I HAVE placed land policy at the heart of the structural reform agenda that Islamabad must pursue in order to bring about economic, political and social changes that will be durable and last way into the future. I should emphasise that when I speak of land policy it is not only with reference to rural land but all land, no matter where it is located and for what it is used.

The traditional way of viewing land policy is in terms of the ownership of rural land, in particular land under cultivation. However, this is a limited view which does not touch upon the contribution land makes to development — not only economic development and growth but also with respect to social and political progress. A policy that aims to change the nature of the relationship must encompass not only privately held land in the rural areas but also government-owned land and urban land. Government owns land in both rural and urban areas. The military is a large landlord in several major cities of the country.

Let me first deal with public land — land that the government owns and sometimes also operates. The history of government ownership of land is a long one; it goes back to several centuries. The various invaders who arrived over the last 1,000 years in the areas that now constitute Pakistan and settled and governed for long periods of time became owners of land. Since the population density was low in these areas, the governments established by the conquerors tended to claim for themselves all the land not demonstrably owned by individuals or communities.

It was in this way that the Mughals, the Sikhs and, finally, the British established their claim on large tracts of land. Each of these administrations extended land grants to their supporters and sympathisers to expand their constituencies. The discretion for granting land to individuals was entirely that of the administration — the royal courts in the case of the Mughals and the Sikhs and the provincial authorities in the case of the British Raj.

The precedence set by the British was followed by the administrations that held office in Pakistan. While some government-owned land was used for settling the refugees who arrived from India in 1947 and some of it was given away to interested farmers following the implementation of such “land colonisation” schemes as the one implemented by the Thal Development Authority in the 1950s and 1960s, most allocations were done in ad hoc ways. The military got actively involved in this area. It has granted large tracts of land — sometimes as much as 250 acres per recipient — to the retiring or retired officers in order to reward them for their services to the state.

This policy needs to be changed in favour of a more regulated and transparent system of allocation. When land becomes available for disposal, it should be auctioned and not allotted. Proceeds from auctions can be used to finance various government programmes including providing ex-servicemen with incomes to augment their pensions. Land grants on an ad hoc basis create perverse incentives and introduce serious distortions into the system of compensation for government employees, including military personnel.

An auction-based policy should be adopted for both rural and urban lands. For the last several years the military is engaged in developing housing schemes in some of the large cities where developed land is allotted to servicemen on concessionary terms. This is bad economics and bad politics. All the land that is developed should be auctioned and proceeds from these can be used for various military welfare schemes.

Urban land is the second type of land that should be included in a wide ranging and all-encompassing land policy. Very few developing countries have modernised their regulatory policies with respect to urban land use. In several large cities, height regulations are strictly enforced which result in less than optimum use of land in the more congested parts. Lahore is a good example of a city in which land use is governed by antiquated laws.

Most of Pakistan’s large cities are “flat” with few high-rise buildings. This becomes apparent when you come in to land at Lahore’s airport. The city now stretches over a large area with very few buildings more than three or four storeys high. This form of city development imposes all kinds of costs on the economy: it creates demands for extensive rather than intensive infrastructure. Roads have to be built, water pipes and sewerage systems have to be laid, electric power lines have to be erected to cover a large area. Mass transit has to be provided to bring in people who live in places distant from their place of work.

Allowing a city to continue to expand creates long distance traffic which in turn results in air pollution. Lahore is now one of the most polluted cities in the world; a dense fog hangs over the city in winter months disrupting air traffic.

However, the types of investments that must be made to make cities functional are seldom undertaken with the result that urban services are poorly provided. That creates costs for the economy and breeds resentment among the people. The best way is to fully involve the affected people. Not only should land use be carefully defined including matters such as the separation of residential and commercial land, heights of buildings, preservation of historical areas and buildings, location of industries, the people’s representatives must also develop tax and resource generation policies for funding the needed investments.

As far as rural areas are concerned, developing countries have gained a lot of experience in dealing with inequalities in the distribution of land. Initially, the favoured approach was the establishment of ceilings on land ownership, expropriation of land above the prescribed ceiling, payment of very little compensation to those who lost land, and distribution of acquired land to landless peasants. This approach works only if the government is in the hands of those who cannot be influenced by the landed aristocracy. This condition was not met in Pakistan when attempts were made to deal with the problem of inequality in land ownership and solve it by acquiring land and redistributing it.

This approach was followed in Pakistan on three occasions — in 1959 by the government of President Ayub Khan and in 1974 and 1977 by the administration of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. In the three efforts, the state decided to expropriate land beyond a certain ceiling, paying minimal compensation to the large owners whose land was to be acquired. Given the political clout possessed by the owners who would be affected, it was inevitable that the programme of expropriation would come with a number of built-in loopholes.

