, because there was no check against
this practice. In some areas, violence was used against the tenants; elsewhere peasants
gave up their tenancy rights voluntarily.
The lack of progress in land reform in India during the 1950s and 1960s has been
described extensively by Wolf Ladejinksky (1977). Indias situation was complicated by
the fact that each state government had its own policies, which were not always the
same as those prescribed by national legislation. During field trips in 1952, Ladejinsky
was struck by the fact that rental rates for tenants were very high, mostly far above 50
per cent of their yields. As a consequence, in the district of Tanjore in Madras state, the
communists had taken up the land reform issue. They did not create the grievances;
in the absence of any effort by the Madras government to correct the maladjustments
breaking into the open, the Communists articulated the grievances to the obvious
satisfaction of large groups of non-political farmers. (Ladejinksky, 1977, 165). This led
to considerable losses for the Congress Party, but not to effective reforms, even though
the communist led peasant organization had 200,000 members.
Community development emerged as an internationally sponsored strategy in the
early 1950s, with support from the Ford Foundation and the Indo-American Technical
Cooperation Fund as means of countering peasant unrest in the wake of a distorted
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agrarian production and power structure. This approach was soon adopted on a large
scale and in a few years became a nationwide program widely presented as a strategy
of meeting the Communist challenge, as the US ambassador to India at that time,
Chester Bowles, indicated (1954:2). As part of this strategy, community development
and agricultural extension workers generally accepted that communicating new ideas
via established leaders in the villages would automatically benefit the whole community.
Information about improved technology, such as beer seeds or fertilizers, was given
to the more advanced farmers, the opinion leaders, who were prepared to adopt new
practices. The expectation was that the other farmers would eventually follow their
example. But this approach completely ignored the uneven distribution of land and
other resources in rural areas. It strengthened the economic position of those who were
already beer off, widening the gap between poor and rich at the village level. Thus,
the community development strategy actually sharpened the contradictions and the
potential for social conflict in the villages.
This rich-poor polarization was accelerated by the Green Revolution. The
introduction of high yielding varieties of grains through credit-worthy farmers to
increase food production was strongly supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and
other Western donors and agribusinesses. A disadvantage of this approach was that,
while an important minority sector of the peasantry could benefit, but majority sectors
did not share in this process and remained behind (Dasgupta, 1975; Palmer, 1976).
Although food production increased considerably, growing contradictions between rich
and poor led to social discrepancies, tenant displacement and increasing landlessness,
enhancing unrest in many rural areas (Ladejinsky, 1977,472).
According to Sharma, the percentage of rural households living below the extreme
poverty line rose from 38 per cent in 1960 to 53 percent in 1968 (1973). It is estimated
that landlessness among Indian peasants increased from 20 per cent to about 50 per
cent between 1950 and 1980. Increasing frustration and deprivation led to greater
participation by underprivileged groups in forms of intense resistance, leading to what
an official inquiry called agrarian unrest. This report of the Ministry of Home Affairs
concluded:
The problem, in other words, has to be tackled on a wide front effectively and
imaginatively. Failure to do so may lead to a situation where the discontented
elements are compelled to organize themselves, causing the extreme tensions building
up within the complex molecule, that is the Indian village to end in an explosion
(1969,102).

Januzzi (1994:140) pointed out that the shaering of Congress Party dominance in the
1967 elections demonstrated that formerly submissive peasants were beginning to act
on their own behalf, contrary to the expectations of the landholding elite.
Agrarian unrest has continued in the Indian countryside, oen including atrocities
commied by the wealthy and even the state against the restless poor. The local landlords
effectively sabotaged land reform efforts. Januzzi observed that land reform for India
as a whole has been a lost opportunity, but that, for electoral reasons and because of
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growing tensions and contradictions, future governments of India will have to deal
with it.

Philippines
Like most of Latin America, the Philippines was colonized by the Spanish, who utilized
and strengthened the existing feudal power structure, inter-marrying with local chiefs
and creating a class of so-called caciques. Aer a revolt in 1898, which was largely
agrarian in character, threatened to overthrow the colonial regime, the United States
took over the Philippines from Spain. However, this did not fundamentally change the
cacique system. In fact, the frustration of the peasants became more acute by the emphasis
placed on the need for democracy and education, without doing much to realize these
ideas. Tenants, who formed the majority of the agrarian population, particularly in the
densely populated areas of Central Luzon, depended almost completely on the landlords
for their livelihoods. They oen rented buffaloes and houses from the landlord, and
in some areas paid a tenancy rate as high as 90 per cent of the harvest. Permanent
indebtedness was common.
Commercial agriculture, introduced under US colonial rule, caused a serious
deterioration in conditions for the peasants. An increasing amount of land was dedicated
to commercial crops, particularly sugar and tobacco, which could be exported to the
United States. Land ownership became increasingly concentrated as a result. In addition,
a more business-oriented approach was introduced on the new plantations, modifying the
paternal relations that had existed on the traditional estates. Absentee landlords became
increasingly common. The paternalism that had helped to maintain some appearance
of benevolence in the old system disappeared, and landlords became hated strangers
(Jacobi, 1961,199-201). Average tenancy rates went up from 38 to 60 per cent between
1903 and 1946. Especially in Central Luzon, in Nueva Eca and Pampanga, the situation
of the inquilinos (cash tenants) and peasants under the kasama system (share tenants)
became unbearable.
An additional source of frustration for the peasantry was land-grabbing, by which
large owners claimed adjacent small holdings and won their case in the courts because
of their influence and ability to pay lawyers. Thus thousands of once independent and
self-sufficient farmers were reduced to the status of tenants and landless farm laborers
(Jacobi, 1961, 201). As a result, several local and more or less spontaneous uprisings of
peasants took place. By 1919, a sharecroppers union had been formed by a communist
leader, Jacinto Manahan, which became known as the National Union of Peasants in the
Philippines (Katipunan Pambansa ng mga Magbubukid sa Pilipinas, KPMP) in 1924.
The peasant organizations generally used non-violent methods, such as
demonstrations and sit-down strikes. If there were any arrests, they went together as
a group into jail. Dramatic stage presentations and cultural activities were used to teach
the peasants about the labor struggle, and to turn the strikes into public manifestations.
However, the country also saw reactionary organizations of landlords come up against
the land reforms. Landlords organized armed groups, such as the soldiers for peace,
to oppose and clash with the socialists, which led to considerable violence in the rural
97

