Explains the concept of agrarian reforms and distinguishes it from two other related but distinct concepts of land reforms and land transfer reforms.Presents a comprehensive set of measures to bring the agrarian reforms in the developing countries

1. Shahid Hussain Raja
Independent Consultant-Public Policy
www.sanoconsultants.co.uk
www.shahidhussainraja.com
May 10,2015

2.  Introduction
 Conceptual Clarification
 Need for Agrarian Reforms
 Components of Agrarian Reforms
 How to bring about Agrarian Reforms
 Conclusion

3.  Land reforms and agrarian reforms are two interrelated
but distinct concepts
 Using them interchangeably can create confusion at
conceptual as well as at practical levels
 World bank has introduced another element-land transfer
reforms in this concept. This has further confounded the
issue
 This presentation is an attempt to clarify these three terms
and explain how agrarian reforms can transform the rural
landscape of a developing country
 Its long article version is available at my website
www.shahidhussainraja.com

4.  Eminent scholars and heads of advocacy groups are
very vocal about the need for carrying out land
reforms in the developing countries.
 They stress it to obtain efficiency and equity gains
and make agriculture a dynamic sector of the
economy.
 Unfortunately the advocates of land reforms confuse
these reforms with a related but distinct issue of
agrarian reforms.
 Land reforms are essentially carried out to distribute
lands, state as well as those confiscated from large
estate holders, to the landless farmers along with
some changes in the tenurial relations

5.  Agrarian reforms, on the other hand, are meant to transform
entire socio-economic landscape of the rural areas of a country
by introducing fundamental structural and institutional changes
in the political economy of a county’s agriculture sector.
 Land Transfer Reforms, favourite of the World Bank for obvious
reasons, are different ball game. These are carried out to
streamline the process of buying and selling of land in
developing countries
 Land Transfer Reforms are needed in those countries where
there is deficiency in legal framework to buy or sell land. WB
want to ensure that big MNCs do not face difficulties in acquiring
land for their corporate farming
 While the agrarian reforms are the need of the day, land reforms
is an idea whose time has gone forever in the face of several
socioeconomic realities and sheer technological imperatives

6.  None can deny the need for increasing the productivity of the
agriculture sector and improving the quality of life of the farmers.
But these can be done by agrarian reforms and not by just
redistributing lands to the landless
 Providing better legal and regulatory framework for sale and
purchase of land, empowering the marginalized sections of rural
society, gender mainstreaming, improving rural Infrastructure,
altering the production relations, rationalizing the role of the
middlemen etc are desperately needed.
 Frankly all these are the issues of improving the governance in the
rural areas and are not related to the land reforms as such.
 However, it is equating the all encompassing concept of agrarian
reforms with a narrower concept of land reforms by some people
which creates confusion at the conceptual and practical levels.

7.  Historically land reforms have been carried out at the initial stages of the
development process when agriculture is contributing more than half of the
GDP of a country as it used to do in Pakistan uptill 1960s.
 Now it contributes around 20 percent of the GDP and is not a dominant
source of wealth notwithstanding its overall economic importance.
 India did carry out, albeit at a limited scale, land reforms in its part of
Punjab primarily to accommodate the Sikh migrants from Pakistan in the
wake of partition.
 Time to do so in Pakistan was in the 1950s and 1960s when it started its
planned development and land reforms could have been made a part of the
overall planning process to carry out the needed socioeconomic
restructuring of Pakistan.
 However we missed the bus due to nature of political economy of the
country. The technological imperatives now demand quite the opposite.

8.  Pakistan needs to push its technological frontier in the
agriculture sector for enhancing the productivity of its
agriculture sector not only to ensure food security on the
one hand and increasing the pace of its industrial sector.
 Both need an efficient, productive and profitable
agriculture sector whose growth is sustainable and
outputs are competitive.
 This is possible only and only if we increase the pace of
farm mechanisation and technological innovation in all the
agricultural operations. In order to introduce technology at
commercial scale the size of the farms is the basic
condition.
 If we redistribute lands and each farmer gets a parcel of
land on which a tractor is not even economical, how we
can increase our productivity?

9.  Land reforms for the sake of land reforms or social justice are
not a practical public policy option.
 we cannot redistribute private lands, confiscated or purchased,
to landless farmers on moral grounds or as a sound economic
policy.
 On what grounds you can confiscate the personal property of
someone? If accepted on the grounds of social justice, then it
should also apply to all sectors of the society without
discrimination.
 Dare you touch the property tycoons, the industrial magnates,
the commercial Mafiosi?
 Purchasing land from the big landlords as suggested by some
learned authors at market price and then redistributing it to the
landless farmers is a nonstarter, not possible to carry out by a
financially bankrupt state

10.  Formulation of comprehensive Land Use Policy
 Improving Agricultural Terms of Trade
 Improving Rural Infrastructure
 Improving Rural Governance
 Environmental Sustainability
 Creating Linkages and promoting Investment
 Gender Mainstreaming
 Production Relations-triple Cs

11.  Developing a national land use policy for rational use of land
resources is the need of the day as valuable arable land is being
converted at alarming rates by the property developers and
industrial concerns for commercial non farm uses
 Infrastructural development, though necessary is also rendering
fertile land to brick and mortar
 Add to it the declining fertility of our agricultural lands due to
non sustainable agricultural practices
 Plus the degradation of our lands due to water logging and
salinity going on for decades, a negative side effect of our
irrigation practices
 All these issues needed to be addressed by formulating a long
term comprehensive land use policy by the government

