Land reforms have been major
issue in agriculture based economy of Pakistan, since its separation from
British ruled united India. Agri-Economics experts have been blaming imbalance
in land ownership in the country, which is believed to play an important part
in increasing poverty and food insecurity within agriculture dependent
families. According to some
surveys, 50.8% rural households in Pakistan are landless, while 5% of the land
owning population owns two-thirds (64 %) of its farmland. According to an estimate, 2% of
households own not more than 50 acres, accounting for 30 percent of total land
area. It is a reality that land productivity on large farms in Pakistan is
lower than that of small farm holdings.
The major effort to redistribute
land to peasants and landless-Laws in 1972 and 1977 by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, were struck down
as un-Islamic by Pakistan courts in a number of decisions from 1979 to 1989. The
first attempts about land reform in Pakistan occurred under Ayub Khan's government, as the West
Pakistan Land Reforms Regulation 1959 (Regulation 64 of 1959). The law put a
ceiling on individual holdings: no one individual could own more than 500 acres
of irrigated and 1,000 acres of un-irrigated land or a maximum of 36,000
Produce Index Units (PIU), whichever was greater. As a result of this attempt, land was
divided among members of the landholding family to keep the land owned by individuals
below the target.
PPP
government (1971-1977) intended to transform Pakistan with land reforms among
other policies. It issued two major land reform laws, Land Reform Regulation
1972 (Martial Law Regulation - MLR 115) promulgated by Prime Minister Zulfiqar
Ali Bhutto, was designed to place ceilings on the agricultural holding of
Pakistan's large landlords. Land in excess of a ceiling of 150 acres was to be resized
by the state without compensation and distributed to the landless. The
ceiling was raised to 300 acres if the land was un-irrigated; exceptions were
also granted for tractors or installed tube wells. Another
provision of MLR 115, Section 25, gave first right of re-emption to the
existing tenants. In 1977, another bill the Land Reform Act, 1977, reduced the
ceiling to 100 acres.
This option of land seize and
redistribution to the peasants was modest, but the reforms were not
administered equitably, with implementation much more robust in the NWFP and
Baluchistan provinces, where opposition to Bhutto was centered, than in
provinces where his power base resided, like
Sindh and Punjab. Many of
Pakistan's large landlords mobilized their supporters against the reforms which
they thought as "a direct challenge to their long-standing interest in
maintaining political control over Pakistan's rural areas". The land
reforms were criticized as "unjustly administered; and as inherently
un-Islamic.
When ZA Bhutto was overthrown,
landlords who were victims of land reform, appealed to "Islamic
Courts" established by Bhutto's successor, General Zia ul Haq and these, undid much with the ZA Bhutto's
redistribution. The new legislation was drafted and implemented with new
interpretations. One of these
laws said that "Islam does not countenance compulsory redistribution of
wealth or land for the purpose of alleviating poverty, however laudable the
goal of poverty relief may be. So the reality is that land reforms in Pakistan
are now at the same level as they were in 1947, as the 1972 regulations and the
1977 act have been struck down and the 1959 regulations have been repealed.
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