areas of Central Luzon. When the socialists were prohibited from holding meetings, the
organizers used any kind of gathering, such as Protestant religious meetings, to make
propaganda for the peasant cause.
As a reaction to the Japanese occupation on 29 March 1942, the united peasant
organizations created the Peoples Army against the Japanese, or Hukbalahap (Hubko
ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon). The aims of the Huk movement were expressed in a
manifesto emphasizing opposition against and expulsion of the Japanese, co-operation
with the Allied armies, apprehension and punishment of traitors and collaborators with
the Japanese, complete independence for the Philippines, and the establishment of a
democratic government with land reform, national industrialization and guarantees for
a minimum standard of living as the core agenda (Salmon, 1968,12).
Beginning in 1942, the peasant organization accepted the use of military means, with
many peasants carrying arms and forming squadrons of approximately 100 men each.
Thus the armed struggle against the Japanese was initiated. The armed units operated
in the areas around the homes of members. Support for the units was organized in the
villages through the Barrio United Defence Corps (BUDC), in order to guarantee a food
supply and other necessities. BUDC councils were created in the villages with the result
that the spread of resistance movement brought forms of democratic decision making
to the villages, which had traditionally been dominated by the caciques. The BUDC
councils formed the local government in the areas controlled by the guerrilla forces.
This system functioned particularly well in the areas where the peasant organizations
had gained strength before the war.
The Huk movement was particularly successful in mobilizing masses, and became
so strong that it controlled the entire areas of Central Luzon, which the Japanese could
not enter. In those areas, de facto political control and local government were in the
hands of the resistance forces, which had their base in the peasantry. The lands of many
landlords who collaborated with the Japanese and lived in the towns were taken over by
the Huks, and harvests were no longer handed over. Landlords who supported the Huk
movement were allowed to remain on their land, but had to accept a fixed rent. Huk
leaders were elected governors in some provinces in the December 1944 elections.
Although the efforts of the Huks facilitated the US armys liberation of the
Philippines from the Japanese, relations between the Huks and the Americans were
never good. It was feared that the Huks would radically change the social order in the
Philippines if they had the opportunity to do so. A few months before he died in 1948,
US-supported president, Roxas, outlawed the Huk organization. His successor, Quirino,
aempted to negotiate an amnesty realizing that policy of armed repression had failed.
Reconciliation was aempted, with the minimum demands presented by the Huks, which
were mainly peasants demands. They were - (1) division of estates, and their resale to
tenants with government assistance; (2) support for migration from overcrowded to less
crowded areas; (3) laws establishing a fair sharing of the crop by landlords and tenants;
(4) curbs on usury; and (5) a minimum wage scale. A 70:30 Rice Share Tenancy Act in
favor of the peasants was soon promulgated, but implementation was very defective,
and no truce between the government and the Huks actually resulted.
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The armed Huk resistance flared up again and gained increasing strength between
1948 and 1950. The Huk leadership seriously considered the possibility of overthrowing
the government by armed force, and the organizations name was changed to HMB
(Hukbong Mapagpalayang Bayan, or Peoples Army of Liberation, although they also
remained known as Huks). Some of the leaders, including Taruc, only half-heartedly
agreed with this change in approach, which was actually made for doctrinaire reasons.
As Taruc reported (1953:67.99), the show of force that the Huks made by occupying
several towns and besieging others scared the government enough to reorient its policies,
with help from US advisory teams. There was a cleaning up in the government ranks
and Ramon Magsaysay became the new Secretary of Defence in 1950. He was given
the responsibility of reorganizing the army and modifying its approach. The Philippine
Constabulary (PC), that is, the police force was integrated in the army and personnel
were shied to ease tensions. Cases of abuse were investigated and arbitrariness was
punished. Magsaysays experience during the Second World War and the pressure from
the US advisory missions were factors contributing to this new approach. Magsaysays
1953 presidential campaign and the reforms that were promised, particularly land
distribution, also helped to appease the peasants.
The possibility of a peaceful solution to agrarian and other problems seemed to
emerge. Divisions of opinion between Taruc and the more doctrinaire leaders came into
the open. Taruc surrendered in 1954 under a pledge of amnesty by President Magsaysay,
although the pledge was not kept. Taruc was jailed for many years. In the meantime,
the peasants adopted a wait-and-watch policy, and the Huks had to withdraw due to
decreasing support among the peasants and the increasing effectiveness of the army.
Between 1952 and 1954 several institutions and programmes were created to deal with
the peasant problem in various ways, as an alternative to the violent struggle in which
the peasants had become involved. One program was the Philippine Rural Reconstruction
Movement (PRRM), a private community development agency, sponsored by Dr. Y.C.
James Yen of the Joint Sino-American Commission on Rural Reconstruction, which had
been active in mainland China before 1949, and had later carried out rural development
activities in Taiwan. The PRRM was called on by President Magsaysay to help with
pacification and counter-insurgency activities in the epicenter of the Huk movement, the
municipality of San Luis in the province of Pampanga (the birthplace of Luis Taruc).
Specially trained village-level workers were stationed in San Luis to try to win
the confidence of the people and wean them from their support of the Huk rebels.
Since the reform program was not extended to the country as a whole, efforts to revive
the peasant struggle flared up time aer time, and a considerable number of Huk
guerrillas remained active in Central Luzon. Another effort to neutralize radical peasant
mobilization was the creation of the Federation of Free Farmers (FFF) in 1953 by a
group of Catholic laymen, headed by Jeremias Montemayor, a lawyer and lecturer at
the Institute of Social Order in Manila. The Institute was created and headed by Jesuit
priests, with the goal of guiding the social action of the Catholic Church, particularly
in the field of unionization. Initially, the growth of the FFF was facilitated by the active
support of President Magsaysay. FFF leaders had easy access to the presidential offices
99

to have concrete cases of farmers problems and complaints resolved. The problems were
generally local, without much impact on government policy as a whole. In a relatively
favorable climate, the FFF enjoyed a rapid growth to over 36,000 members by March
1957, particularly in Central Luzon. Aer the death of Magsaysay in March 1957, the
situation became more difficult, but the FFF was able to consolidate its organization.
The role of the parish priest as facilitator was oen crucial to the establishment of an
FFF organization in a village. The fact that an increasing number of local parish priests
became favorably inclined toward the FFF was a key reason for the organizations spread
into many areas, particularly in Mindanao. Although the FFF published a booklet (Land
to the Tiller, draed by Fr. Mauri, its former religious advisor) containing a number of
radical suggestions for agrarian reform, the FFF undertook very lile political pressure
or action to influence the draing of land reform bills.
Because of the resistance in influential circles to even moderate land reform, the
FFF gradually became more openly radical. At times it organized public demonstrations
in which a great number of individual cases were brought together and given wide
publicity. At such events, student sympathizers played an important role. A whole
series of individual cases was resolved aer a spectacular demonstration was staged
in Manila in September-November 1969. The demonstration consisted of a marathon
picket of almost two months in a park (the Agripina Circle) in front of the Bureau of
Lands, and sometimes extended into the lobby of the building itself.
The assassination of several local FFF leaders also had a radicalizing influence. It did
not stop other, more radical, peasant organizations from emerging until President Marcos
declared martial law in 1972. Many organizations were banned, and went underground
to join the outlawed Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed wing, the New
Peoples Army (NPA) (Karunan, 1992,72). This organization, led by Jos Maria Sison,
waged an armed guerrilla struggle along Maoist strategies. During the 1980s, NPA had
about 3,000 fighters and a considerable base in the wider population. However, internal
divisions, due to policy changes in China, have weakened the NPAs influence.
Land reforms promulgated under Marcos in the 1980s were directed towards
being on the strong, including multinational agribusiness corporations. The World
Bank-supported agrarian reform program of the Aquino government, which came to
power on a wave of protest in 1986, was also disappointing. But peasants continued to
organize, in the Kilusang Magnubukid ng Philipinas (KMP, National Peasant Movement
in the Philippines), and under the leadership of Jaime Tadeo, became increasingly vocal
in favor of more radical land reform (Karunan, 1992,88).

Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe is one of the most interesting cases in which traditional cosmology; folk
religion and spiritual forces played a crucial role in the struggle for land and liberation,
which culminated in 1980. Traditionally, the ties between people and land in Zimbabwe,
as in many other African countries, are not only material but also religious and spiritual.
The belief that land belongs to God, ancestors and, particularly, to the founders of a
lineage, clan or tribe who have been buried there, was sacred to the natives. Some of the
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most important landmarks, hills, ponds or trees, are named aer ancestors whose spirits
are honored there. These are thought to be powerful spirits who guide many aspects
of the daily life of the tribe in order to keep harmony with the natural environment.
Every descendant is entitled to enough land to survive with his family. Land is alloed
mostly by the chief, who is the most direct descendant of the founders of a clan and
thus possesses considerable power (Schoffeleers, 1978).
African religions thus continue to play a crucial role in modern rural development, in
spite of a century of colonial penetration and missionary activity. The former Tribal Areas
of Rhodesia Research Foundation observed, in a report in 1974, that an important factor
in traditional life in rural areas continued to be the role of the tribal spirit (mhondoro).
The tribal spirit is that of the founding father of chiefdom, and is distinguished from
the ordinary ancestor spirits. Tribal spirits are contacted through a human medium
that goes into a trance and then speaks with the voice of the spirit. Such mhondoros
are particularly concerned with the land from which their descendants derive their
subsistence. As the report noted on rural development projects: Any planner of such
a project would be wise, therefore, to acquaint himself with the position with regard
to these spiritual influences in the areas in which the project is planned to operate.
(Hughes, 1974, 294-297). Both the Mwari religious officers and the spirit mediums were
influential. The first were effective in the areas strongly influenced by Mwari beliefs, in
western and southwestern Mashonaland. In central, northern and eastern Mashonaland,
the spirit mediums were more influential.
Various efforts have been made to explain the relatively strong impact of the Shona
uprising as compared with rebellions elsewhere in Africa. Ranger (1967:352.4) ascribes
it to charismatic leadership and religious enthusiasm, combined with a utilitarian and
disciplined approach. Thus European goods were not looted but promptly delivered to
the servants of Mwari. There is also evidence of millenarian elements in the movement,
based on prophetic warnings against the seductions of the white mans way of life and
goods. Although the millenarian and supra-tribal impact of the movement are debatable,
its strength was obvious, as it took the BSACs two armed columns, entering from Beira
and Bulawayo, more than a year (to December 1897) to gain control of the area, and this
happened only aer the two most important spirit mediums had been captured. In the
rebellion, 400 whites were killed along with about 10 per cent of the seler population
of the time (Martin and Johnson, 1981:49).
Aer the 1896-97 rebellion was put down, relative peace seems to have prevailed
between the white minority and the great majority of black people. Ncube, a
contemporary Mwari high priest, pointed out (during an interview with the author in
December 1983) that as long ago as King Lobengulas days, spirits had told the king
that whites would rule, and that they knew many secrets about the minerals. Although
Mwari generally favors peace, harmony and unity, violent resistance would be allowed
if the whites broke the rules of decent behavior, as they did in the 1890s. Thus it was
to be expected that the spirits would intervene again if the whites commied additional
injustices, especially in relation to land possession. As early as 1898, 38 per cent of the
total population of Matabeleland had been forced into reserves, and the whites had
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expropriated 15,000,000 of the countrys total of 96,000,000 acres (Martin and Johnson,
1981, 51).
Aer the Second World War the white population doubled to about 150,000, and
more Africans were expelled from their lands. There was rising discontent among the
Africans, as many had served in the war, yet on their return were again treated as
second-class citizens. Trade union activity, which had been almost impossible previously,
emerged in 1945, and in 1948 resulted in a general strike (Astrow, 1983, 7). In 1951, the
Native Land Husbandry Act forced rural families to reduce their cale herds and change
land tenure practices. This contributed to radicalization, which was further enhanced by
the fact that in the early 1960s, many African countries gained independence. But whites
in Rhodesia resisted pressures from Great Britain to give the Africans a greater share
in the government and, under leadership of Ian Smith, declared themselves unilaterally
independent from Britain.
In the meantime, a section of educated Africans was gradually emerging, oen
through missionary schools. Their aspirations were blocked by white supremacy, as were
the goals of the trade unions and their leaders, such as Joshua Nkomo. Together with
intellectuals such as the Rev Ndabaningi Sithole and Robert Mugabe, Nkomo initiated
the nationalist movement. The movement emphasized winning concessions from the
white government regarding political participation. In 1961 the ZAPU (Zimbabwe
African Peoples Union) was formed, with Nkomo as leader, but a year later the
nationalist organization was banned. Leaders were jailed or fled into exile. Members
of ZAPU who were dissatisfied with Nkomos leadership created ZANU (Zimbabwe
African National Union), led by Sithole. This organization soon founded the ZANLA
(Zimbabwe Nationalist Liberation Army), and sent recruits to China in 1964 for training
in revolutionary warfare.
The upsurge of the African nationalist cause also brought a revival of the Mwari
cosmology. In 1954, trade unionists from Bulawayo visited the Matonjeni Shrine for
consultation, as did Nkomos wife aer he was jailed in 1965. Many others did the
same. According to Daneel, Mwari seemed well disposed to the African Nationalist
cause, but was suggesting peaceful negotiation as a beer way than violence. Various
authors have suggested that the oppression of the nationalist movement helped revive
the influence of spirit mediums (Daneel, 1970, 71; Fry, 1976, 107).
Following the example of FRELIMO, the Mozambican liberation movement, a
guerrilla war began in Zimbabwe in 1972, with aacks organized from guerrilla positions
in Mozambique. Both the nationalist organizations and the Rhodesian government
soon acknowledged the important role of the traditional spirit mediums. In his first
serious reaction to the guerrilla struggle in January 1973, the Prime Minister Ian Smith
commented that the local population was being intimidated, and that they found a few
witch doctors of doubtful character and of lile substance, and succeeded in bribing
them to their side. (Martin and Johnson, 1981:74) These witch doctors were, in fact,
the spirit mediums that were helping ZANLA. The Rhodesian government, however,
was swi in its reaction to the guerrilla uprising. In one study, it was noted that the
Rhodesian Ministry of Internal Affairs took the spirit mediums seriously enough to
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employ an advisor on African customs, just as the CIA station chief in the Philippines
had ordered a study of the superstitions of the local peasants, such as their lore, witch
doctors, taboos and myths. (As a result of these studies, the CIA in the Philippines
broadcast curses in Tagalog from small aircra flying low over villages supporting Huk
peasant rebels.) Similarly, the Rhodesians dropped pamphlets from the air in guerrilla
areas, pretending that they were anti-nationalist instructions from local spirit mediums
(Frederikse, 1982:146).
In 1973, shortly aer the beginning of the liberation war in Rhodesia, instructions
were given to control the spirit mediums. Government forces shot some of them
and others were persuaded by gis and respectful treatment to collaborate with the
government, as many of the traditional chiefs had been. The guerrillas killed two
because they co-operated with government forces (Lan, 1983, 37). Lan has studied
the role of spirit mediums in Dande, an area of Zimbabwe into which the ZANU
guerrillas made incursions from Mozambique. He noted that the inhabitants of Dande
originally considered the guerrillas heavily armed foreign conquerors, but because
of their efforts to merge with the people and their environment and to fight for
the recovery of ancestral lands, they were soon accepted as natives (1983:196). Lan
explains the importance of the spirit mediums as a way of creating a link between the
guerrilla forces, entering from Mozambique, and the local peasantry in Dande.
The ZANU forces used the Maoist model of a liberation war, in which combatants
seek the support of the local population through political education, as well as
mobilizing and defending them, extending the liberated zones. (Lan, 1983:11), but
avoiding possible confrontation with the technically superior military forces of the
state. In order to gain a real acceptance among the peasants, the guerrillas could not
rely on and in fact had to replace the traditional chiefs. The laer had lost much
of their authority, because they had been integrated into the colonialist system of indirect
rule. Here the spirit mediums were to play an important role (Isaacman, 1979:313),
facilitating the transfer of authority from the chiefs to the guerrillas by representing
the mhondoros, spirits of the ancestors of the chiefs. Of course, the guerrillas assertion
that they were fighting for the reclamation of the land, the rightful owners of which
had been dislodged by the white farmers, was also important. The guerrillas duly
observed certain ritual prohibitions in order to be accepted as adopted descendants of
the mhondoros, the tribal guardian spirits and protectors of the land. Though mhondoros
are generally against killing, the guerrillas were allowed to do so because of the cause,
liberation of the land, although the spirits insisted that the killing be kept to a minimum
(Lan, 1983:283).
The struggle resulted in considerable changes in relations between the generations
in the rural areas. The guerrillas were all young, but enjoyed great authority as
descendants of the mhondoro. Aer the war in Dande, under the leadership of the
mhondoro Chiwawa-Ponday, democratically elected village commiees introduced by
ZANLA replaced the influence of the chiefs. The influence of the spirit mediums was
so important that it was officially recognized and honored by the newly elected Prime
Minister, Robert Mugabe, at the independence celebrations in 1980.
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Recovery of much of the ancestral land by the peasantry, however, was postponed
by the Lancaster House Agreement, which was signed by the liberation forces and the
colonial government before independence became official. Although land reform was
recognized as a key reason for the social mobilization, the agreement stipulated (under
international pressure) that a radical redistribution would not take place during the
decade following 1980. Recently, within the ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National
Union/Popular Front (ZANUPF), pressure has been building to finally return much of the
land to its original African inhabitants. Aer years of waiting, a first spectacular return
of peasants to the land of their grandparents, organized by ex-guerrillas on white farms
in the fertile Marondera area, was reported in The Economist (9 June 1998) as a sign of
growing peasant revolt. Over the years, droughts and other worsening ecological trends
in Zimbabwe had resulted in an interest by some ZANLA ex-combatants together with
spirit mediums and local chiefs to continue the social mobilization for the re-conquest
or maintenance of the quality of the ancestral land.

