[sacw] Report on Pakistan (May 20, 1999, FEER)

[Harsh Kapoor]

May 20, 1999
Dear Friends
the following article in The Far Eastern Economic Review, May 20, 1999
may interest you
Harsh Kapoor
South Asia Citizens Web
======================================

PAKISTAN:
Lords of Misrule
Feudal landowners hold sway over the lives, beliefs--and votes--of a
massive rural community. Their political power may be Pakistan's most
intractable problem.

By Shada Islam in Karachi and Mirpur Khas, Sindh province

May 20, 1999

The mud-spattered jeep bounces along lush
sugar-cane fields and mango orchards in Mirpur Khas, a village 300
kilometres north of the bustling port city of Karachi. Surveying the family
lands from behind the wheel, Pir Aftab Jilani talks animatedly of water
problems, fertilizer costs and the pros and cons of adopting new
technology. "This is a day-and-night business," he says, stopping to watch
a group of farm workers harvesting the ripening sugar crop. His
agricultural savvy, backed up by a degree from an American agricultural
university, is impressive.

But then, the tall and stately 52-year-old Jilani is no ordinary farmer.

Jilani's tour of his property is interrupted at regular intervals by
bare-footed farm workers, their skins burned dark brown by the sun, who
rush forward from the fields to touch his hands and feet in reverence.
Brightly dressed peasant women modestly cover their heads, trying to hush
crying babies. Jilani, clad in an impeccable white shalwar kameez, the
traditional loose trousers and long tunic favoured by many in Pakistan,
takes the adulation in his stride. He stops to talk about crop yields. But
soon he is also holding forth to workers on politics and religion.

For Jilani is many things to many people. The farm labourers of Mirpur Khas
are clearly in awe of the powerful owner of the lands they till. In
addition, he is an influential parliamentarian, a member of the National
Assembly. And for many in the province, Jilani is also a pir, or hereditary
religious leader, commanding up to 20,000 disciples who believe he
possesses unique spiritual powers inherited from sufi mystics who came to
Sindh from Iraq in the last century.

"My job is undefined, unlimited," Jilani explains over a cup of milky tea.
Refreshments are served by faithful retainers in the reception pavilion
where, during his frequent weekend visits to Mirpur Khas, Jilani meets his
political and religious followers. "People come to me with all sorts of
problems," Jilani says. "I am duty-bound to look after their interests."

Jilani gets the villagers' respect and loyalty because he can settle
disputes and prod the local authorities to improve local conditions,
including access to water and electricity. More significantly, come
election time, Jilani also gets the villagers' votes: He and four other
members of the Jilani family hold seats in the national and provincial
legislatures. The family's skill in combining property, religion and
politics is hardly unique. Across Pakistan, wealthy landowners, known
locally as zamindars, jagirdars or waderas--terms that translate roughly
into English as "feudal landlords"--have exercised a quasi-medieval control
over the lives, spiritual beliefs and, crucially, over the votes of the
largely illiterate rural population to amass immense political power. For
50 years they have dominated the National Assembly, acquiring an overriding
say in the conduct of national affairs.

This may be Pakistan's deepest problem. With their conservative economics
and fickle political loyalties, the feudal landlords are to blame,
according to their many critics, for Pakistan's disastrous economy and
chronic political instability. Using their legislative strength and
government connections, a few thousand elite families have staved off
efforts to distribute land more equitably, a major reason why agricultural
productivity remains low. Most have also resisted the implementation of an
agricultural tax--repeatedly demanded by the International Monetary Fund to
help defray the country's acute fiscal deficit. And successive parliaments
dominated by feudal landlords have paid little attention to Pakistan's dire
social needs, making it one of Asia's poorest and most illiterate nations.

In contrast to the rest of Asia, where an emerging and dynamic middle class
has helped promote social change and development, much of Pakistan's
society remains mired in the past. "Feudals have long been the cause of
backwardness and underdevelopment in Pakistan," says Sohail Lari, a
historian based in Karachi who specializes in Sindh. Modernization is
resisted because it means a surrender of power, adds Iftikhar Malik,
professor of international history at Bath University in England and author
of State and Civil Society in Pakistan. "The landed classes of Pakistan
want to maintain the status quo because change will not go in their favour."