These allowed the owners to keep much larger holdings than permitted by the laws that were enacted as a part of the reform effort. The programmes were also corrupted during the implementation stage which was also inevitable. When legal systems are weak and large landlords have influence over bureaucracies assigned the task of implementing reform programmes, the latter can be easily subverted. This happened in Pakistan.

In retrospect, it appears that General Ayub Khan was much serious about redistributing land in order to reduce inequalities in its ownership. His effort was more genuine than the two attempts made by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. When Ayub Khan launched his programme, he was still not beholden to the landed aristocracy. That happened later when Nawab Amir Muhammad Khan of Kalabagh was able to expand his political influence at the expense of the more moderate elements in the constituency that supported the military president.

Kalabagh brought the landed aristocracy back to the centre stage of Pakistani economics and politics. Large landlords had been sidelined for a while because of their opposition, if not total hostility, to the idea of Pakistan. Once in power again, they were able to stall all efforts to undertake land reforms whereas across the border in India, the Congress party had much greater success. It was more under the influence of urban economic interests, and, consequently, was able to move forward with a fairly draconian land redistribution policy. That move helped India to develop a democratic system of governance.

Expropriation is expensive if it comes with compensation determined at market prices for the land acquired. It is affordable, if compensation covers only a fraction of the market value of land. But such a policy is politically difficult to implement. This was the way Ayub Khan’s government tried to redistribute land beyond the prescribed ceiling on landholding. Long term bonds were issued that had little value.

As already indicated, improving the legal structure and administrative arrangements would help to adopt programmes that aim to reduce the economic and political presence of large landholders in the countryside. Also the full productivity benefits of land reform cannot be realised without complementary inputs and training.

This is one of the many conclusions reached by the World Bank in the World Development Report 2006. The bank points out that putting land in the hands of inexperienced farmers without the needed support often led to high rates of desertion. “More generally, a broader rural development strategy is required to complement land reform because rural households get their livelihoods from several different sources. This has implications for the design of land reform (for example, determining viable farm size) and highlights the importance of investments that can facilitate off-farm employment such as education”.

If the type of land reforms attempted in Pakistan in the past did not achieve the required results, if the experiences of a number of other countries suggest that a wide-ranging rural development programme must accompany any effort to redistribute land, then what public policy options are available to Pakistan? Brazil and South Africa have tried with some success to use what is described as “market based” land reforms. Large farmers are encouraged but not forced to reduce the size of their holdings. However, small owners or landless peasants are encouraged to augment their holdings or buy land for themselves by the provision of capital on easy terms for making land purchases. This approach helps to develop active land markets. Once they become operational, large landlords may be inclined to dispose off land they consider as exceeding their needs. This is inevitably a slow process and takes a long time to reduce inequalities in land distribution.

Perhaps a better approach is to use markets to redistribute land along with the imposition of ceilings on family holdings. Once the ceiling has been prescribed the state should provide a period for making adjustment, using the market to dispose of the land beyond the established limit. The period of adjustment could last for some five to 10 years. If small holders wish to buy the land that large owners are obliged to sell, the state could provide them with the needed financial resources on concessionary terms.

Redistribution of land is not the only way to improve wealth and income equality in the countryside. Providing security of tenure to those who rent land or are sharecroppers, giving them access to capital for making improvements in the land they cultivate, and allowing them a larger share in the output are some of the ways of helping this segment of the population.

In these two articles, the one this week and the one published last week, I have touched upon some of the issues that should be kept in mind by the policymakers as they start to work on developing a long-postponed land policy. Political and economic imperatives demand that this task should not be postponed any longer.

THE United States and Iran are playing programmed roles in a minuet on nuclear weapons. The United States pushes the UN Security Council to warn Iran about the consequences of going nuclear. And Iran continues its march toward development of nuclear power, even as its president declares that “we don’t give a damn” about UN resolutions calling on Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment.

With the Russians and Chinese seemingly determined to block sanctions, our efforts at the United Nations promise to evolve slowly while Iran presses ahead with its plans. If we stay on the same path, we will be left with two choices: accept the reality of Iran’s nuclear weapons capability or take military action to set back its ambitions.

Either outcome could prove disastrous. If Iran succeeds, in all likelihood we will face a nuclear Middle East. The Saudis — fearing an emboldened Iran determined to coerce others and to promote Shia subversion in the Arabian Peninsula — will seek their own nuclear capability, and probably already have a deal with Pakistan to provide it should Iran pose this kind of threat. And don’t expect Egypt to be content with Saudi Arabia’s being the only Arab country with a nuclear “deterrent.”

As for those who think that the nuclear deterrent rules that governed relations between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War will also apply in a nuclear Middle East: Don’t be so confident. For one thing, the possible number of nuclear countries will drive up the potential for miscalculation.