Brazil
In the coastal belt of the northeast Brazil, aer a few indigenous communities had
been extinguished, the best lands were occupied in the colonial period by rapidly
expanding sugar plantations (engenhos), producing for the world market. Large cale
ranches occupied the drier inlands. When the traditional sugar estates could no longer
compete effectively on the world market, many workers were dismissed. The marginal
areas, where land of inferior quality was still available for subsistence farming, were
soon occupied, and peasants moved farther west into the remaining areas in the dry
sertao region. Also, many people migrated to the south, to find work in the newly
created coffee estates, or in the growing urban centers. The extension of the estates
in the northeast continued in spite of the decadence of the old estates, the engenhos.
Modern sugar factories (usinas), oen built with foreign capital, were introduced and
the government took measures to protect the sugar industry.
Occasional droughts in the marginal areas aggravated the already precarious land
tenure situation. A religious movement headed by Father Cicero in one such area,
Juazeiro, from 1872 onward was aimed at supporting the peasants, while aempting
to solve the basic issues of land tenure through the construction of a Holy City. The
drought of 1877-9 in particular had a tremendous impact, resulting in movements that
took the form either of small bands of rural bandits (cangaceiros), rebellious groups
without a clear cause, or large-scale rebellions of fanaticos (as occurred in Canudos,
1893-97, and Contestado in1912). The movements of fanaticos had religious and messianic
overtones, but were also partly a reaction to the increasing pressure on the land.
The social banditry that occurred in Brazil has been noted by Hobsbawm (1959)
as one of the more primitive ways through which peasants have protested under such
circumstances. This phenomenon should be viewed against a background of the overall
lawlessness existing in the rural areas where power holders imposed the laws at will.
Although messianic movements, jacqueries or social banditry were not the most effective
means of defending the peasants, fundamental interests in conserving their lost land,
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in view of the lawlessness imposed by the landed elites, is something that stands out
in the peasant reactions of various types. In fact, it was extremely difficult to find an
appropriate response to the violence with which capitalist systems of land use, property
and economic activity were introduced.
Later, large peasant movements emerged in the heavily populated areas in Brazils
northeast. Peasant League (Ligas camponesas) organized in 1955 by peasants on the
Galileia sugar estate formed an association to raise money to purchase from the landlord
whose estate they worked. The landlord, who tried to evict the peasants from the land,
considered this undesirable. A socialist lawyer and charismatic leader, Francisco Juliao,
sympathized with the peasants and defended them in the courts. Soon the idea emerged
to extend this local initiative to the state of Pernambuco, then all of northeast Brazil. As
the movement gained strength and became more radical in reaction to the landlords
opposition, the Catholic Church established competing unions. These groups became
increasingly convinced of the need for radical reform. A programme of concientizaao
introduced by Paolo Freire, which aimed to assist the peasants through literacy to
express their needs, supported this.
During the early 1960s, the le-of-centre Goulart government began promulgating
agrarian reform legislation that could have largely satisfied peasant demands. Probably
as a reaction to the growing strength of the overall reform movement, in which the
peasant leagues and some church-sponsored unions participated, the army staged a
coup d tat in April 1964. Under the military government the peasant leagues and other
groups were ruthlessly oppressed. The grassroots movement, originally sponsored by
the Catholic Church to compete with the leagues, soon allied with them aer it also
faced the intransigence of the landlords. This later became known as the theology of
liberation.
Aer the military coup, peasant mobilization became very difficult. Peasant leaders
were harassed and others killed, and yet others fled into exile in other countries. While the
radical peasant leagues were thus practically eliminated, the agricultural workers union
(CONTAG, Confederaao dos Trabalhadores na Agricultura), which had been created
under the Goulart regime, was placed under government intervention. Aerwards,
CONTAG played a double role, on one hand giving some legitimacy to the policies
of the military and, on the other hand, trying to defend the interests of agricultural
workers within certain limits. With support from the progressive wing of the Catholic
Church, and radicalized aer the coup, the local CONTAG unions could maintain some
degree of independence in some areas.
In the hope that some redistribution of land would take away the motive for
peasant mobilization, the military legislated land reform in 1964: the Estatuto de Terra.
This reform did not affect the underused land of large estates; it was designed to
encourage reselement on virgin land in Rondnia, in Amazonia. At the same time,
in the south, commercial agriculture (soja) was stimulated on large estates. In 1979, as
a reaction to this modernization and commercialization in the southern states, many
small-scale peasants, who had been dislodged or had lost their tenancy, began the
landless movement, through which they sought to defend their land or occupy what
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they were entitled to. This took place in isolated cases all over Brazil (Manano, 1996:
66). The peasants were oen supported by the Comisao Pastoral de Terra, (CPT),
created by the Catholic Church to deal with the increasing injustice. The contribution
of liberation theologians such as Leonardo Boff and Oscar Beozzo, as well as various
social scientists to the struggle was very crucial (Stedile, 1994:12). Church-sponsored
grassroots communities (CEBs) were the spaces of freedom where spiritual reflection
on a more just and egalitarian relationship between human beings and the promised
land was widely practiced, oen leading to organizational efforts. Some of the priests
involved were persecuted.
The peasant movement continued to gain strength and created, in 1984, the
Movimiento Sem Terra (MST), which had its first national congress with 500 participants
in 1985 (Fatheuer, 1997, 73). The movement intensified its increasingly militant and at
times confrontational policy of occupying lands, thus achieving de facto land reform in
many different local situations. Wide publicity regarding invasions of mostly underused
land gained considerable support among the peasantry and public opinion. One of the
key leaders, Joao Pedro Stedile, was in favor of collective ownership so that economies
of scale could be practiced with the use of tractors in order to compete with capitalist
farmers.
As Grzybowski (1994, 289) points out, the movements have experienced crises,
partly due to internal differences but mainly to the oppressive measures of the
government and the ruthless violence of the landlords. About 2,000 peasants have
been killed in massacres during land occupations, but 140,000 peasant families have
obtained land through these activities since the 1980s. The intensified use of violence
by the landlords was related to the rapidly increasing concentration of land in a few
hands. The concentration took place in the south, and particularly in Amazonia where
several latifundia of over a million hectares were created (Manano, 1996, 39). As a
reaction to the aggressive occupation of huge tracts of land in the laer region by foreign
companies (such as Volkswagen) and commercial farmer selers, the local population
seeing its life-support system threatened, gradually began to mobilize. Encroachments
were resisted with some measure of success by rubber-tappers (seringueros), who had
long lived and worked sustainably in Amazonia. These traditional producers, oen
considered to be backward, became the vanguard of the movement for the conservation
of tropical forests. The rubber-tappers movement gained worldwide recognition aer the
assassination of its leader, Chico Mendes, in 1988 (Fatheuer, 1997, 72). By that time, the
movement had created a national organization and was receiving considerable support
from environmental and other NGOs to defend peasants rights and set up sustainable
projects going beyond land reform as such.
Movements that have emerged in Brazil over the past two decades have in common
a struggle for real democracy and against the neoliberal model of development prevailing
in the country. There are different ideas about possible alternatives, but as Jos Rainha,
one popular leader of MST, recently stated, We dont want a revolution, land reform
today means to reform capitalism to give everybody a chance (Fatheuer, 1997:79).

