The Man behind the Plough

 N o country has made any progress without radical agrarian reforms. The issue of Land Reforms has, therefore, been in the forefront of national politics ever since the birth of Pakistan. The crux of the agrarian problem is the relation between those who cultivated the land and those who owned it, those who produced its wealth and those who accumulated it.Ayub Khan, a military dictator, introduced land reforms in Pakistan. The Ayub Reforms put a ceiling on ownership, prohibited fragmentation of holdings and ejectment of tenants. But the reforms did not prohibit absentee landlordism nor did it prohibit the leasing of land. No land reforms are complete without these basic changes. Ayub Khan decided to setup a Agrarian Commission. The dissenting view of Ghulam Ishaq Khan did not persuade the majority of the Commission members because they thought that “the premise from which Mr. Ishaq proceeds does not correctly depict the conditions obtaining in West Pakistan”. A heated debate followed. When the matter came before the Cabinet, Mr. Bhutto (who was a member of the Ayub Cabinet) defended the landlord’s case with great passion and almost broke down. In order to ease the tension, President Ayub had to interrupt the discussion and order drinks to be served.The ceiling of land held by an individual owner under the Bhutto’s land reforms was reduced from 500 irrigated acres to 150 acres and from 1000 un-irrigated acres to 300 or an area equal to 15,000 produce index units, whichever is greater. Some concessions were also given to the tenants which were not there in the previous reforms. The main objective of all agrarian reforms in various countries of the world is that of establishing peasant farms large enough to support the families of the present tenants who produce wealth. Not in Pakistan. ZAB pointed out in his Land Reform address of March, 1972, “I know the power of the landed aristocracy, the over-riding power of the tribal sardars, the waderas and maliks. They would stop at nothing to frustrate and circumvent these Land Reforms”. The French Revolution abolished feudalism in France, rest of Europe followed the French example. The hari remained a serf. The hari, whose family may have cultivated a piece of land for several generations, does not know how long he will be allowed to stay on it. Fear reigns supreme in the life of the hari; fear of imprisonment, fear of losing his land or his wife. The zamindar may, at any time, get annoyed with him and oust him; he might have to leave his crop half ripe, his cattle snatched, he may be beaten out of the village, may suddenly find himself in police fetters under enquiry for theft, robbery or murder or, more often, under section 110 of the Criminal Procedure Code. The zamindar might at any time send for the hari for begar (forced labour) for the construction of his house or the sinking of a well, or some other minor work. He might be called to come with his plough and bullocks to cultivate the private fields of the zamindar or to spend a few days on a shoot with him, or to render some domestic service. He is thus always at the beck and call of the zamindar. He dare not refuse him. A pretty wife is a constant source of danger for the hari as he might be asked to surrender her. He may be subjected to intimidation, threat or coercion and if he does not yield, the wife could be kidnapped, or he be arrested in a false criminal case and the wife left alone is then compelled to live with the zamindar. The hari can even be murdered if the zamindar sees no other hope of success. Peasant revolutions are vast, shapeless anonymous, but irresistible movements. What turned an epidemic of peasant unrest into an irreversible convulsion was a combination of provincial town uprisings and a wave of mass panic, spreading rapidly across vast stretches of the country. The most formidable legacy of the French Revolution itself was the set of models and patterns of political upheaval which it established for the general use of rebels anywhere. Revolution occurs when state institutions fail to satisfy the basic problems of the people. Revolution occurs when economic and social discontents are so acute as to make series of outbreaks virtually inevitable. “Soon the enlightened nations will put on trial those who have hitherto ruled over them. The kings shall flee into the deserts, into the company of the wild beasts whom they resemble; and Nature shall resume her rights.” (Saint-Just. Sur la Constitution de la France, discours pronounce la convention 24 avril 1793)The government, having lost their balance, are frightened, intimidated and thrown into confusion by the cries of the intermediary class of society, which placed between the kings and their subjects, broke the sceptre of the monarchs and usurped the cry of the people. (Metternich to Tsar, 1820)The country poor are desperate and restless with riot and banditry; the urban poor are doubly desperate as work ceased at the very moment that the cost of living soared. The Supreme Court will succeed, in the face of the united resistance of the Prime Minister, Law Makers and the privileged orders of the landed autocracy, because it represents not merely the views of an educated and militant minority, but of far more powerful forces; the laboring poor of the cities, sans-culotte, especially of Islamabad, and shortly, also, the revolutionary peasantry.