May 22, 2006	Monday	Rabi-us-Sani 23, 1427

IT is reassuring that the country’s top brass is beginning to accept behind closed doors that the poverty “issue had not been effectively tackled over the past six years.”

The Planning Commission is contemplating measures to ensure better income distribution and improved employment generation. Budget planners are reportedly urging the “government to offer increased wages and distribute land among deserving people from the next financial year to alleviate poverty.”

It should be encouraging that the government will now be contemplating land distribution and that the land reforms terminology is catching on even amongst some of the wealthy elite. Important question, however, is what land distribution means to the government, what it means to some “experts” who too are proposing land reforms, and what land reform actually is to make a substantive dent in poverty and initiate inclusive development.

For, the danger is that a minimalist approach of land distribution like the one undertaken in the 1980s and in the 1990s will feed more into government rhetoric than into national economic development. And, it is rhetoric that we have to be wary of as nothing can be more dangerous than false claims about poverty reduction based on policy inputs rather than actual poverty outcomes.

The “experts” at a recent UNDP/Ministry of Finance workshop who proposed initiation of land reforms by distributing 2.7 million acres of state-owned land fell short of stipulating the outcome of this action in terms of poverty reduction and the follow-up actions required.

Impact assessment on this score first requires determination of poverty line, the percentage of population below or at it, and the poverty gap. All policy-makers feel inhibited in determining the poverty line and then poverty levels on the basis of it. They have taken the easiest route of caloric intake and keep claiming 6.7 per cent poverty reduction on the basis of this criterion which is not a valid indicator of poverty.

So, policy proposals should determine actual impact on poverty reduction as it is supposed to be measured. Otherwise, they will smack of shielding the status quo behind development economics jargon to again feed the rhetoric rather than the change sought for the betterment of all. And, real change requires real land reform and not a mere smokescreen.

For, in essence, land reform is not just land distribution to merely “alleviate poverty.” Rather, it is a fundamental policy measure to start an inclusive development process that would eventually get all into the mainstream with poverty either eradicated or reduced to a bare minimum.

A related goal is also to restructure socio-economic power networks whose attitudes and outlook would otherwise continue to fuel development of self at the expense of all others.

That is, if attempts to reduce poverty through some land distribution are outweighed by wealthy elite outlook of personal wealth maximization, then all prima facie efforts at development will continue to be offset by elite attitudes that have thus far only fostered underdevelopment of the multitude.

Development requires attitudinal change first and foremost for the development of all and not just a few. It is this single most important rigidity in attitudes that land reforms should render a telling blow to thus initiating what can be called equitous socio-economic development.

However, the only model that people think of is communist China’s land reforms. Those who are apprehensive need to then study the Japanese, Taiwanese, and South Korean land reforms too where “the pyramid was inverted” before an inclusive development process was cranked. And, if East Asia is not interesting enough, let us take a look at the land reforms initiated by none other than President Abraham Lincoln of the USA through the well known Homestead Act of 1862 when Westward expansion was taking place.

Adult Americans were allowed to claim up to 160 acres of government land but the land could not be sold to speculators or used as debt collateral. The Act guarded against manipulation by the interests of the rich.

An agrarian middle class base thus developed in the US which would later impact not just the economy but democratization of the nation. While government land was being given in an expanding country, the idea was not to just seek poverty alleviation. For, the Homestead Act served as a catalyst in throwing up a vibrant middle class. At the same time, slavery was being abolished and the day of the plantation based on slaves’ surplus extraction was declared over.

Huge attitudinal changes were in the offing that eventually resulted in widespread ownership even of corporate stocks that are owned by a large segment of the American population. The US democracy that the Westophilial minds are so impressed by was also promoted by land reforms.

And, Venezuela’s Chavez has taken a leaf out of Lincoln’s land reforms. Chavez’s 2001 Law on Land and Agricultural Development seeks to set limits on the size of land-holdings, tax unused agricultural property, redistribute unused government land, and expropriate uncultivated land from large, private estates for the purpose of redistribution. Chavez’s next phase of land reforms will be extended to private latifundios, which are large, privately owned estates of more than 5000 hectares.

By 2005, they had distributed 2.2 million hectares of state land to more than 130,000 peasant families and cooperatives in a country only about one-sixth as populous as Pakistan is. For populous Pakistan, lot more state land than has been proposed will require distribution to reach out to a sizeable segment.

Also, Chavez is making a definite attempt to clip anti-developmental attitudes by taxing unused land, expropriating uncultivated private land, and making his second phase of land reform known, that is, its extension to private latifundios.

Noteworthy point is that Chavez is not merely resting on his country’s oil resource. Rather, even Venezuela is seeking development through land reforms by engaging the smallest peasant family in the development process.

It has been empirically established in the development economics literature that small farms are more efficient than large farms in third world countries. Large farms in third world countries are inefficient because the large farm owners are more interested in enhancing their social influence and political clout than in maximizing wealth for the nation through efficient cultivation of their large farms.

They arrange cultivation to the extent they need for personal material comfort and the remaining portion remains un- or under-utilized as their time and space is taken up in jockeying for political positions. However, title to property is what they are interested in as it gives them the clout they need in social and political arenas.

This is underutilization of large farm owners’ capacity and capability which is why the Japanese government had compelled them to either till the land themselves or give it to the tiller and free their own time and space for commercial and industrial application which option they took. So, “land-to-the-tiller” is no “radical cry” but a crucial principle that underpinned Japanese development effort which all observe with awe and admiration.

So, Bhutto’s land reform idea cannot be junked just because it was poorly implemented. We can, at best, say that this was a good idea but implemented poorly instead of calling a good idea bad merely because of its unacceptable implementation.

And, when we look for “modern” solutions, we must remember that in development, “modern” is what is appropriate for addressing the issues of underdevelopment given the ground reality in a third world country. So, the USA, China, Japan, Venezuela all had their own variants of land reforms.

What was common, however, was an emphasis on country-specific land reforms that would crank the wheel of socio-economic development through structural and attitudinal change. That is, a land reform in substance and not in mere form to get by politically to another election and past it riding the wave of jargon that fuels rhetoric more than inclusive development.