But the alternative of using force to prevent or forestall the Iranians’ going nuclear does not look much better. To begin with, there are no simple or clean military options. Air operations alone might involve striking hundreds of targets, many in populated areas where there are significant air defence capabilities in the process of being upgraded by the Russians. The more casualties we inflict, the more we inflame the Islamic world.

Perhaps we could manage the response if the military campaign inflicted relatively few casualties and succeeded in setting back the Iranian nuclear programme. But such a rosy scenario assumes that Iran’s ability to retaliate is relatively limited. Even if we have the means to prevent the Iranian navy and air force from shutting down shipping into and out of the Persian Gulf, Iran has other options for turning any effort to take out its nuclear capability into a wider war.

The Iranians can foment far greater numbers of insurgent attacks against our forces in Iraq — literally trying to set the earth on fire under our feet. To cut off the support for such attacks we could be driven to act militarily across the border into Iran on the ground. Perhaps Iran would realize that an escalating conflict with the United States is too dangerous, but after underestimating the risks we encountered in Iraq, can we be so confident about what the Iranians might do?

If neither outcome that our current policy is likely to produce is acceptable, should we not look for another pathway? Of course, but the challenge remains one of changing the Iranian calculus. Iran must see that it either loses more than it gains by proceeding to move toward nuclear weapons or that it can gain more by giving up the effort. The problem with the current policy is that it threatens costs that either aren’t believable or are likely to pale in comparison with what the Iranians see themselves gaining with nuclear power.

But what if we could threaten collective sanctions that the Iranians would see as biting? What if those were combined with possible gains in terms

of a deal on nuclear energy, economic benefits and security understandings if the Iranians would give up the nuclear programme?

While one can argue that the Europeans were trying to negotiate something like this with the Iranians, they were never able to put together a package of credible sanctions and inducements, because the United States was not really a part of the effort. True, this country has coordinated with the British, French and Germans in the Bush second term. But a serious effort at raising the costs to the Iranians and offering possible gains has never been put together.

Why not now? Why not have the president go to his British, French and German counterparts and say: We will join you at the table with the Iranians, but first let us agree on an extensive set of meaningful — not marginal — economic and political sanctions that we will impose if the negotiations fail. Any such agreement would also need to entail an understanding of what would constitute failure in the talks and the trigger for the sanctions.

The Europeans have always wanted the Americans at the table. Agreeing on the sanctions in advance would be the price for getting us there. To be sure, the United States would focus as well on what could be provided to the Iranians, but the benefits have always been easier to agree on, particularly since meaningful sanctions will also impose a price on us. Real economic sanctions would not just bite Iran and its ability to generate revenue but also would undoubtedly drive up the price of oil. Our readiness to accept that risk at a time when high gasoline prices are becoming a domestic political issue would convey a very different signal about our seriousness to the Iranians — who presently don’t fear sanctions because they think they have the world over a barrel.

There is no guarantee such an approach will work with Iran. This Iranian government may simply be determined to have nuclear weapons. If that is the case, and if President Bush is determined to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons — as he has said — we would still be better off having tried a direct negotiating option before resorting to what inevitably will be a difficult, messy use of force once again. —Dawn/Washington Post Service

The writer was director for policy planning in the US state department under President George H.W. Bush and special Middle East coordinator under President Bill Clinton.

RELIGION, the ideologues’ panacea against disharmony, has failed to unite this 60-year-old nation; self-serving politicians have only worked to perpetuate the hold of a feudal mindset that insists on exercising a complete control over people’s minds; an army of serving and retired generals rolling in money has done more for itself than for the country.

Last but not the least, the bureaucracy has worked untiringly to maintain the status quo, with ad-hocism as the driving force of a polity in disarray. This is Pakistan in 2006, gearing up for a general election due next year that marks the country’s 60th year of independence.

For all practical purposes, we have time and again asserted our independence vis-a-vis establishing the rule of law. Constitutions were framed to be violated and changed beyond their original character; rulers, military and civilian, came and went, leaving the polity poorer, the people virtually more disenfranchised. The state of democracy in 2006 is no better than it was under Ayub Khan or Ziaul Haq, who, like Gen Musharraf, had reinvented the political wheel but could not steer the nation in a manner that would bring stability to the political system. The experiments crumbled after the autocrats were out of power.

Gen Yahya Khan, by comparison, was a different breed altogether. Efforts have been made recently to humanise him, posthumously, as having been a man with a heart and a mind, but it is all irrelevant. Some skeletons of the past are better kept locked away in the cupboards of time. The number of people who blame Yahya Khan or Z. A. Bhutto, depending on which side of the political fence one stands, for the breaking away of East Pakistan is nearly equal. Mr Bhutto’s legendary charisma, too, is a thing of the past, thanks largely to his heir Ms Benazir Bhutto’s two stints in power.