The feudal class makes up just one of the three pillars of the elitist
power structure that has dominated Pakistan's political and economic life
for decades. The others are the British-trained military forces and the
civil service. This triumvirate's track record is not impressive: The army
is largely discredited by the policy failures of Gen. Zia ul Haq's 1978-88
rule, which was characterized by religious repression and economic
mismanagement; the bureaucracy, for its part, is accused of corruption and
poor governance. It is the feudal class, however, that has had the most
obvious and unchanging influence. And its decades-old grip on power shows
no signs of waning.

"They are still a potent force," says Richard Ponzio of the Mahbub ul Haq
Centre for Human Development in Islamabad.

The number of large landlords is small--perhaps no more than 5,000. But
given Pakistan's large rural population, they hold sway over millions of
people. No political party can afford to ignore their strength.
Traditionally, feudal landowners have played a pivotal role in the Pakistan
People's Party of Benazir Bhutto, herself a member of one of Sindh's
best-known feudal families. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, a nonfeudal
businessman, was elected largely by urban voters in 1997, but he needs
feudal and rural support to stay in power. "Nawaz Sharif is indebted to the
waderas," says Lari, the Sindh specialist. Malik, the history professor,
adds that "Sharif is acceptable to the feudals because he does not
challenge them."

India acted quickly after independence to reduce the power of landlords in
eastern Punjab, setting a strict eight-hectare limit on their holdings. In
1951, Pakistan's eastern wing (now Bangladesh) implemented equally tough
land reforms. The Muslim League, the party that led Pakistan to
independence, however, was "hijacked by the landed aristocracy," says
Malik. "In the end it became a party of landlords." Attempts at land
redistribution have been little more than cosmetic.

Unlike Jilani in Mirpur Khas, very few landlords are genuinely interested
in farming. For the majority, land and the influence it brings over the
rural population is important because it leads to social privilege and
automatic entry into the high-drama world of Pakistani politics. "Land is
seen more as a political than economic resource," says Ian Talbot, a reader
in South Asian studies at Coventry University. "Land is still the symbol of
prosperity," agrees Jilani.

Not surprisingly, a list of Pakistan's parliamentarians reads like a Who's
Who of landed families. In a National Assembly of 207 members, feudal
landlords and tribal leaders currently hold 126 seats, almost three times
the number won by businessmen and urban professionals. The names of feudal
families, such as the Syeds, Daultanas, Wattoos, Legharis, Noons, Khuhros
and Soomros, are dotted throughout the country's early history. Their
children and grandchildren continue to exert political power in modern-day
Pakistan. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who shocked conservative Pakistanis with his
socialist message in the 1970s, was a feudal landowner. During her last
stint as prime minister, from 1993 to 1996, his daughter Benazir gave top
ministerial posts to 17 fellow feudal landlords out of a cabinet totalling
39 members. Nawaz Sharif has handed out ministerial jobs to eight
landlords.

Though feudal influence is felt most acutely in rural areas, Pakistan's
modern-day feudal landlords--often urbane and educated abroad--cast a wider
net. Moving effortlessly from their family-owned village properties to the
posh salons of the 100-year-old Sind Club in cosmopolitan Karachi, they
often set the tone for others to follow. The Sind Club's 1,000 members
still participate in exclusive shikar, or hunting expeditions, once a
favourite pastime of Mogul princes and landed aristocrats. Rifle-toting
armed guards accompanying landlords in their sombre-windowed Pajeros and
Land Cruisers are a familiar sight in urban centres like Karachi. Feudalism
is as much about attitudes, a feeling that normal rules and laws do not
apply to oneself, as it is about owning vast tracts of land, says writer
Tehmina Durrani. "The feudal lifestyle is emulated by everyone in Pakistan
because it is seen as successful," Durrani says. "They are powerful role
models."

The contagion is spreading. "Despite his business background, Nawaz Sharif
has adopted many of the traits of patrimonialist feudals," says Talbot at
Coventry University.

A deteriorating law-and-order situation is increasing the feudal landlords'
power. Once banned by the British, the ancient practice of holding jirgas,
or unofficial courts, is back in force. Feudal lords or tribal elders,
rather than the civil courts, hear disputes--even murder cases. The verdict
of the jirga is unquestioningly accepted. "The problem is that the decision
is always taken in favour of the more powerful party," says Lari. "Jirgas
make a mockery of law."

