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Let’s start
with a very important distinction: the one between landholders
and ‘feudals’. The former are people who
have been in the business of agriculture for more than
one generation. They have inherited large tracts of
land, thousands of acres in many instances, and their
methods of land management are processes that have evolved
over generations. On the other hand, Pakistan also sees
landowners who possess farms on a much smaller scale:
a holding of 50-150 acres is typical of such a setup.
In Punjab, the system for settling
people on the lands works in such a manner that land
is set aside for the development of the village, whereas
in Sindh, no formal system exists, and people have settled
on the lands in small hamlets that can grow into larger
villages; the case for ownership is decidedly more ambiguous
in this province. A landowner may own the land the village
is settled on, but they do not ‘own’ the
village and they certainly do now ‘own’
the people who work on their lands. One of the major
accusations is that feudals exploit and mishandle the
people who work for them. I agree that not every landowner
is honest, but more than you would suspect actually
care about their people and work hard to bring development
to their areas of influence, cooperating with and guiding
the government on how best to use the funds allocated
by the Centre for rural uplift.
The question of mistreating any
of their haris, or sharecroppers, does not even arise,
nor does the question of them sanctioning or approving
the rape of women. Although I have heard of cases where
landowners have kept their haris in chains to keep them
from running away with large advances of money before
completing any of their contracted work, there
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