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Bolivia
Up to 1952, the agrarian structure of Bolivia was highly exploitative, with the native
majority suffering exploitation at the hands of the small, white, Spanish-speaking
landowning aristocracy, allied with the tin barons. Indian serfs (colonos) who lived
on haciendas had the right to farm small subsistence plots (sayaas) for their own
use, in return for which they had the obligation to provide free labor to the hacienda
owner three or four days a week, either on the hacienda itself or at the owners town
residence. It was thus not uncommon for the peon to sharecrop his plot with another,
even lowlier peasant, and to mobilize the members of his family in order to fulfill his
labor obligations.
Scaered peasant revolts have occurred in Bolivia for centuries, as a reaction to
the abuses of the prevailing system of servitude. The Chaco War between Bolivia and
Paraguay (1933.35), related to a conflict over oil-concessions between Standard Oil and
Royal Dutch Shell, fuelled such rebellion, because it exacerbated the disintegration of the
traditional system, as thousands of Indian soldiers le the haciendas for the first time
and entered into contact with the outside world. Bolivias defeat le many frustrations
and much political bierness.
In the aermath of the war, peasant unrest increased in many areas of Bolivia. In
1936, a rural syndicate was formed in Ucurea, in the temperate, fertile Cochabamba
valley, one of the countrys most prosperous agricultural regions. In this area, the Santa
Clara monastery was leasing some of its land to local large landholders, and the lease
included the right to the services of the resident peasants. The laer organized a union in
order to rent the land from the monastery themselves, and thus avoid the onerous labour
obligations that were imposed upon them. Their efforts encountered strong opposition
from various local landowners, who saw in the peasants initiative a direct threat to
their customary rule. These landowners thus bought the land from the monastery and
evicted the peasant families who had been living and working there for years, destroying
their homes and forcing them to leave the area or to revert to serfdom.
In 1945, the creation of the first Bolivian Indian Congress increased national
consciousness about the peasant problem. The key points of the agenda of the Congress,
which opened on 10 May 1945, included the abolition of compulsory services that
peasants had to render to landlords (pongueaje), education, regulation of agricultural
labor, and formulation of general agrarian policy. The peasant delegates proposed no
particularly radical measures. Rather, they emphasized adjustments that would improve
their lot, directed against the most abusive forms of servitude and the lack of educational
facilities. Government decrees concerning the abolition of servitude and the obligation
to establish schools in the large haciendas were issued a few days later. Land reform,
as such, was not dealt with.
During this period, the many spontaneous peasant strikes and uprisings against
the landholders, and also the struggles between indigenous communities over territorial
boundaries, abated. But as a result of the negative reaction of the landlords aer the
Indian Congress, sit-down strikes recommenced with greater vigor, covering large areas
of Tara, Oruro and Potos. By refusing to perform traditional compulsory services, the
107