But Mumtaz Bhutto, a landlord who is also Benazir Bhutto's (estranged)
uncle and a member of the Sindh assembly, argues that jirgas are gaining
importance because the civil administration has collapsed. "People have
lost faith in the police, the judiciary and the parliament," he warns.
Without the jirgas, there would be wholesale bloodshed, Bhutto adds. "We
are doing the job that the administration should be doing. Because the
government machinery is not working, this is the only alternative that
provides solutions."

Matrimonial alliances with the military and the bureaucracy have given the
landed families added clout. In Punjab, family connections have created a
feudal-business nexus. By distributing land in return for favours,
Pakistani military rulers such as Ayub Khan in the early 1960s and Zia ul
Haq in the 1970s helped create a new set of landlords who are now as
powerful as the older feudal families--and have adopted their patterns of
behaviour. As a result, the feudal landlords' grip on Pakistan is more
powerful than ever, says Lari, the Sindh specialist.

However, an urban public, growing impatient with the feudal families' hold
on power, is beginning to demand changes in the status quo. "There is a
tug-of-war between the forces of tradition and modernism," says Jilani, the
gentleman farmer in Mirpur Khas. "It is a fight of attitudes and
behaviour." But that does not mean he can escape his responsibilities as
head of a fiefdom. "I have to provide development and settle personal
feuds. For every ill of society, people come to me. They look to me to
provide law and order, to influence the police and every department of
government."

Pakistan's media, human-rights organizations and urban professionals find
the feudal landowners' ostentatious lifestyle, cruelty to farm workers and
constant political horse-trading incompatible with their modern aspirations.

Some say a transformation has begun. Independent economist Syed Akbar
Zaidi, author of Issues in Pakistan's Economy, believes feudalism as a mode
of production no longer exists in Pakistan. The number of middle-income
farmers is on the rise and while large landowners do still wield power,
they are modern capitalist farmers, not European-type feudals of
yesteryear, he argues. "The emergence of a real middle class in the country
represents a sea change in our society. The tide of history is sweeping
away the feudals," he says. He cites changes in voting patterns that first
became clear in the 1997 polls, when some of the most powerful landlords
lost their assembly seats.

But his is a minority view. Other commentators argue that the departing
landowners were replaced by others, sometimes from the same family. "The
feudals still pretty much dominate the National Assembly," says Ponzio of
the Mahbub ul Haq Centre. "Faces don't really matter . . . old or new
feudals, the outcome can be expected to be the same: More poor governance."

In time, however, demographic change will dent the power of the feudal
families. Though official figures from the 1998 census have not yet been
released, preliminary indications are that 35%-40% of Pakistan's estimated
140 million people now live in cities, compared with 17% in 1950. The
rising power of urban voters means that slowly but surely rural vote banks
will become less important.

Malik, the Bath University history professor, suggests that one way to
loosen the feudal landowners' grip is to make Pakistan's electoral
constituencies smaller and to enlarge the 207-member parliament. "This will
allow reform-minded politicians with more limited resources to fight
elections," he argues. Pakistan's four large provinces should be replaced
by 15 to 20 smaller units or states, he adds. But there is one obstacle:
Landlords did not want last year's census. They are now expected to resist
any attempts to redefine constituencies.

"The text-book situation against the landlords appears ideal," says Hasan
Mujtaba, a journalist at Newsline magazine in Karachi. "There is rising
urbanization, access to television and more education in Pakistan. But the
situation at the grassroots remains pretty horrible."

Some blame it all on the British. Under the Mogul kings, private ownership
of land was not permitted. But hoping to create a class of loyal barons who
would help maintain law and order in the countryside, the British rulers of
India soon began distributing land to local dignitaries as reward for
services rendered. Later, landowners were nominated to the local boards and
district councils, reinforcing their influence in the local community.

The country's centuries-old land-tenure system has helped reinforce the
feudal families' power. While the number of small farmers is slowly rising,
in many parts of Sindh and Punjab, landlords who possess large tracts of
land traditionally divide it into smaller areas which are then handed out
for cultivation to sharecroppers, known as haris. Most landlords are
absentee owners, leaving responsibility for farm production to their
managers and the haris. Under the system, known locally as batai, the
landlord and tenant farmer split the gross produce in half. This system,
however, all depends on the good faith of landlords, since there are no
provisions for settling disputes.