12.  Agricultural transformation demands restructuring, not
merely fine tuning, the political economy of the rural areas
which are an integral subset of the overall economic
structure of Pakistan.
 One of the ways to do so is to improve the terms of trade
between agriculture and the other sectors of the economy so
that the squeezing of the peasants can be reversed.
 For this purpose we have to rationalize the prices of the
inputs farmers use as well as those of commodities they
produce, ensuring that the farmers get fair returns for their
efforts.
 Improving the marketing infrastructure, provision of subsidy
on inputs and selective procurement when the prices of
agricultural commodities crash as well as the introduction of
crop insurance scheme are other ways of improving the
terms of trade

13.  Urban areas do need good public goods and services but
so do the rural areas.Visit any village in a developing
country and see the deplorable conditions of roads,
schools, hospitals and other rural infrastructure
 No doubt the government has invested a lot in farm to
markets roads, construction of health facilities, schools
and also rural electrification
 However there are complaints of substandard
workmanship and their fast wear and tear due to paucity
of maintenance funds
 Similarly there are complaints of shortage of staff to man
these health and educational schools. 'Ghost Schools’ was
a term not invented in the air; it has a solid evidence

14. ◦ There is an urgent need to take adaptive and
mitigating measures to ensure sustainability of the
agriculture sector in the face of looming threat of
climate change
◦ Promoting environment friendly good agricultural
practices through creating awareness and
promulgating legal/regulatory framework with
adequate incentives and rewards are also needed
◦ Similarly adjusting the cropping pattern and fine-
tuning the planting and harvesting schedules,
practicing crop rotation and diversifying crop mix,
developing more varieties responsive to climate
change, and adapting irrigation practices and
fertilization regimes.

15.  It is not an easy task to dismantle centuries old rural
governance structure and replace it with modern, formal
contract based rural public management in a short period
but can be done in long term
 Start with education, literacy and skill formation which will
shake the foundations of this feudalistic structure
 Establish alternate dispute resolution mechanism to
replace the informal system heavily dependent on big
landlords, supported by the police and the patwari
 Local bodies elections be held as per fixed schedule which
will bring in the leadership interested in improving rural
infrastructure, the best guarantee of their fast journey to
urban culture

16. ◦ Sustained growth of the rural economy lies in the
development of efficient and effective agri-based supply
chains that link the agriculture sector with their
corresponding upstream and downstream links in the
rural nonfarm(RNF) to the national and international
markets
◦ RNF provides 40-60% of incomes/jobs in rural areas,
much of its activity occurs in the trading, services and
processing sector having strong forward and backward
linkages with agriculture.
◦ Informal and low capital using entities catering mostly to
domestic markets, RNF presents opportunities for
providing value addition to primary production at the
farm level

17.  RNF is hampered by the numerous middle level low capital
using players who add little or no value to products and
services
 For creating linkages between non-farm rural enterprises
with agri-based supply chains, we have to establish
modern agricultural produce wholesale markets in public-
private partnership with cold storages, pack houses,
customs facilities etc.
 At the same time government should Introduce warehouse
receipt system for easy realization of sale proceeds to
farmers and encourage processing and value addition of
agricultural produce to fetch better value, and to reduce
post-harvest losses

18.  We need to enhance the productivity of the agriculture at micro
and macro level by increasing efficiency in all agricultural
operations through public as well as private sector investment in
R&D, extension services, rural infrastructure, marketing, value
addition etc.
 We need to make agricultural produce competitive in the rapidly
globalizing world by reducing cost of production, improving its
quality and meeting global food safety standards. raising the
awareness of the opinion leaders and decision makers to enforce
strict food safety standards.
 Motivating domestic and foreign investors to invest in seed
production, fruit and vegetable processing, agri-infrastructure
development and encouraging development of commercially
viable non-farm rural agriculture enterprises

19.  Rural women are under three pressures-nature, society and
family, all treat them unfairly in terms of status, ownership of
resources , job opportunities and empowerment
 Improving healthcare and family planning facilities to relieve
them of excessive child bearing burden should be the top
priority
 Launching of special rural female literacy and education
campaign by offering attractive monetary rewards would help in
their empowerment and reduce domestic violence
 Ensuring women’s access to resources and assets, including
ownership of land by creating awareness about their rights and
strict enforcement of legal framework priority
 Providing equitable opportunities to women by developing
marketing oriented skills and remunerative employment in the
rural areas;

20.  Although it is not possible to replace the centuries old production
relations of land cultivation in the rural areas of Pakistan in the
short term, efforts can be made to introduce the three modern
forms of farming
Contract farming-encouraging agri-based processors to supply
inputs & technology packages to farmers on deferred payment
with buy-back of produce at guaranteed prices
Cooperative farming-piloting variations of successful coop-
models (with refinements to traditional coops)
Corporate farming-promoting lease of commercially viable tracts
of land to corporate level entrepreneurs who are willing to
practice high-tech export oriented agriculture and share profits
with the owners
 However all the above three need comprehensive legislation about
contract making/dispute resolution as well as their strict
implementation through a specially created institutional
infrastructure

21.  All over the world industrial revolutions have occurred after the
agricultural revolutions and not vice versa
 Treat agriculture as a pivot for bringing this agricultural
revolution by carrying out fundamental structural and
institutional changes in the political economy of agricultural
sector
 Promote farm mechanization to reap efficiency gains, encourage
commercial farming through appropriate legal/regulatory
framework, modernize its marketing channels and invest in R&D,
extension and rural infrastructure.
 However it needs to be emphasized that the gains from this
enhanced productivity be made available to all stakeholders
without distinction by providing them good governance and
ensuring fair returns to the farmers

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