Both Ayub and Bhutto introduced land ceiling acts but neither went far enough to address rural inequalities. They were based on individual and not family holdings.
Bhutto reduced the individual ceiling from 1,000 to 300 acres of non irrigated land and 500 to 150 acres of irrigated land.
The glaring loophole was that land would be transferred to family members. Bhutto himself divided his holdings amongst family members before the legislation became operative.
It is true that land reforms were largely ineffectual and indeed the persistence of rural poverty is linked to unequal access to land. It is not just that rules were circumvented by transfers within families.
In the 1959 reforms, only a relatively small amount of land was handed over. Of this 57% was uncultivated and some of it was not deemed suitable for cultivation. There was some compensation granted even where the quality of land was poor. It was estimated that only 20 per cent of resumed land was actually sold to landless tenants with the remainder auctioned to richer farmers and civil and military officers. The concept of the Produce Index Units (PIU) - with a maximum of 36,000 units permitted - was also controversial. PIUs was a measure of land productivity - essentially a gross value per acre of land by type of soil was computed. It was based on pre-partition settlement figured so under-reported true value of land. 36,000 PIUs was often far greater than the upper ceiling of 500 acres of unirrigated land. It was estimated in Sindh it was possible for some individuals to own up to 1,800 acres!
On the 1972 reforms, we should note first Bhutto’s speech in March 1972, where he confidently proclaimed that land reform would ‘effectively break uptake iniquitous concentrations of landed wealth, reduce income disparities, increase production, reduce unemployment, streamline the administration of land revenue and agricultural taxation, and truly lay down the foundations of a relationship of honour and mutual benefits between landlords and tenants.’ Sadly, this rhetoric was not matched by reality. Less land was resumed than 1959 - only 0.001 per cent of the total farm area. The definition of ceiling involved PIUs again (limit being 15,000 this time), which again meant that the value of land was underestimated. As a result with 12,000 PIUs, it was estimated that a family could keep 400 acres in Punjab and 480 in Sindh. With special exemptions for tube wells and tractors, these upper limits were raised further to 932 irrigated acres in Punjab and 1,120 in Sindh. It was estimated that only 1 per cent of landless tenants and small owners benefited.
Interestingly in 1994, 6 per cent of the resumed land in 1959 still needed to be distributed with the corresponding figure being 39% the the land resumed in 1972.
So the failure of land reform is very real. However, this does not mean that we should stick the label feudalism on Pakistan, for reasons I have outlined before.
