A Case for Land Reforms

Why has Pakistan failed to ride the trajectory of long-term sustainable growth like South Korea, Taiwan, or Japan? Jamil Nasir’s book “Development Challenges of Pakistan: Constraints and Choices,” published by Palgrave Macmillan, is an attempt to search for answers to the question in the light of empirical studies and data analysis. It is predominantly an academic book with a multi-disciplinary approach. The book contains 15 chapters and three case studies. It is a voluminous book containing over 600 pages. Some salient features of the book are as follows:

First, the book blends academic discussion and practical policy prescriptions. It gives an overview of the scholarly papers in detail, analyzes the data, and then distills down the discussion and analysis to public policy prescriptions. Second, it is well-researched. It is hard to find a single claim or proposition not supported by academic papers and data from national and international sources. Third, the book takes a longer view of economic growth and development. Fourth, leftist leanings are very much visible in the entire book. Fifth, the book is readable despite being thick with data and references due to simple style and references to anecdotes, literary characters, and works spanning various disciplines of knowledge.

For example, while emphasizing the shortcomings of the formal justice system, Nasir writes: “The English language would be incomprehensible in most probability only to the disputants for whom all English is being spoken and written in the court. The disputants or accused most often find them in a situation of Franz Kafka’s Joseph K. in the ‘Trial’ who did not know why he was being tried”. At the start of the sub-section on gender inequality, Nasir, before bringing numbers and studies to support his claims and prescriptions, writes: “Bapsi Sidhwa, in her well-acclaimed novel ‘The Pakistani Bride,’ discusses the dilemmas females face in a patriarchal culture. Such depiction of the suppression of women’s agency is not confined to tribal and rural cultures. Tehmina Durrani’s ‘My Feudal Lord’ is another well-rendered description of the dire consequences a woman, even with brain and beauty hailing from a privileged background, can face when she challenges the restrictions and norms imposed by a feudal society.” Similar references to literary work, books, and old reports are scattered at various places in the book, which keep the readers engaged.

The book, however, raises several controversial propositions that can be best described as revolutionary besides being a lengthy read. For example, it is argued that microcredit and cash transfers are ineffective tools for poverty alleviation. According to the author, for poverty alleviation, you need to give the poor households illiquid assets, and when it comes to illiquid assets, skills and land should be at the top as these cannot be easily disposed of or wasted. The author makes a case for land reforms, including distributing state land to the poor for poverty alleviation. Similarly, he argues that inequality in Pakistan is structural as Palma ratios (the ratio of income of the top 10% or 1% to the bottom 40%) has not witnessed any positive change. The top 10% captures over 300% of the income compared to the bottom 40% of the population, while the top 1 %’s income has hovered around 120% compared to the bottom 40% in the last 4 to 5 decades.

Land reforms, imposition of high taxes on 1 %, promulgation of law for generic medicine, declaration of health as a fundamental right, changing civil service structure, and creating linkages between the formal and informal system are not easy to undertake due to path dependence, inertia, and vested interests. Still, at least we can start discussion on these seemingly hard propositions and public policy prescriptions discussed quite convincingly in the book.