In fact, thousands of haris in Sindh and parts of Punjab still live in "a
kind of slavery," says Moazzam Ali of the Human Rights Commission of
Pakistan. The problem, he says, is one of an unending cycle of debt. A loan
of a few hundred rupees given by a landlord to a hari to buy equipment
keeps rising as illegal charges are added to the initial sum. "Failure to
repay these inflated debts turns haris into debt slaves," says Ali.

The commission's taskforce in Sindh says many landlords lock up their
workers, fearing they will run away without paying. A shortage of skilled
labour in Sindh makes the feudals even more anxious to hang on to their
sharecroppers. Landlords deny allegations of mistreatment as "slogans." But
Ali says the commission has freed up to 7,000 haris from private jails run
by landowners. "In some cases, the waderas have come after us and tried to
take the haris back."

Despite the commission's efforts, the system is unlikely to change soon.
Land reform is not on the government agenda, and past efforts at limiting
land ownership have produced modest results. In 1959, former President Ayub
Khan fixed the ceiling on land holdings at 200 hectares of irrigated land.
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto reduced the maximum to 60 hectares in 1972. But
landowners, with the connivance of local administrative officials, put
their lands in the names of their family members and the "fictitious names
of haris," says Lari, the Sindh specialist. "It was a total scam." As a
result, the concentration of land ownership has hardly changed since
Independence. According to the 1990 Census for Agriculture, 2% of large
landlords own 24% of the land.

Farming represents one-quarter of Pakistan's GDP and provides employment to
half the workforce. But, without a redistribution of land, the farming
potential remains unfulfilled. The resulting damage to the economy has been
serious. Land reforms in South Korea, Taiwan and Japan have helped boost
rural productivity and incomes and have resulted in increased savings. In
Pakistan, the agricultural sector as a whole has acted as a drag on the
economy. Crop yields in the parts of Punjab within Pakistan are lower than
those in India. "With such a huge agricultural sector, Pakistan should be
self-sufficient in food," says Malik, the history professor. "But we cannot
feed ourselves." In 1997, Pakistan imported 4 million tons of wheat, as
well as edible oils and sugar, using up scarce foreign exchange.

Implementing a nationwide tax on agricultural revenues is proving equally
difficult. Landed families have long opposed a direct tax on farm income,
arguing that farmers already pay a host of indirect levies on water and
land. But in 1997, under pressure from the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund, provincial governments were finally persuaded to introduce
legislation allowing the taxation of agricultural incomes. Most landowners
have managed to get exemptions, while others underdeclare their revenues.
As a result, the government of Punjab collected a modest 2 billion rupees
($40 million) in agricultural taxes last year; an economist estimates the
total untaxed profits of feudal landlords at at least 50 billion rupees a
year. That means many of the country's richest people are paying little or
no tax, which does nothing to help the country's solvency. In January, the
government managed to avoid defaulting on its $32 billion foreign debt only
by getting a $1.6 billion bailout from the IMF. Meanwhile, the World Bank
expects growth of less than 3% for the financial year ending in June.

An estimated 200 billion rupees-worth of loans made by Pakistani banks,
including the Agricultural Development Bank, remain unpaid, mostly by
landlords. "We estimate that since the 1980s about 1.25% of GDP has been
lost to corruption in Pakistan on an annual basis," says Ponzio of the
Mahbub ul Haq Centre. "And corruption cannot be disassociated from the
feudal value system of Pakistan."

Many also blame feudal landlords for Pakistan's dismal social performance.
The adult literacy rate is 36%, compared with a 69% average rate for all
developing countries. In other words, 42 million adults are illiterate.
"The neglect of Pakistan's human resources arises from a feudal society
that places a low value on the lives of ordinary people--except at election
times," says the Mahbub ul Haq Centre's 1998 Human Development Report for
South Asia. Education and "serious, long-term development projects are not
on the radar screen" of Pakistan's landowners, says Ponzio.

Some feudal landlords, like Jilani in Mirpur Khas, are anxious to distance
themselves from such practices and prefer to underline their agricultural
credentials. "We are not absentee landlords," Jilani says. "We earn our
livelihood through agriculture. People are not going to follow me unless I
consult them." Sindh assembly member Mumtaz Bhutto, sitting in his tasteful
book-lined study in Karachi, denounces the "sensational" anti-feudal
stories cooked up by city-based journalists. "This is a country of feudals.
I come from a feudal family and make no apologies for that," he insists.
"Unless they can do away with agriculture and industrialize Pakistan
completely, people here are stuck with us."

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