As Pakistanis go to the polls on Feb 18, 2008, the role of the feudal class in Pakistan as power brokers is getting scrutiny from the world media. Some Pakistani feudals and politicians, including Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi of PPP, Syed Fakhr Imam of PPP, Imran Khan (Tehreek Insaf), and others argue that the feudal influence is overrated. They say the feudal power is declining and represents more of a mindset than reality. However, the media men traveling through rural Sind and rural Punjab are finding that most, if not all, of the candidates of the major parties are big landowners. And the people living on their lands must choose from them. When asked by the BBC correspondent Shoaib Hasan why none of the farmers or other poor people consider standing as candidates, a group of village people burst out laughing.
Here are some of the foreign media reports that caught my attention:
William Dalrymple, writing for the Guardian in London says: "There is a fundamental flaw in Pakistan's political system. Democracy has never thrived here, at least in part because landowning remains almost the only social base from which politicians can emerge. In general, the educated middle class - which in India seized control in 1947, emasculating the power of its landowners - is in Pakistan still largely excluded from the political process. As a result, in many of the more backward parts of Pakistan the local feudal zamindar can expect his people to vote for his chosen candidate. Such loyalty can be enforced. Many of the biggest zamindars have private prisons and most have private armies."
Writing about Mumtaz Bhutto, whose son is a candidate for parliamentary seat, Aryn Baker of Time Magazine reports: As one of Pakistan's largest landowners, Bhutto is both a victim and a perpetrator of the corrosive feudal system that has shaped Pakistani society for most of its 60-year history, and still dictates how politics are done today. Bhutto's family has owned this patch of fertile land alongside the Indus River for nearly half a millennium, and on the wall of his stately home is the family tree to prove it. (He is a cousin of the assassinated Benazir Bhutto.) Sharecroppers till the lands, exchanging half they produce — rice, wheat and sugarcane — for a place to live, seeds and fertilizer. And patronage. "If my tenants are happy with me, they work more efficiently on the lands," says Bhutto. "You help the people and they will help you." That exchange extends into the political realm. Bhutto isn't running in this year's parliamentary elections — he's retired — but his son is. With some 10,000 acres of land being cultivated by a vast network of thousands of sharecroppers dependent on feudal largesse, the Bhutto family can count on a large turnout of supporters at the polls.
BBC South Asia service talks about the power and influence of the feudal lords near Multan in Makhdoom Shah Mehmood Qureshi's district as follows: The term "feudal or "feudal lord" refers to the large-scale landholding families in Pakistan.By dint of their landholdings, which they rent to tenant farmers, the feudal lords are able to exercise immense financial and political influence. In many cases they are also able to claim the loyalty of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, of "murids" (devotees) who believe they are directly descended from local saints. On top of this, they usually control the "station and katchery" (the police and the courts) which ensures the compliance, willing or not, of the local populace.
Regardless of which party or parties emerge as the winners on February 18, one thing is certain: The power and the influence of the feudals will be very well represented in the corridors of power. And the ordinary people of Pakistan will continue to be at their mercy in the name of democracy, unless the military refuses to cede power to the elected feudals.
Amidst all the cries for democracy, independent judiciary, human rights, and fair polls in Pakistan, nothing will change fundamentally on Feb 18. Regardless of the party labels and promises, the feudal power will endure in the name of democracy. The choices remain narrow for Pakistanis: Choose between military and the feudal class. There is no third choice as long as the middle class remains small and unable to exert any real influence. The only hope for real democracy lies in continued robust growth of the middle class over an extended period of time of another decade or two. There are no guarantees that feudal rulers will permit that.
Inside ATP: Who Reads Pakistaniat.com
10 hours ago
3 comments:
How True, we need a dictator who can implement true land reforms.
Fully agree with the comment what is really needed is an international Marshall Plan style effort toward transforming Pakistan from a feudal/tribal to an industrial society. Such an effort will face major hurdles from the feudal leadership of the major political parties in Pakistan.
To do that the first logical step would be to abolish the parliamentary form of government as the Pakistan assemblies will always be dominated by feudals and tribals. When it gets beyond their leadership capacity, the political power will pass on to the religious extremists who, as you've rightly pointed out, are bred by the deprivations generated by the lack of productive capacity of the feudal system. Unfortunately none of our intellectuals/ analysts, mostly from the urban middle classes, have the intelligence to recognize this very basis cause of our socio-economic backwardness and so instead of trying to find out ways for remedying this cause, are always demanding for applying the 1973 constitution in a manner so as to concentrate more state power in the hands of the feudal and tribal dominated assemblies.
One alternative is to have a Presidential system with the President elected directly by the people. The National Assembly to be abolished as this will have no role to play with the Local Governments in place enabling grassroots representation of the people. Similarly the Provincial Assemblies be abolished and Provincial Governors elected directly by the people. These steps will result in a tremendous savings to the national treasury which funds can be put to better developmental use such as health and education.
This may be a more practical solution than dictatorship which is too dependent on the efficient performance of one single person who would probably be difficult to get in the country. The military generals do not have the politico-economic training necessary to understand the root causes of the problems facing the country, so very soon become more "constitutional" than the politicians thus throwing away the opportunity to bring in the much needed socio-economic reforms.
Here's report on water related corruption in Pakistan:
"Pakistan’s irrigation network has always served the privileged elite at the expense of the poor. World Bank and government programs have consistently favored feudal landowners. When the irrigation system was established, the government failed to recognize the land rights of the original inhabitants and allotted irrigated plots to rich landowners and military personnel. While large and very large farmers control 66% of all agricultural land in Pakistan, almost half of all rural households own no land. A World Bank evaluation noted in 1996 that the bank’s projects "provided large and unnecessary transfers of public resources to some of the rural elite."9
The top–down engineering approach to Pakistan’s water sector has also caused massive collateral damage downstream. The Indus Basin Irrigation System starves areas of Sindh province – and particularly the Indus Delta – of water and sediment. And because the sediment trapped in the reservoirs does not replenish the delta, close to 5,000 square kilometers of farm land have already been lost to the sea. Meanwhile salt water is intruding 100 kilometers upstream in the Indus. The lack of water and sediment is destroying flood plain forests that are home to hundreds of thousands of people and mangrove forests that help protect the coast against storms.
While the downstream areas suffer from a water shortage, wasteful water use is wreaking environmental and economic havoc in the command area. Over–irrigation and inadequate drainage have caused the water table to rise across a large area. As a result, about 60% of all farm plots in Sindh are plagued by water logging and salinity."
Please read here for more details.
Post a Comment