peasants were in fact complying with the decrees issued in May 1945. Indian peasant
organizers, especially those who had experience as miners or who had been jailed for
their political activity, travelled in many areas, mobilizing the peasantry. But when
the moderately reformist Villaroel Government was overthrown on 21 July 1946, the
reform measures were revoked and steps were taken to reintroduce traditional order
in the rural areas.
The peasant protest movements that occurred in subsequent years were not met by
conciliation as before, but by armed force. Many peasant leaders, particularly those who
had participated in the Indian Congress, were jailed. Revolts protesting these repressive
actions began in late 1946. In Ayopaya, Cochabamba, several thousand peasants invaded
large landholdings and assassinated some of the landlords who had tried to reintroduce
compulsory labor obligations. Soon many areas of the country were in turmoil. Most
of the peasant movements now became violent, with the peasants taking up arms,
whereas their earlier approach had generally been non-violent. Rural estates, and even
some provincial capitals, were threatened or effectively aacked. Dynamite, with which
peasants who had worked in the mines were well acquainted, was frequently used in
the struggle. Miners and workers occupied important leadership functions in these
movements.
The peasants goals at this stage went beyond mere changes in the working
conditions to include radical alterations in the political and social structure of the country.
The intransigence of the rural elite had apparently awakened the peasants to their
real interests. Workers from La Paz helped to organize the peasant protest movements
in the Altiplano. Several of the labor leaders who were active in this field were also
jailed. In 1947, movements in various parts of the country were repressed by large-scale
army intervention, and air force planes bombed peasant concentrations. A special rural
police corps was created, and in parts of the country civil militias were formed. Over
two hundred peasant leaders were confined in a concentration camp (colonia fiscal)
created in Ichilo, one of the isolated tropical areas of the country. This agrarian revolt,
which involved several thousand soldiers and many thousands of peasants, was finally
crushed by the end of 1947. The landlords, several of whom had fled to the towns,
returned to their estates.
In the meantime, the urban middle class became increasingly dissatisfied with the
traditional oligarchical control based on landed and mining interests. They initiated a
number of political movements, which culminated in a revolution under the leadership of
Paz Estenssoros MNR (National Revolutionary Movement) with the widespread support
of the urban and mining proletariat and the organized peasants. On 9th of April 1952, the
army and other defenders of the conservative government who had tried to prevent the
electoral victory of the MNR were defeated by a short, bloody revolutionary movement,
directed by the MNR in La Paz and other towns. The power of the landholding elite,
which depended on army support, came to an end.
In the power vacuum created in the rural areas by the disappearance of the forces,
which traditionally supported the landowners, new power relations took shape. Peasant
syndicates were organized all over Bolivia, virtually taking over local government
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functions. New leaders were elected in massive peasant concentrations or community

meetings. The newly formed Ministry of Peasant Affairs and leaders of the MNR
directed this drive. One of the strongest centers of organization of this movement was
Ucurea, in Cochabamba, where the movement grew rapidly when rumors circulated
that conservative forces were trying to regain control. Many haciendas were invaded,
and buildings burned down.
The movement pressured the government to take radical land reform measures.
Partly as a reaction to the growing violence of the movement in Cochabamba, President
Paz Estenssoro appointed a commission to study this question in January 1953, and
on 2 August 1953, the Bolivian agrarian reform was officially launched by presidential
decree in a public ceremony in Ucurea aended by thousands of peasants. One of the
chief functions of the peasant syndicates, in newly formed federations in all departments
and united at the national level in the National Confederation of Peasant Workers of
Bolivia (CNTCB), was to petition for land for members under the new land reform
program. An armed peasant militia was created to support the government and the
peasants against counter-revolutionary violence. Many landlords fled their estates, and
the de facto distribution of hacienda lands by the organized peasants oen took place
well in advance of the slower legal proceedings.
The Bolivian land reform was partly inspired by the Mexican agrarian reform.
As in the laer, the Bolivian reform affirmed the nations original ownership of its
natural resources, and established the right of landless peasants to ownership, and
Indian communities to restitution, of land through the expropriation of haciendas. The
principal achievement, however, which profoundly affected the Bolivian social and
political structure, was the abolition of the colono system, whereby the peasants were
freed from their forced labor obligations to the landowners.
Aer the mid-1950s, the rate of implementation of land reforms declined. Benefits
for the peasantry were largely neutralized because land property was mostly privatized,
and the market remained under control of rural elites. The reforms, however, were
effective enough to prevent the possibility of peasantry being sucked in any major
revolutionary movement in the future in a significant way.

