SINDH National Front leader Mumtaz Bhutto, who is part of the landed class and was ruling Sindh during the 1972 land reforms, favours large land holdings on the pattern of the US and parts of Europe where land is given to a cultivator on a fixed rent basis, on lengthy lease. Once the agreement is in place, the landlord has no control over the land, and the crop belongs to the cultivator.

Mumtaz believes that in our context smaller land holdings are not viable “in view of mechanized farming”. The following are excerpts:

Q: Prime Minister Jamali said recently there would be no more land reforms. In the light of earlier land reforms, his assertion meant that the issue has been settled. But apparently he has re-opened the issue. What is your position?

A: I believe that whether it is land reform or any other reform, first the instrument or machinery of implementation has to be galvanized. Here land reform means taking the supervision away from the landowners and placing it into the hands of the bureaucracy, which is totally corrupt, incompetent, and no longer under the control of the government, or committed to the well-being of the country.

It is for this reason that the land reforms of Ayub Khan and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto did not work. A large number of landowners saved their land. Those that were surrendered have passed through many hands and 50 per cent fo them has become barren, as the bureaucrats could not replace the landlord. They could not care whether or not the cultivator was receiving proper supply of water, fertilizers and other inputs.

Also, the cultivator had no protection against crime. He himself became a victim of the bureaucracy and police. Many haris sold or just abandoned their lands. My family had surrendered 40,000 acres of land during the first land reforms. There used to be a railway line on our property to transport all the grain. Today, most of those lands are barren, and the railway line has disappeared. The bottom line is that first the government machinery should be made to carry out the obligations that a landlord does. If it happens, land reforms will certainly work.
 

Q: To your mind, what would constitute land reforms, just curtailment of land holdings, or something else as well?

A: Well, land reforms here means curtailment, but you can have land reforms as have been done in France, Germany, Spain and several other European countries, without the curtailment of land holdings, which, I think, is more effective and easy. The government should fix the rates at which the landlord should give the land to the cultivator on a long-term lease. Beyond that, the former should have no control whatsoever over the land and the crop of the latter. He should simply recover his rent as is the case of a house being given on rent. This is how it is done in certain European countries with very positive results.
 

Q: No peasant movement had demanded the land reforms that were carried out by Ayub and Bhutto. Was that a reason behind their ultimate failure?

A: There is no peasant movement even now. During the second of the two reforms you will find that all peasants were sitting at the doorsteps of the landlord, looking for protection against police, corruption of the irrigation engineers, shortage of water and non-availability of fertilizers and other inputs. It was the landlord who had to guarantee all this, and pay for it. Of course, he recovered it after the crop, but had the landlord been not there, who would have helped the hari out?
 

Q: There is a direct relationship between poverty and lack of land and education. Is it not a fit enough case in favour of land reforms?

A: That this is a lack of land is a misperception. Even today there are thousands and thousands of acres of land with the government. It is available to anybody who comes and applies for it. And this land has always been there since the British days. Cultivation of land is more difficult than plying donkey-carts or doing other manual labour. The point is that it is not simply the availability of land or transferring it to the landless; there are so many obstacles. First get rid of the land that has been lying with the government for so long.
 

Q: Land record in other countries is a public property but in Pakistan neither it is complete nor reliable. No reliable data of any kind is available on land ownership by size. Why?

A: This, again, is a failure of the government machinery. We have not been able to survey our land in the last 55 years. The land distribution here is also faulty. Certificates of ownership do not guarantee that there is such a land and also that land has not been granted to someone else before. Nawaz Sharif and others who distributed land created serious problems of this nature. It was all propaganda stuff. When those who were given the documents went to take possession, the land was either not available or had already been allotted to someone else.
 

Q: Do you think it is the size of the holding that is affecting productivity?

A: It’s the failure and corruption of the institutions as well as unrealistic holdings. We hear that in India they are revising earlier reforms and expanding the holdings. You can’t have mechanization on eight or ten acres. You will not be able to pay the cost. So the holdings have to be large, and cooperatives have to be encouraged. That is another failure; we have been reading about the cooperatives, but where are they? Where are the rules? Where is the law?. How do you start, where do you go?
 

Q: But in East Punjab, they have the holding limit of 17.5 acre. Yet they register better output.

A: They are expanding the holdings. It is also the question of existence of facilities. For example, there are about 15 lakh acres of land in the kutcha area of Sindh. These are dependent entirely on flood irrigation. For the last seven, eight years there has been no flood in the Indus because there is no water. It has all been stopped upstream. And this is prime rabi crop land which has become a wasteland.

Now in India they have started schemes in which the government installs tubewell and provides electricity to the cultivator on hundred rupees a month. Machinery, electricity and everything else is included. Barani land is prospering there. Over here, whatever tubewells were in existence, about 50 per cent of them are no more functioning today.
 

Q: We have not seen tenancy reforms in Pakistan. The tenants do not have proper rights. What do you say?

A: They should have lots of rights, and I am all for the system that exists in Europe and America where the land is leased out and the landlord has no other right except the rent. It works much better.
 

Q: But in Europe we don’t find the big landlords who exist in our society.

A: That’s not correct. There they have millions of acres.
 

Q: But their social and political setup is much different.

A: The feudal lords there used to have the right of life and death over their salve. They could take away his belongings, his women, whatever. But because of land reforms, society gradually stabilized. That is what is required here, because the landlord is still interested in the land being cultivated.
 

Q: Getting back to the issue of land holdings, how will you convince the people about your idea of larger holdings?

A: The reforms are subject to the functioning of the government machinery. If this machinery is not functioning properly, no reforms — as is the case with City governments — will work. So that is the paramount requirement. Otherwise, leave agriculture alone, because you will destroy agriculture and the land will become barren. In this age of mechanized agriculture, it has become very uneconomical for smaller land holding to be profitable. If you are encouraging mechanization, you have to have a viable holding.
 

Q: There is also this problem of the grower not getting the fixed price for his produce. It is the middle man who benefits.

A: Yes, it is there. The sugar industry is a good example. There are only 27 sugar mills in the country. The government has fixed the price at Rs43, but the mill-owners pay at least ten rupees less. This is absurd. If you can’t control 27 mill-owners, how are you going to control crime, how will you control bureaucracy.? If I am not getting the right price and the government is not going to protect me, I am not going to grow it. Simple.
 

Q: Are you in favour of an overall package of reforms that should also involve the social sector?

A: Of course. It should be overall reform. More than 75 per cent people are in the rural areas, so if we are making changes, they will affect the whole country. Today, the hari spends time at the teashop except for a few days when he works the fields. Everything is done by the landlord. He pays for the tractor. He pays for the fertilizer. And he gives them interest-free loans, which are recovered only when the crops are good. We have millions outstanding against the haris.

If you take the landlord out of the equation, who is going to provide the vital inputs? It’s all wrong when people say that haris are doing everything and the landlord is having fun. People sit in the cities and pass judgment. He has to cultivate the thanedar. He has to cultivate the tehsildar. He has to cultivate the irrigation engineer. And he has to make sure that the hari is facing no hassle. In scorching heat, he has to tour the area to ensure that there is enough water. Shooting arrows at the landlord is blatantly wrong.