Tuesday, March 06, 2007
The underlying causes of Pakistanââ¬â¢s poverty
By Syed Mohammad Ali
The nation at large has continued to opt for a controlled form of democracy which treats politics less as a participatory process than as something to be steered from above. To deal with provincial discontent and recurrent fears of secession, the state itself allows patronage to be routed through its favoured powerbrokers in exchange for political stability
Poverty is a multidimensional phenomenon with a range of location-specific implications. To make sense of our present-day inequities, we must understand the social dynamics of different areas in Pakistan, which are rooted in particular historical circumstances.
For example, in Punjab the increasing pressure applied by the Mughal Empire in its declining years led to a prolonged armed opposition that disbanded the older regional elite. These peasant agitators succeeded in forming new fiefdoms willing to lend support to an emergent colonial presence. In turn, the British Raj recognised them as ââ¬Ërulers over princely statesââ¬â¢. A new ruling class of peasant-landowners was therefore given legitimacy during the Raj.
The service and labouring castes which formed a majority of the rural population, known as the kemais, failed to improve their status during this socio-political upheaval in Punjab nearly two hundred years ago. Instead, the colonialists strengthened a newly dominant agrarian group through extensive land settlement schemes on new canal-irrigated tracts along the Indus. Under colonial agricultural schemes land was granted to the bigger agriculturalists, not to small cultivators, sharecroppers or tenants.
Sindhi landlords also made gains with the introduction of canal irrigation by the British. However, it is interesting to note that the size of landholdings in Sindh was much larger than in the Punjab. Sindh still has the highest rates of tenancy arrangements in the country. This is because zamindars from Mughal times, essentially administrators and revenue collectors of the state, obtained proprietary land rights from the British colonisers. The British colonisers did this primarily to motivate greater agricultural productivity. Yet many of the zamindars instead hired intermediaries, while others became absentee landlords or sold their lands along with the haris working on it.
The Mughals had at least acknowledged haris as the actual cultivators of the land. But the British gave land ownership rights only to the zamindars while the multitude of poor haris became increasingly subservient and indebted to thesem zamindars, often being compelled to provide bonded labour, a practice which still hasnââ¬â¢t ended.
Due to their control over rural vote banks the British-patronised elites were quickly able to assume political power after independence. The feudal presence in the legislatures thereafter repeatedly strangled land reforms. Attempts by Ayub Khan and Bhutto in this regard proved to be no more than tokenistic, setting out limits for individual not family land holdings. Even though landholding sizes remained unevenly distributed, the elites of Punjab and Sindh were able to benefit considerably during the Green Revolution of the 1970s because of the relatively greater area under cultivation. This added to the disparities between and across the countryââ¬â¢s provinces.
In the case of the NWFP and Balochistan, our policymakers have not deviated much from colonial precedents. The post-partition era has also witnessed the strategy of handpicking tribal chiefs to control territory for the state. The state enhanced the power of those sardars who chose to cooperate, and ousted others who become defiant. In Balochistan, where the sardari system was even more hierarchal than in NWFP, the collusion of the state with a handful of sardars to extract precious natural resources like gas and coal brought little prosperity to the common people.
The induction of Pashtuns into the military is said to have contributed to the NWFPââ¬â¢s greater sense of integration into Pakistan. Many Pashtun investors have also moved south to Punjab and Sindh. Yet this integration into the Pakistani state is limited mostly to the Peshawar valley, where the is a concentration of civil servants, army personnel and investors. In remoter districts like Battagram ââ¬âone of the areas that suffered the brunt of the earthquake in 2005 ââ¬â there has been hardly any development since the time of partition. Life in such far-flung areas has changed very little for the livestock herders or tenants whose homestead and livelihoods continue to be controlled by the local khans.
The government bureaucracy continues to extend its alliances with large landowners, tribal chiefs, and major industrialists. Land grants, lucrative defence contracts, permits, loans, licenses, and jobs are still awarded on the basis of personal contacts and the ability to do political favours rather than on merit. Such practices have become accepted as necessary and inevitable ways of conducting business. The evident importance of such patronage networks and personal loyalty are a clear symptom of our weak state institutions.
The nation at large has continued to opt for a controlled form of democracy which treats politics less as a participatory process than as something to be steered from above. To deal with provincial discontent and recurrent fears of secession, the state itself allows patronage to be routed through its favoured powerbrokers in exchange for political stability. Given this situation, devolved power structures and development funds are repeatedly captured by the haves while the have-nots continue to be marginalised.
Combined with the narrow sectional politics that have taken root in the absence of representative political institutions, existing elite tactics of state building have caused a serious segmentation of society along lines of class and ethnicity. Discontent within the country often explodes in the form of violent episodes. A sense of resentment, fuelled by years of uneven growth, is increasingly palpable. The anger of the deprived masses is perfectly understandable given the conditions found in the majority of our rural and less affluent urban areas. Most Pakistanis still lack access to the most basic facilities, including safe drinking water and adequate sanitation, health and education facilities.
Pakistan is now at a precarious stage in its history, where it must deal with a range of increasingly complex challenges, the lingering problem of poverty being one of the most serious. Without acknowledging the historical processes by which we have come to the stage where we stand, and without genuinely undoing some of these deeply entrenched exploitative processes, the goal of eradicating poverty will remain insurmountable.