Mexico
One of the first and most important peasant movements for land reform was the rebellion
headed by a Tlahuican Indian villager, Emiliano Zapata, between 1910 and 1919 in the
Mexican state of Morelos. Large sugar plantations with huge areas of fertile land had
seen the peasants thrown to marginal lands with barely a scope of subsistence. The
collective reaction of these communities came in the form of the revolution led by Zapata.
Its one of the major demands was redistribution of excess or illegally acquired land
among the peasants. This process began as a collaboration between village commiees
from Zapatas village and others, for the legal recovery of lands that had been usurped.
Before going for the revolution, they tried to sele it down with the legal procedure
itself, but the effort went in vein as the judges themselves were landlords. It was aer
exploring this legal option that the cause was taken to the arena of mass movement that
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started with bringing down the fences that had been put up illegally by the hacienda.
Landlords and paramilitary reacted violently to this land-invasion, causing the conflict
to escalate further. The peasant groups fought with government troops using guerrilla
tactics. They simultaneously worked on the land and defended it too. Records of land
ownership were purposely destroyed. Most of the lands of the State of Morelos, 53
haciendas, farms and ranches were returned to the peasants, which explains the strong
local-level support received by Zapatas troops.
The rebel groups were not organized in a single army, but in dispersed groups,
ready to be called upon at any moment. Zapata and his collaborators recognized that a
positive statement clarifying to the world what the peasant movement really stood for
was a necessary as a defense against accusations of banditry. The agenda and program
of the peasant revolution thus was laid out in the document, famously known as Plan
de Ayala. The final text of the document was signed in Villa de Ayala on 22 November
1911, and was ratified by all the peasant generals in the guerrilla mountain camp of
Ayoxustla.
The Plan de Ayala proclaimed that the people should take immediate possession
of the lands they had illegally been deprived of, and for which they could show title.
Those with difficulty proving their title could receive lands from the expropriation of
one third of the hacienda lands aer indemnification of the landlords. Small properties
were respected by the Zapatistas. In addition to the distribution of land, a credit program
was initiated for the peasants in 1915 and 1916.
The impact of the movement and its agenda on the official policymaking was
quick in real time. To appease the peasant armies that had sprung up in various parts
of Mexico, certain elements of the Plan de Ayala regarding the restitution of communal
lands (ejidos) to peasants, were included in Article 27 of the 1917 Mexican Constitution
in a Constituent Assembly at Aguascalientes. However, the various federal governments
that came to power aer the revolution did not honor the promise of effective land
redistribution. Some of the distributed ejidos were later taken back by government
troops. The movement began to suffer setbacks aer 1917 because of the severe measures
undertaken by government troops. Whole villages were eliminated in order to cut off
support for the movement. On April 10, 1919 an infiltrator, an officer from the army,
treacherously assassinated Zapata. During the following two decades the legal provisions
for land reform were implemented only in those areas where peasants created militant
organizations on their own.
Land reforms since gained an instrumental value to effect peasant mobilization for
the benefits of the seat of political power, the state. By the mid-1930s, the government of
the reformist general Lazaro Cardenas was relying heavily on the peasant organizations
for defense against military coups staged by conservative forces opposed to his moderate,
but firmly reform-oriented, policies. The agrarian reform program had an especially
strong impact during his government (1934.40), when almost 18 million hectares of
land (many irrigated) were distributed among 770,000 peasants. Because of the oen
violent opposition to the distribution, peasant organizations were strengthened by the
government, which provided them with weapons for self-defense. This government
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also took a strong stand regarding the countrys natural resources, such as oil, and it
nationalized foreign oil interests, including those belonging to Standard Oil and Royal
Dutch Shell. However, this was the period that saw co-option of peasant organizations
and labor unions in the institutions and processes of the state. Peasant organizations
and labor unions were brought together in the Confederacon Nacional Campesina
(the National Peasant Federation) and the Confederacon de Trabajadores de Mexico
(the Mexican Workers Federation) respectively, both of which were integrated into the
official national political party and which, under different names, remain in power to
this day.
And with it, the period of intense land reform ended in 1940, and the spirit of
mobilization gradually disappeared thereaer. Political power came under the control
of sections of the middle class, which were not interested in pursuing the vigorous
program of social change and reform. The official peasant organization put up only verbal
opposition to this trend. Various observers have noted that, in response, discontent and
unrest among the peasantry increased, and many peasants turned to non-official channels
and organizations. In 1958, an independent peasant organization led by Jacinto Lopez,
the Union General de Obrerosy Campesinos de Mexico (UGOCM), gained sufficient
strength to stage massive demonstrations and symbolic land occupations, particularly
those possessed by large landholders in circumvention of the law. Occupations took place
mainly in the Pacific-northern states of Mexico, where the government had encouraged
the cultivation of cash crops on relatively large commercial farms on newly irrigated
lands. These were the same lands claimed by the landless peasants under the land
reform legislation. Nevertheless, the reform process has stagnated and general unrest
at times leading to acute turmoil has continued in Mexico to this day, as illustrated by
the Zapatista movement in Chiapas.

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4
Womens Right to Land:
A Neglected Issue

omen represent over 50 percent of the worlds population and provide 60-80
percent of the worlds agricultural labor, yet some research indicates they own
less than 5 percent of the worlds land. There has also been significant increase in
the percentage of female-headed households (FHH) in recent years. Among the main
causes are male migration, the deaths of males in civil conflicts and wars, unpartnered
adolescent fertility and family disruption. Development initiatives have oen tried to
direct resources and services to FHHs on the assumption that they were poorer than
households headed by men, and less able to improve their situation without special
help. There seems to be lile dispute over the fact that FHHs are usually disadvantaged
in terms of access to land, livestock, other assets, credit, education, health care and
extension services. For instance, in Zimbabwe, female-headed households have 30-50%
smaller landholdings than male-headed households. There are similar findings on
Malawi and Namibia.
Women work two-thirds of Africas working hours, and produce 70 per cent of
its food, yet earn only 10 per cent of its income, and own less than 1 per
cent of its property. They work three hours a day longer than the average
British woman does on professional and domestic work combined. African womens
health is particularly poor. These statistics indicate that women in third worl countries
oen perform two kinds of unpaid labor. They work out on the fields and also rear
children and fulfill household duties. This dual burden coupled with no access to
land and a lack of basic resources results in severe impoverishment, and at a rate and
intensity far greater than that of men.
A report by the Rural Development Institute demonstrates the importance of
womens right to land.22

22

Assets and Income in the hands of women results in higher caloric intake and
beer nutrition for the household than when in the hands of men.
Improving womens land rights makes a powerful contribution to household food
security.

Rural Development Institute hp://www.rdiland.org/OURWORK/OurWork_WomenLand.html

112

Womens property rights increase womens status and bargaining power within the
household and community.
Secure land rights provide women with greater incentives to adopt sustainable
farming practices and invest in their land. More than 80 percent of farmers in
Africa are women, yet women in most African countries do not have secure rights
to the land they farm.
Providing women with secure rights to land that they can farm has the potential
to mitigate the impact of HIV/AIDS on food security and reduce high-risk
behaviors.

When women have access and secure rights to land, they are beer able to improve
the lives of their families and themselves.
Unfortunately, women in many poor countries do not have access to land or lack
secure property rights to the land they do possess. This dearth makes women even
more vulnerable to poverty. Land rights confer direct economic benefits as a source
of income, status, nutrition, and collateral for credit. Access to agricultural land can
mean higher household calories and consumption. However, women may not fully
participate in these benefits as members of a household if they do not share formal
rights to land. The centrality of women in struggles for land reform (such as in Nepal
and South Africa) has shown that gender needs to be an integral component of land
rights movements.

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5
Conclusion

ncreasingly today, we hear people remark, the world is geing smaller. The advent
of globalization has met with mixed responses across the world. They range from
praise for interconnectivity and exchange between people to alarm and contempt towards
environmental deterioration and rising inequality. Together, these are the contradictory
and ambiguous results of globalization currently unfolding throughout the world. These
commonalities, which exist between countries in our contemporary moment, are precisely
what allow us to draw a variety of positive lessons from the social and political history
of one fundamental human necessity - land. For it is land that lies at the center of all
the questions on economic, trade and environmental policy plaguing governments,
lawmakers, activists, and most importantly, ordinary citizens today.
When political elites and World Bank officials implement seemingly innocuous,
top-down poverty alleviation schemes asking how do we make globalization work
for all? they fail to see the most basic underlying causes of poverty and destitution in
much of the world. In opposition to this institutional ignorance, we witness a variety
of peoples movements emerging from below composed of the landless rural and urban
working poor, struggling to survive and at times, taking things into their own hands and
voicing their demands through mobilizations, both violent and peaceful. The examples
in this document locate these moments of public discontent and pressure exerted on
the state to address the need for land rights. In order to reassert the importance of
land reform to current questions on global socio-economic structures, we retrace the
key components of our arguments.
1.

2.

