The Case for Land Reforms

This article will attempt to answer the question why the redistribution of land ownership (i.e. land reform) is important and even necessary for our society's progress and development. Why there remains a crying need to concretely study the question of agrarian land ownership and all it implies in terms of political and economic power distribution and its social fallout in the rural milieu. Let us begin with an examination of how the present land ownership patterns originated and evolved. A discussion of the pattern of agrarian land ownership must necessarily take as its main focus the areas where agriculture is the mainstay. That inevitably means the provinces of Punjab and Sindh. The other two provinces, NWFP and Balochistan, with the exception of some relatively limited areas where canal fed or barani cultivation exists, have economies that are mixed pastoral/agricultural, an economic base reflective of their surviving tribal structures.