The politically nouveau riche coterie raised and matured by Gen Zia in the form of the Nawaz League, too, is quite a spent force, with the Chaudhries taking over the charge of the PML under military tutelage. The latter’s control over politics in Punjab is near total, with their satellites and allies being able to contain the religious right in the Frontier and Balochistan and managing the affairs in Sindh. What happens next hinges largely on how long President Musharraf remains in power, and you don’t need the White House or the CIA to tell you that. For now, the support for Gen Musharraf is stronger outside than inside Pakistan. But that’s one man who cannot be ousted from office by a popular vote. He is above all accountability, above all political haranguing, just as the general wished it to be. It is he who single-handedly and single-mindedly decides what dams need to be built, what public-sector enterprises are to be privatised; an India-Pakistan cricket match is to be telecast or not.

Holed up in his besieged palace in Kathmandu, King Gyanendra must envy the man in khakis next door. The trick is that Gen Musharraf has had a parliament in place for the last four years, which is keen on pleasing him and him alone, as long as the ruling party MPs keep getting their share of the power pie.

Where do we go from here? There has got to be some hope for the teeming millions out there, one day, of establishing the rule of law. That hope, unfortunately, cannot come from Benazir Bhutto and Mian Nawaz Sharif cozying up to each other in London as long as their respective parties remain in disarray, which suits their whimsical styles of leadership. What is needed is a reorganisation along democratic lines of the two mainstream political parties that lay a claim to commanding a popular vote bank. It is because the two leaders, and not the parties, are made to be seen as deliverers, that a fatigue has set in among the general public. Both the leaders have been discredited, to an extent, twice, in the public eye.

The two parties, by acting merely as rubberstamps of the not-so-immensely popular leaders, have alienated the people. In the aftermath of the 1999 coup, the PPP and the PML-N have had all the time they needed to reorganise themselves. But they have failed to respond to public aspirations and raise their voices over issues that confront the people who feel disenfranchised and thus irrelevant to a system in whose formation and working they have had little say. It may work personally for Benazir Bhutto or Mian Nawaz Sharif to come back in power; the people have little reason to wish them back in power, as matters stand today.

What’s in a name, one may ask, whether it is Gen Musharraf, Shaukat Aziz or the Chaudhris, the religious right and the MQM, or the PPP and the PML-N in power when none promises a break from a turbulent past.

Democracy cannot take root in a society that has all the trappings of a feudal stranglehold over its system. The revolting sardars of Balochistan must be biting their nails in desperation for falling out of favour with the civil-military establishment. Their more cunning, or politically savvy, cousins — the village chaudhris, the makhdooms and the waderas in Punjab and Sindh — are firmly in the saddle. The maliks in the tribal belt too have their power and influence.

Besides, the establishment has shown a remarkable ability to create neo-feudal groupings to support and further its own political agenda. One calls them neo-feudals because their leaders behave in a manner that matches the tactics of their traditional feudal counterparts. The aim to control the people’s minds is the mainstay of their politics. The continued popularity of ethnocentric, sectarian and religious parties in pockets around the country where feudalism may be in decline falls in that category.

In the 2007 general election nearly 100 million Pakistanis over the age of 18 will be eligible to vote. Even if increased urbanisation in recent years — now estimated at 35 per cent of the total population — is taken into account as representing a proactive, better educated and thus relatively better aware group of participants in the political process, it is the bulk of the 65 per cent of the remaining less privileged majority that needs to become involved for any meaningful change to take place. What we are seeing instead is a widening economic gap between the haves and have-nots, in both urban and rural areas, sustaining a myriad of political and pressure groups that will continue to exist on the periphery of mainstream politics.

If the trend continues, and there is no reason to suggest otherwise, the end result will be a further fragmentation of society along socio-economic, ethnic, religious and other divisive lines. The promise of holding free, fair and transparent elections alone will not arrest the decline seen in a political culture based on public accountability of leaders and political parties. There are structural changes that need to be made to narrow the gap between those ruling the roost now and those aspiring to come to power as genuine representatives of the people.

The process of transformation must be begun by the ruling party and its backers in the establishment if they mean well by the country. It is these political players who are best equipped with the tools to bring about a change in the political culture under the existing circumstances. If the ruling party can reorganise itself on a genuine democratic footing other mainstream parties will have no choice but to follow suit. Democratic process has to start from within a political party and then play itself out in the larger inter-party political arena.

More important, the ruling party is in a position to allow the return of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif from their exile abroad and even of the key ruling-coalition partner Altaf Hussain. The inclusiveness of the process will help lend credibility to the coming general election and sustain a political system based on democratic plurality rather than on the exclusion of principal political players opposed to the present civil-military ruling system.

Let everyone contest the polls without hindrance, to be held under a caretaker administration based on a broader political consensus among key parties. If we can implement this in the 60th year of our nationhood, the journey ahead may not be as turbulent as in the past.