We have mapped the historical trajectories of several countries and asked a basic,
but critical question Why land?
Land sustains and fulfills fundamental human needs, from food to shelter. The
inability to own land debilitates the tiller/cultivators ability to reap the benefits of
his/her labor and generate income. A cycle of asset poverty prevents consumption
and mobility and therefore, exacerbates economic and political dependency.
The introduction substantiated the first question with evidence on the destructive
and self-perpetuating consequences of inequitable land distribution. Wealthy elites,
who own the best lands, control and expand agricultural production for export,
continually displacing the poor to ever more marginal areas for farming. The poor
are forced to fell forests located on poor soils, to farm thin, easily eroded soils on
steep slopes, and to try to eke out a living on desert margins and rainforest. As
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3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

23

they fall deeper into poverty they are oen accused of contributing to environmental
degradation, and worse are treated as criminals on the charges of encroaching on
what has come to be defined as public property.
The inability to own land in rural areas is closely linked to urban poverty. The
landless poor must abandon the countryside in massive numbers and migrate to
cities where only a lucky few make a living wage, while the majorities languish
in slums and shantytowns.
Arguably, these dire consequences reaffirm the need to redistribute land through
comprehensive agrarian reform. This is a basic prerequisite for the kind of inclusive,
broad-based development that would allow nations to provide all of their citizens
with a decent standard of living and make possible more ecologically sustainable
management of natural resources. Compelling empirical evidence strengthens
arguments for broad and effective land redistribution. For instance, as stated
earlier, in India the redistribution of only 5 percent of farmland combined with
beer access to livelihood resources could reduce poverty levels by as much as 30
percent.
Sure enough, we are not saying that there should no diversification away from
agricultural production for those dependent on land. On the contrary, a proper
economic transformation must imply opening up of new cultivation activities for a
land dependent population. In fact, one may even argue that the whole successful
resolution of the agrarian question means that dependence on agriculture for
livelihood as percent of GDP and workforce becomes smaller.
However, this must not be a forced transfer of people from agriculture to socalled development. To avoid this, redistribution of land becomes a pre-requisite
for economic growth and development.
It must be emphasized that the models of economic transformation in developing
countries will be necessarily different from the models of Western capitalism. This
is largely because the historical conditions and the overall global conjuncture are
very different from what those countries confronted when they embarked upon
economic growth. It is extremely important to realize that one obvious consequence
is that the pace of movement out of agriculture will be necessarily much slower.
This obviously implies that instead of aping contemporary models of corporate
capitalism, which is what is being done by governments of developing countries, we
need to find our own appropriate models which would ensure decent livelihoods to
masses in rural areas. For reasons of space, we cannot elaborate on this here.23
In addition, as the cases in this monograph showed, multiple actors and interests
push for; partially support or all together prevent or block land reform. The
economic and political elite of a country, external agencies such as the World
Bank and the IMF, citizens initiatives and organizations, and NGOs influence land
policies. Keeping in mind the contestations and conflicts between these actors, we
then asked how does land reform happen?
Please see Editors introduction in Praveen K. Jha, Land Reforms in India: Issues of equity in
rural Madhya Pradesh Volume 7. Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2002.

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9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

Land reform legislations and efforts at implementation have invariably derived

from the force of peasant mobilization; it is the character of the peasant movement
that shapes the agenda of reforms. Through political organizations, coalitions and
alliances land reform demands have been pushed to the forefront of social justice
movements and national policies.
The presence and pressure of multiple interests can break or make changes in land
policy. In democratic countries, it was seen that governments paid lip service to
the recommendations of NGOs while pushing through land legislation favorable
to the landed and corporate interests. In other cases, such as Nepal, we observed
small but effective initiatives such as the CSRC, a movement where the social and
economic roles have been fundamentally altered and formerly subjugated people
are now empowered. However, to replicate this experience within Nepal and the
world requires sweeping changes in larger economic policy and intense pressure
on state mechanisms.
The pressures of external agencies such as the World Bank on the agricultural
policies of postcolonial nations also need to be read critically. As the case of South
Africa betrays, it is clear that conditional policies intending to integrate countries
into global markets and trade resemble a double sided-knife. On the one hand, the
implementation of market-led land reforms has deepened poverty and inequality
internally and on the other side, multilateral loans have buried South Africa in a
cycle of debt.
Another important lesson to be learnt from country experiences (such as China,
and Vietnam) is that cultivator has to be the base of any agricultural enterprise,
and policies should be targeted at enforcing her/his positioning as a primary agent
of agrarian economy. State-enforced collectivization may oen run into difficulties
because of the loss of incentives on the part of the peasantry. It failed to take
cognizance of the character of land as a living unit rather than a production unit.
Any effort at land reforms, therefore, should follow a boom-up approach, at least
in policy formulation and implementation design at various stages.
The experience of countries such as Japan proves beyond doubt the economic
viability of small farms, indicating that economies of scale are not an issue in
agriculture. Wherever land reforms succeeded in redistributing a significant
proportion of quality land to a majority of the rural poor, and when the power of
rural elites to distort and capture policies was broken, the results have invariably
been real, measurable poverty reduction and improvement in human welfare.
Therefore, developments primary purpose needs to shi from large industrial farms
focused on profits to small farmers with secure tenure, long-term productivity of
their soils and conservation of functional biodiversity.
An unambiguous political direction combined with an elaborate structural
intervention results in significant victories for land rights. Operation Barga, in West
Bengal in India, is a clear example of this. Here administrative officers recorded
the rights of tenants while party workers from the state government supported
the tenants in mobilizing and claiming their right to land. Clearly, the lesson is
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that peasant mobilizations can influence and transform the economic regime when
supported by broader networks and mechanisms.
16. Womens right to land is an issue largely ignored by policymakers and organizations.
Women sustain rural households through unpaid labor within and outside the
home, yet in most third world countries, they are far more impoverished than
men. The lack of land and the inability to draw on its related resources prevents
women from breaking the cycle of poverty. The enormous benefits of winning land
rights for women are shown in improved family structures, beer nutrition and
rising incomes in rural households.
17. The gap between policymaking and implementation continues to debilitate
possibilities of effective land reform. Thus, successful transformation of an
inequitous agrarian structure warrants not only a pro-active state whose policy
orientation derives from the needs and welfare of the masses, but also a peasantry
which is not only conscious of its needs and interests, but is ready to seek them
pro-actively. Mobilizations and movements have the power to impact political
processes, which ultimately lead to policy transformation.
Clearly, what is at stake is model of development that is inclusive, rather than
exclusive. The varied examples here prove land as a fundamental basis for citizenship.
Internationally, strong social justice movements have been the impetus and motivation
behind changes of overarching economic policies, and have inevitably encountered
resistance from those in power. Both the state and international agencies have to come
to terms with the fact that their policies will fail to survive if they continue to benefit
the few at the expense of the majority. To make international economic policies and civil
society work for all, new paradigms that include all, need to be developed. The voices
of citizens from across the globe show that alternatives to prevailing policies exist and
can be created. It is this shared global experience that has, hopefully, revealed to us a
variety of possibilities and lessons for the future of land reform.

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