http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009\06\30\story_30-6-2009_pg3_2
Tuesday, June 30, 2009 analysis: Betraying the peasant -Rasul Bakhsh Rais Effective, quality and universal public education along with better governance is the least we can give to the peasant, in return what he has done to improve the quality of our lives and the national economy While many of us sit in air-conditioned offices during the hottest period of the summer, my thoughts go out to the peasants, literally millions of them, working in the fields, sowing and tending crops under the blazing sun with their barely covered sunburnt bodies. Never does their routine of work change with the changing cycles of seasons - cool, hot, good or bad. They have to do what they have to do for a living; unending work without much compensation from their lords. The peasantry of Pakistan, from the Northern Areas down to the coastal zones of Sindh, grow everything we have on our dining tables, and feed our textile and many other industries round the year. They contribute a substantial amount of their time, energy and, frankly speaking, most of their productive lives to generating our national wealth and keeping the rent-seeking landlords happy and prosperous. What have the lords, the state and society done for the peasants? First, let us talk about the lords. There is socially a dialectic relationship between the lords and the peasants. Lords cannot be lords without a passive, obedient and socially depressed and economically deprived peasant class. In almost every region of Pakistan where we have landowners, and peasants working for them, we have traditional, hierarchical social relations. Much of this hierarchy rests on ownership of land on the one hand and landlessness on the other. The real question is who gets what on account of the ownership of land and work on the land. There may be some regional variation in how the costs and benefits of agricultural produce are distributed between the landowners and the peasants, but those who contribute physical labour, quite often with the entire family - men, women and even children working as a team - get very little. Peasant families, even when they are overworked, barely get enough to survive and often end up in some kind of debt-trap. Most landlords have never been interested in improving the social and economic conditions of their peasants. Rather, they have obstructed almost every type of development, like education, that could lead to social mobility and economic liberation for the peasants. How have they managed that? The landowners comprise our governing elite at level of the society, from the Union Council to the national parliament. They have the power to ensure that girls' schools for peasant families are set up close to them but also function with teachers present and classes held regularly. Unfortunately, that is not the case in most of the areas where we have a small landowning class dominating the social and political scene and lording over a large landless peasantry. The social conditions of the peasant communities are appalling, particularly in rural Sindh and Southern Punjab, domains of large land-owning families. Half-hearted land reforms and the fragmentation of land among successive family members has not eroded either the economic power of these families or their social significance. Landlords are a social class more than an economic class. They have found ample means, mostly through politics and political office, to maintain their hold on their respective areas of influence and have also become more prosperous. Therefore the argument that land holdings have shrunk in size is not valid in proving that the social or political influence of the landlords has declined. Yes, the emergence of small land holders has been a positive development in many areas of Pakistan. This group has expanded substantially over the decades as a result of two important developments. A section of them has been allotted government lands under various land distribution schemes. Others have purchased small parcels because of the Dubai factor or due to the social and economic mobility of a member of the family who became a professional or joined government service. And they are the vanguard of modern-day capitalist farmers. But compared to the vast peasantry, the number of small and medium landowners is relatively small. A section of the peasantry has been liberated by slow growth, but that is not enough. State and society cannot leave social development of the peasantry to the laws of nature or to the trickle-down Musharraf-Aziz economy that our elected governments should have thrown out as soon as they left the political scene. Besides economic exploitation of the peasantry, we see the old system of social oppression in place. It is still not uncommon for peasant girls to be kidnapped and forced to satisfy the sexual desires of a member of the local landowning clan. Lacking skills and means, these unfortunate peasants are resigned to their fate and are never able to move out. What has the state done for the peasants; what can it do? True land reforms could have brought about a social revolution like the one small landowners are bringing about in central Punjab. The small landowner has become socially and economic independent and has opened many opportunities for quality education and thus greater social and economic mobility. Many families in Southern Punjab that have slowly entered this class are the beneficiaries of the Ayub Khan and, to some extent, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto land reforms. We know the reasons why land reforms are not possible. Military rulers could do it because they were not socially or institutionally bound to the landowning class. The current crop of leaders from all parties, except the urban MQM, has its social and thus political roots in land ownership. Why would these leaders destroy their own social and political base? But there are a lot more positive things that the state can do for the peasants without land reforms. First, we need to do something about the state of governance. The failure of governance that has pushed Pakistan to the top ten failed states index hurts the peasantry the most. All rent-seeking elements of the state, from the local policeman to higher ranking government officials, suck the blood of the peasantry like wild leeches and nobody really comes to their rescue. None of the major or minor political parties is organised at the local level, has any dedicated local cadre to organise the peasantry or works toward their welfare. And unfortunately whatever peasant movements we had in the sixties and seventies have declined in their ideological appeal and scope of activities. Education is the key to the liberation of the peasantry. Failure in delivering this basic social service, and others like health, is keeping the peasantry bound in tradition and in the unfailing service of the lords. Effective, quality and universal public education along with better governance is the least we can give to the peasant, in return what he has done to improve the quality of our lives and the national economy. Dr Rasul Bakhsh Rais is author of Recovering the Frontier State: War, Ethnicity and State in Afghanistan (Oxford University Press, 2008) and a professor of Political Science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. He can be reached at [email protected] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
