Time for land reform

THE chapter on agriculture in the latest Economic Survey begins with a plea to “developing countries like Pakistan to get their acts together and benefit from the current situation by giving more serious attention to agriculture”.

The advice is especially relevant to Pakistan because “agriculture is still the single largest sector, contributing 21 per cent to GDP and employing 44 per cent of the workforce. More than two-thirds of Pakistan’s population lives in rural areas and their livelihood continues to revolve around agriculture and allied activities”.

This opening paragraph of the chapter takes note of poverty in Pakistan being largely a rural phenomenon; “and, therefore, development of agriculture will be a principal vehicle for alleviating rural poverty.” (And, of course, the global food crisis is offering Pakistan opportunities to get richer by exporting more food).

What is to be done about agriculture and for the well-being of the 44 per cent of the workforce and the two-thirds of the population? While asserting that “agriculture will continue to acquire the highest priority from the government”, the Survey merely advocates a shift towards yield enhancement and attention to farm needs. This analysis is characteristic of the policy various governments of Pakistan have followed, that is, to make agriculture more productive in the interest of the national economy. The interest of two-thirds of the population is not the focus of government thinking. It is assumed, despite evidence to the contrary, that if agriculture shows a good rate of growth the rural have-nots will automatically receive windfalls.

The most critical omission in official thinking was pointed out by a perceptive journalist in this daily: “The minister evaded the issue of land-holding structure in rural Pakistan that has been identified by economists and a report of the agricultural reform commission as the major hurdle to increasing agricultural productivity.”

It is not surprising therefore to find the volatility in agricultural growth (1.5 per cent to 6.5 per cent over six years) attributed to vagaries of nature, losses caused by pests and use of adulterated pesticides, and that no reference is made to the plight of small cultivators and landless tenants. For promotion of agriculture reliance is placed on the inputs formula in vogue since the 1960s. Steps will be taken to ensure greater and better utilisation of fertilisers, improved seeds, machines, plant protection, better irrigation, and disbursal of larger amounts of credit to farmers. Again, no mention is made of the millions of men and women who toil against heavy odds except for a reference to an initiative for “upgradation of socio-economic conditions of the fishermen’s community”.

There is need to seriously ponder the contribution to stagnation and reverses in agriculture made by the cultivators’ lack of ownership of the means of production. The fact is that small landowners, tenant-cultivators and the voiceless haris have been abandoned to adjust themselves to the vagaries of the market, deadlier than the vagaries of nature. Largely denied the guidance of the once efficient extension services, the under-privileged farmer is changing crop patterns, in panic, that produces results such as replacement of wheat cultivation with sugarcane, unions or tomatoes. It is time the impossibility of moving forward without raising the status of the cultivator was duly appreciated. That will lead to the urgency of land reform, which was high on the national agenda for decades till the Zia-created religious courts issued the incredible verdict that land reform is un-Islamic (because one of the regular judges of the Shariat Appellate Bench joined the two ulema-judges to produce a retrogressive decision by majority). The way peasants were subsequently forced to give up lands acquired under land reforms — by force in Pakhtunkhwa and by legal chicanery in Punjab and Sindh — is a matter of abiding shame for all conscious citizens of Pakistan.

Land reform was always advocated on two premises — one economic and the other social. The economic argument was that smaller owner-cultivated farms achieved higher productivity than large farms operated by absentee landlords. This view has been challenged by advocates of mechanised, capital-intensive farming on huge tracts, (including corporate farming). They are not concerned with the consequences of displacement of hundreds of thousands of tenants without any prospects of alternative employment (decent and gainful). However, one may concede that the economic grounds for land reform can be re-examined. But, nothing has happened to reduce the force of the social argument for land reform. A system of self-cultivated farms is required to break the suffocating rule of feudals who prefer dictatorship to democracy, obscurantism to ijtihad, and rule by force to supremacy of reason. Land reform is also necessary to pull a large body of citizens out of medieval bondage, help them realise themselves, and thus avoid the huge loss of human capital Pakistan incurs year after year by denying the people their basic right to land. The case for land reform is as strong as ever. The food crisis lends the matter greater urgency.