The writer is a researcher. He can be contacted at [email protected]
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\03\06\story_6-3-2007_pg3_3
The underlying causes of Pakistanââ¬â¢s poverty
By Syed Mohammad Ali
The nation at large has continued to opt for a controlled form of democracy which treats politics less as a participatory process than as something to be steered from above. To deal with provincial discontent and recurrent fears of secession, the state itself allows patronage to be routed through its favoured powerbrokers in exchange for political stability
Poverty is a multidimensional phenomenon with a range of location-specific implications. To make sense of our present-day inequities, we must understand the social dynamics of different areas in Pakistan, which are rooted in particular historical circumstances.
For example, in Punjab the increasing pressure applied by the Mughal Empire in its declining years led to a prolonged armed opposition that disbanded the older regional elite. These peasant agitators succeeded in forming new fiefdoms willing to lend support to an emergent colonial presence. In turn, the British Raj recognised them as ââ¬Ërulers over princely statesââ¬â¢. A new ruling class of peasant-landowners was therefore given legitimacy during the Raj.
The service and labouring castes which formed a majority of the rural population, known as the kemais, failed to improve their status during this socio-political upheaval in Punjab nearly two hundred years ago. Instead, the colonialists strengthened a newly dominant agrarian group through extensive land settlement schemes on new canal-irrigated tracts along the Indus. Under colonial agricultural schemes land was granted to the bigger agriculturalists, not to small cultivators, sharecroppers or tenants.
Sindhi landlords also made gains with the introduction of canal irrigation by the British. However, it is interesting to note that the size of landholdings in Sindh was much larger than in the Punjab. Sindh still has the highest rates of tenancy arrangements in the country. This is because zamindars from Mughal times, essentially administrators and revenue collectors of the state, obtained proprietary land rights from the British colonisers. The British colonisers did this primarily to motivate greater agricultural productivity. Yet many of the zamindars instead hired intermediaries, while others became absentee landlords or sold their lands along with the haris working on it.
The Mughals had at least acknowledged haris as the actual cultivators of the land. But the British gave land ownership rights only to the zamindars while the multitude of poor haris became increasingly subservient and indebted to thesem zamindars, often being compelled to provide bonded labour, a practice which still hasnââ¬â¢t ended.
Due to their control over rural vote banks the British-patronised elites were quickly able to assume political power after independence. The feudal presence in the legislatures thereafter repeatedly strangled land reforms. Attempts by Ayub Khan and Bhutto in this regard proved to be no more than tokenistic, setting out limits for individual not family land holdings. Even though landholding sizes remained unevenly distributed, the elites of Punjab and Sindh were able to benefit considerably during the Green Revolution of the 1970s because of the relatively greater area under cultivation. This added to the disparities between and across the countryââ¬â¢s provinces.
In the case of the NWFP and Balochistan, our policymakers have not deviated much from colonial precedents. The post-partition era has also witnessed the strategy of handpicking tribal chiefs to control territory for the state. The state enhanced the power of those sardars who chose to cooperate, and ousted others who become defiant. In Balochistan, where the sardari system was even more hierarchal than in NWFP, the collusion of the state with a handful of sardars to extract precious natural resources like gas and coal brought little prosperity to the common people.
The induction of Pashtuns into the military is said to have contributed to the NWFPââ¬â¢s greater sense of integration into Pakistan. Many Pashtun investors have also moved south to Punjab and Sindh. Yet this integration into the Pakistani state is limited mostly to the Peshawar valley, where the is a concentration of civil servants, army personnel and investors. In remoter districts like Battagram ââ¬âone of the areas that suffered the brunt of the earthquake in 2005 ââ¬â there has been hardly any development since the time of partition. Life in such far-flung areas has changed very little for the livestock herders or tenants whose homestead and livelihoods continue to be controlled by the local khans.
The government bureaucracy continues to extend its alliances with large landowners, tribal chiefs, and major industrialists. Land grants, lucrative defence contracts, permits, loans, licenses, and jobs are still awarded on the basis of personal contacts and the ability to do political favours rather than on merit. Such practices have become accepted as necessary and inevitable ways of conducting business. The evident importance of such patronage networks and personal loyalty are a clear symptom of our weak state institutions.
The nation at large has continued to opt for a controlled form of democracy which treats politics less as a participatory process than as something to be steered from above. To deal with provincial discontent and recurrent fears of secession, the state itself allows patronage to be routed through its favoured powerbrokers in exchange for political stability. Given this situation, devolved power structures and development funds are repeatedly captured by the haves while the have-nots continue to be marginalised.
Combined with the narrow sectional politics that have taken root in the absence of representative political institutions, existing elite tactics of state building have caused a serious segmentation of society along lines of class and ethnicity. Discontent within the country often explodes in the form of violent episodes. A sense of resentment, fuelled by years of uneven growth, is increasingly palpable. The anger of the deprived masses is perfectly understandable given the conditions found in the majority of our rural and less affluent urban areas. Most Pakistanis still lack access to the most basic facilities, including safe drinking water and adequate sanitation, health and education facilities.
Pakistan is now at a precarious stage in its history, where it must deal with a range of increasingly complex challenges, the lingering problem of poverty being one of the most serious. Without acknowledging the historical processes by which we have come to the stage where we stand, and without genuinely undoing some of these deeply entrenched exploitative processes, the goal of eradicating poverty will remain insurmountable.
The writer is a researcher. He can be contacted at [email protected]
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\03\06\story_6-3-2007_pg3_3
