Rural Poverty and the Green Revolution: The Lessons from Pakistan

Abstract

This article argues that the Green Revolution in Pakistan has failed to live up to its promise of ending hunger, unemployment and poverty. An analysis of the time series data of the past four decades points to the worsening of inequalities in income and asset distribution, contributing to the poverty of one in every three Pakistanis [World Bank, 2002, 1992]. The article measures the distributional impact of the Green Revolution in three allied areas of tenurial security, rural employment and rural household income, which tended to decline correspondingly, worsening income and asset distribution. Based on this evidence, this article makes a case for equitable land distribution in rural Pakistan, where half of the population is landless [World Bank, 2002].

Notes

Tarique Niazi teaches Sociology in the Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin, SSS 422 Schneider Hall, 105 Garfield Avenue, Eau Claire, WI 54702, USA. Email: [email protected]. The author would like to thank Dr William R. Freudenburg for his continuing support to his past and present research work, and also Tom Brass for editorial comment.

It is somewhat curious, to put it no more strongly, that Borlaug is not even mentioned, let alone included among the list of those invited by the World Bank [ Meier and Seers, 1984] to reminisce about their role in and celebrate their contributions to development studies. Whether or not one agrees with his views, it is undeniably the case that Borlaug was a ‘pioneer’ in this particular field.

Early discussions of the issues raised by those conducting research into the socio-economic dimensions of the Green Revolution can be found in collections edited by Weitz [1965], Wharton [1970], Robinson [1971: 123ff.], and Hunter et al. [1976]. A major contribution to the debate about the role of agriculture in economic development is that by Myrdal [1968]: for a specifically Soviet take on the latter, see Ulyanovsky and Pavlov [1973].

When assessing the impact of the Green Revolution, particularly in Asia, it is important to remember that it is only relatively the most recent intervention of this kind in an area where such initiatives have a long history. The colonial era, for example, was characterized by periodic investigations into peasant agriculture, and attempts to raise its productivity. Over the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, therefore, this concern was central not only to the research of Voelcker and Mann, but also to official investigations such as the Linlithgow Commission, and the commentaries on this [ Voelcker, 1897; Mann, 1967; Government of India, 1927; Gangulee, 1935; Huque, 1939; Roy and Sen, 1939].

The most trenchant critiques of the Green Revolution package and its effects have come from, among many others, Gadgil and Guha [1995], Griffin [1972, 1974, 1989], Glaeser [1987], Pearse, [1980], Cleaver [1972, 1977], Sharma [1973], Dasgupta [1977] and Frankel [1973, 1974].

See, for example, Gadgil and Guha [1995], Glaeser [1987], Pearse [1980], Frankel [1973, 1974] and Griffin [1972].

Agricultural growth rate is defined here as an annual change in the size of the agricultural sector's production, while its distributional impact is assessed for this analysis by considering changes in tenurial status, the labour absorption capacity of the agriculture sector, and rural household income. Tenurial status and the labour absorption capacity of the agriculture sector form the base of rural employment [ Mellor, 1966; Mellor and Moorti, 1971; Borlaug, 1972; Black, 1960] that in turn is expected to affect income distribution in both absolute and relative terms.

It goes without saying that this contradiction is both common historically and has the same root cause: the fact that nationalist parties are able to rally support in this populist manner by uniting classes with different and antagonistic interests against an external enemy – British colonialism, the representative in Pakistan of ‘alien’ Imperialist power. Delivering to all parties what is promised – implicitly or explicitly – by this multi-class alliance against a colonial power is, of course, difficult, if not wholly impossible.

It is worth noting here that 94 per cent of Pakistan's farmland is deficient in organic matter that is necessary for plant growth.

The figure for the 1990s refers to the period 1991–97 only.

This phenomenon, known as ‘reverse tenancy’, is a widely reported outcome of the Green Revolution in Asia. Rather than the usual pattern, whereby a rich landlord leases portions of his property to poorer tenants of one kind or another who cultivate it and pay its owner rent, therefore, ‘reverse tenancy’ involves the leasing by poor peasants of land to capitalist producers. Whether the latter ever return land acquired in this fashion to its original owners is a moot point.

Whether such workers – who are landless but unfree – can be categorized as a rural proletariat is, of course, a much debated issue, not least in the pages of this journal. For an account of unfree hari labour in Sind province some 60 years ago, and how such workers were bonded by debt to a zamindar, see Masud [1948: 9].

For this information, see ‘2.6 Million Acres of State Land to be Given to Landless’, The Dawn, 1 February 2002.

If nothing else, this underlines the importance of a land reform programme being not merely carried out but also – and more crucially – policed by the state. It is easy to declare on paper that a property has been expropriated and reallocated, it is far more difficult politically to ensure that those from whom land is taken and to whom it is given recognize and accept this fact.

Ghimire [2002] has commented on the political implications of this process, with particular respect to Brazil, Egypt and Nepal. Many of his observations are also applicable to Pakistan.

According to the World Bank, the total number of those in Pakistan living below the poverty line is 47 million out of a total population of 140 million.

This kind of linkage – seemingly unlimited borrowing licensed by rising crop and/or land prices – is by no means confined either to Pakistan or to the Third World. The same linkage was encountered in the US and Europe in the final decades of the twentieth century, where it generated farm surpluses, ‘food mountains’ (in the then-European Community), overproduction, set-asides and crisis in the farm sector on both sides of the Atlantic.

There is abundant evidence to support this contention. Gupta [1990], for instance, classified income inequalities as a negative factor of production. Earlier Haq [1983] argued along much the same lines, pointing out that reduced income inequalities had a positive impact on economic growth. His case study – East Punjab in India – underlined the extent to which reduced income inequities contributed to higher per acre farm yield, higher farm production and higher levels of income for different social groups.

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Tarique Niazi

Tarique Niazi teaches Sociology in the Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin, SSS 422 Schneider Hall, 105 Garfield Avenue, Eau Claire, WI 54702, USA. Email: [email protected]. The author would like to thank Dr William R. Freudenburg for his continuing support to his past and present research work, and also Tom Brass for editorial comment.