That something can be done to alleviate the misery of tillers of the soil short of an over-arching land reform cannot be denied. The many sound proposals in this area include a plan to abolish bonded labour in agriculture not only in Sindh but also in Punjab, the International Labour Organisation — supported move to settle homeless haris in new villages, settlement of cultivators’ claims on military farms in Okara and elsewhere, creation of education and skill-development facilities for hari/kisan children; unionisation of agricultural labour, et al. While such measures are welcome, they will only ease the rigours of the archaic land ownership pattern Pakistan has maintained at a terrible cost to the present and future generations. They cannot be a substitute for land reform.

Perhaps this is an appropriate time to plan land reform, not merely in terms of revision of land ownership pattern but also, and more essentially, in terms of land utilisation practices and social justice to a large mass of people. There may still be in the PPP some who could own the legacy of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Nawaz Sharif and Shahbaz Sharif also have been known to favour land reform. At least they did so a few years ago when they asked the World Bank to present the case for land reform before the members of the Punjab Assembly.

Critical appraisal of devolution

THE underlying theme of the so called devolution of power launched with such fanfare in 2001, was decentralisation of the administration down to the districts and empowering elected representatives.

But behind this facade of creating a new set of elected administrators, there was a more sinister motive — the weakening of the principle of provincial autonomy enshrined in the constitution.

The system is supervised by an elected head that is above accountability. All administrative powers are concentrated in an ‘elected’ nazim. But the system does not institute any supervisory control over his actions and decisions, violating the universally accepted principle of ‘authority with accountability’. To say that nazims report to the chief minister is preposterous and absurd. How can dozens of nazims, in Punjab for instance, report to the chief minister?

The whole philosophy behind this plan was to create an entrenched constituency which would play a role in the exercise to legitimise state institutions. This was short sighted and therefore, short lived as proved by the events that followed. The system has however damaged our administrative institutions further by giving the law and order functions to the nazim. Handling of law and order, in any civilised or semi-civilised society, is the principal function of the government which is exercised through a cadre of civil servants who are appointed through an impartial and merit-based system, and are trained and motivated to perform their duties in accordance with the law. How could a nazim, an elected person with known affiliations and prejudices, be expected to assume the responsibility of exercising control over law enforcement agencies?

And what has happened is most shocking; as ever, the teeming millions of this country remain silent spectators while their lives are being adversely impacted. There is no captain of the team in any district. Consider some appalling implications: complete mob rule in Lahore and Peshawar in the wake of the anti-cartoons agitations; collapse of the state administration in Hazara division of NWFP following the earthquake of October 2005; collapse of authority and order, mob rule and mayhem in Karachi on May 12, 2007; collapse of administrative authority in Karachi on April 09, 2008.

Who was present to handle the carnage when a former prime minister was killed? With scores of people being killed every week across the country in bomb blasts etc, it is clear that the system has deteriorated beyond repair.

The administration has simply abdicated its role and responsibility in combating not only acts of violence but also street crime. When there is no one to assume control, the result is anarchy. In Swat, the situation became so bad that the nazim fled and never returned to his “place of duty” for well over a year! So much for nazims taking responsibility for law and order!

The revenue administration is not delivering either. Such was the beauty of the old system that the district collector also happened to be district magistrate and that facilitated his handling of revenue matters and revenue cases which affect the future of 80 per cent of the people. In administering revenue laws, the district collector was aware that his decisions were enforceable because of the powers that he wielded under the law.

In an agrarian country the fate of millions of people depends on an accurate and updated maintenance of revenue records. Every year, thousands of disputes arise regarding claims over land ownership and with outdated revenue records, countless have been left in the lurch. If we consider the magnitude of the problem and the disappearance of the administrative and legal machinery to deal with revenue cases and consequential disaffection and frustration being caused to millions, we can understand the degree of public anger and how potentially risky the situation has become. Nazims cannot contribute to improving this situation. The poor citizens deserve better.

To compound the woes and suffering of the common man, the main law enforcement agency, that is the police, has been left virtually without any supervision. After the magisterial watchdog that operated for so long so successfully, vanished, the police have been let loose on the people. No wonder human rights abuses have sharply increased; rampant torture, extortions, custodial killings have become the order of the day.

In a country where more than half of the population is illiterate, where more than one third of the population lives below the poverty line, where access to justice is limited, there is a dire need for an effective district coordinator. There is no option except to revert to the old system of a district magistrate. After all, who demanded the abolition of the system of district magistrate? Was the regime empowered or had the consent of the people to introduce such structural changes in basic administrative institutions?

