For decades, Pakistan’s landed aristocracy has been portrayed as cruel, merciless, and oppressive toward their employees, tenants, sharecroppers, and village-based service providers. Countless novels, films, and TV dramas have drawn on this theme. Over time, this stereotype has taken deep root in the national psyche and left a lasting negative image in the public perception.
Certainly, many large landlords have engaged in such malpractices. However, one school of thought argues that, for them, such behaviour is more a necessity than a choice in managing their vast holdings — in effect, a distinctive form of a ‘management control system’ (MCS).
Organisations and businesses worldwide use various MCSs to regulate day-to-day operations. The simplest and most common is close, real-time monitoring of employees by the owner or manager. This hands-on oversight enables them to observe performance directly, provide immediate feedback, and ensure tasks are carried out in accordance with established procedures and standards.
Though effective in small setups, such MCSs fail on large, unfenced farms spanning hundreds of acres, where individual workers or tiny teams (two to three workers) operate out of sight, especially in tall crops like maize or sugarcane, where visibility is limited to a few feet only. Supervisors can be employed to monitor on-site, yet hiring dozens to supervise scattered workers across the farm makes this option uneconomical. Worse still, it risks collusion between supervisor and workers, creating the absurd need for yet another supervisor to monitor the first one.
Given rapid technological advances, Pakistan’s elite must recognise that old coercive forms of control can no longer work
Another widely used MCS is based on an input-output linkage, where specific inputs correspond to expected outputs. For instance, in garment factories, industry-wide standards clearly define how much fabric yields a given number of shirts. Similarly, well-established benchmarks exist for worker productivity, electricity consumption, and other consumables.
However, agriculture operates outside predictable boundaries.
Uncontrollable weather variables — rainfall, temperature, sunlight, windstorm, and frost — directly affect crop yields. The equation is not as straightforward as “a certain amount of fertiliser, pesticide, and water equals a certain yield”. Consequently, workers’ theft of input or negligence can conveniently be explained away as the result of unfavourable weather. Moreover, crop harvest occurs several months after inputs are applied.
In some professions, like medicine and education, ethics and moral values are instilled during training as an intrinsic MCS. In our society, doctors are seen as maseehas (healers), embodying the Qur’anic principle: saving one life is like saving all of mankind. Similarly, teachers have traditionally been revered as spiritual parents, and their role regarded as prophetic.
Such moral grounding is vital because, unlike quantity, the quality of their work cannot be mechanically measured. Teachers may attend classes punctually, yet only they know whether they are truly giving their best.
However, agriculture stands apart: most workers are illiterate or ill-educated. Expecting them to be guided by ethics and moral values alone is therefore unrealistic.
Given the limitations of conventional MCSs and the highly labour-intensive nature of traditional farming, landlords historically developed a distinctive, often brutal, system of control rooted in fear and coercion. Workers lived under constant threat of severe, extra-legal punishment for misconduct, which could be extended to their families, including women. This reign of terror, though unjust, undeniably proved a highly effective MCS.
Nevertheless, the continued dominance of this tyrannical MCS rests on two conditions. First, landlords must maintain influence over the local police and administration, which they usually secure through political clout and authority.
Second, rural youth must be kept illiterate to confine them to unskilled farm work, thereby ensuring a steady supply of cheap labour. Illiteracy also leaves them ignorant of their legal rights and turns them into captive voters, who follow elders’ dictates.
This explains why school education has long been suppressed in rural areas. According to the latest available data, Pakistan has 26 million out-of-school children, nearly 38 per cent of the school-age population as of 2021. The actual figure is likely higher, as many schools inflate enrolment records to meet official targets. Moreover, a large number of ghost schools still exist.
On the other hand, the agriculture sector is undergoing rapid transformation. Mechanisation and automation are reshaping almost all farming operations, reducing the need for manual labour.
Centralised fertigation systems now apply fertilisers from a single control point. Drones — already used in Pakistan — spray pesticides over fields. GPS trackers now monitor tractors and other machinery along with their fuel consumption. These technologies enable large farms to operate like modern corporate enterprises with a small, efficient workforce. However, this evolution is making agricultural jobs more specialised and technically demanding.
Furthermore, the use of high-yielding hybrid and genetically modified seeds, such as Bt cotton, which involves complex production technology, is rising. Moreover, importing countries are imposing stricter food safety standards on agricultural exports.
Finally, shrinking landholdings are putting immense pressure on farmers to maximise productivity, especially at a time when government subsidies and support prices are being phased out.
Given this rapidly evolving landscape, Pakistan’s agricultural elite must recognise that the old, coercive MCS would no longer be workable in the future. For long-term competitiveness and survival, large farms now need to be managed along the same management principles as any other business by relying on educated, skilled, and highly productive workers.
However, such a workforce cannot develop without the elite’s unwavering commitment to expanding quality education and skills development in rural areas.
Khalid Wattoo is a development professional and a farmer, and Dr Waqar Ahmad is a former associate professor at the University of Agriculture, Faisalabad
Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, November 24th, 2025