This was a provincial subject and this change amounted to usurping the rights of the provinces to formulate policies for their own areas. Was the man entrusted with this huge responsibility actually suitable for it in terms of his credentials, knowledge and experience? The fact is that we have sacrificed our time-tested systems at the altar of political expediency. We have destroyed the fabric of administration for mundane, petty objectives.

If the new government does not take stock of this grim scenario and does not revert to the old system, it would be fair to assume that the old dispensation continues. Then it is a folly to call it a ‘new government’. In which case, the unjust system, motivated by an evil intent, would perpetuate itself.

The writer is a former interior secretary.

Overzealous policing

THE difference between a police state and a well policed one is notoriously blurry and itself requires careful policing. It’s all too easy for the pursuit of the latter to edge, slowly and almost imperceptibly, into the creation of the former. But there are times when it’s worth remembering that there is actually a difference — and that a well-policed state has quite a lot of things going for it.

Another way of putting this would be to say that an ingrained wariness of a police state — laudable in most circumstances — can occasionally turn into a kneejerk neurosis which isn’t useful at all. A case in point might be the recent letter from the chairman of the Local Government Association, Sir Simon Milton, warning councils not to get overzealous in applying the powers they now have under anti-terrorist legislation in pursuit of minor misdemeanours.

The fact that Wyre Council in Lancashire had used hidden cameras to catch people letting their dogs foul the pavement and that other councils have used surveillance to tackle litterbugs was called in evidence, in some reports, to support the idea that a kind of mission-creep was taking place.

The powers had been brought in to deal with Al Qaeda cells in British suburbs but, before you knew it, flak-jacketed jobsworths would be conducting stealth raids on your recycling bins to make sure that you hadn’t mixed plastic with paper. The estimable director of Liberty, Shami Chak-rabarti, (no sarcasm intended) called for a change in the law to ensure that powers were aimed only “at serious crime”.

I really can’t see why myself, since relatively few of us are troubled by serious crime while trivial forms of anti-social behaviour are a daily nuisance. And there are several flaws in the argument that sees a technologically-supported dog-fouling fine as somehow falling into the same category as 42-day detention.

The first flaw is the implicit suggestion that allowing one’s dog to deposit coils of ordure on the public pavement is some kind of human right. It isn’t. The second flaw is the implication that it is somehow improper for councils to attempt to enforce these more trivial laws when they suddenly find they have the means available. It seems odd to fret so much about the civil liberties of people who have no concept of mutual civility themselves. Provided that real terrorists aren’t being left untroubled because council officials are too busy checking up on motorists misusing disabled parking stickers, I really can’t see the problem in them getting a bit cloak-and-dagger to catch the creeps.

And none of these cases should really be discussed in the same breath as 42-day detention — a change to the law which, because it is more abstract and likely to exert its injustice on very few us — is harder to present as a genuine danger. But that’s where the threat lies — not with the possibility that irresponsible dog owners might be inhibited from paving the streets with crap.

It’s time to revive a TV classic. Intriguing to see that the BBC are planning to screen film adaptations of stage plays by David Hare and Caryl Churchill — with Uma Thurman, pictured, no doubt drumming up plenty of attention for Hare’s My Zinc Bed by taking on a lead role.

One can only hope that it’s the beginning of a trend for one-off drama, which has been an endangered species in recent years. I doubt that the BBC has the title under copyright — and at a stroke it would annoy his rivals, restore a bit of lustre to his channel, and — who knows — possibly improve his audience figures too.

My Obamania has been in remission recently — the unbearable itchy inflammation caused by the later stages of the Democratic primaries having vanished almost overnight after Hillary’s withdrawal.

Barack Obama’s decision to go back on an early promise about campaign funding has left an odd kind of after-taste in the Kool-Aid recently, but I know I’m not in the clear because of the defensive reflex I felt when I saw a report on a new poll which showed that more than half of white voters agreed with the statement that Obama would be a risky choice.

This was conveyed as if it was a straightforwardly worrying finding for the Obama campaign, which seemed to me to miss the point. An election is very often a kind of gamble on unknown quantities, and the electorate doesn’t always play the odds in the same way. I would still bet that this is a year in which the punters want a bit more risk in their lives, not less.— © The Independent