On the Inside

You say you are not feudal ``However, I refuse to call my family “feudals” because we do not act like feudals`` but then you contradict yourself by saying ``we feudals will be no more in a generation or two....``. From your article it seemed like you do take a lot of pride in being one.

Re: # 36

Romair,

A similar comment I heard in a Wilbur Smith novel Golden Fox where one of the persons who is shown as buying minerals from a sanctions hit Rhodesia tell the heroine (his sister) ``I am a white knight of capitalism by buying from them at a lower pice I am slowly eroding them and weakening them any structure that gives privilege based on your skin colour is wrong`` and then even advocates that blacks should be educated and made part of the economic pie so that they have a vested interest in education and preserving the system and not become Bolshies like ANC. Considreing smith is a South African and the book was written in the 70`s it tells you volumes about the negativeness of Feudalism.

Also correct me if I am wrong is not the Mullah also part of this game in Rural areas telling the peasant it is a crime against Allah to rebel against whose salt you have eaten or run away from a master whose ``loan`` you have not paid back. I know a feudal in Delhi Nawab of Najibabad Shahid Hamid who was telling very proudly about such things

feudals are gentle, sweet, and benevolent. 99% of them basically exist because they sold out to the brits. once the gora left in 47, the feudals kept their original role of keeping the plebs in line!

Re: # 44

Ahmedmadani......what are you sniffing?.And, if your pride gets pricked by having to import vegetables from india, then DON`T.We don`t care.We`re getting rid of our excess produce and making money off it.Otherwise it wil probably go to feed livestock or used as mulch.False pride doesn`t get anyone anywhere.You guys can`t even feed yourselves and you call yourselves a country.

Dear MS. Shah,

Your essay in needless and misses all the points. The truth is: Feudalism is here and is the root cause of almost all the political and social ill in the feudal-belt(s). But as you say, education and awareness is spreading (no thanks to the feudals) and shall take its course.

On the issue of urbans asking for bloody uprisings against the lords. Pray tell me, how many such revolutionary advocates have you come accoss?

From pure logical prospective, on can understand the motives of your piece, but do we really need another ``apologist`` for our feudals lords.

MAV

Re: # 41 Mr.Romair this land reform will make problems. Those workers have no management experience and they can not do good decisions. Agriculture is difficult job at management level due to lots of problems. Bogus fertilizers to water to harvesting marketing etc. Those working hands can not do justice. Also land will be broken up in pieces of worthless size as those workers breed like crazy mices and every 20 years with 6 to 7 children their land will be reduced to nothing. You can not use modern machinary to produce wealth from land. Also it will become like India and these farmers will go socialist ways breaking everything and creating nothing and will lead to godless socialist type politics like in India. And there will be famile like India. We are getting little signs in our land as socialist slogans are hurting us. It is shameful to bring food from India like Onion , tomatos, Garlick, cattle now Sugar and Mollasis also and all of above wheats about 1 million tonne. You have just Idea what will happen when land distribution starts like India and commies and socialist ideas etc. Present situatation may be bad but land reforms will look them great. Most are not good, they have freedom to whatever job they can find but they have zero skills. They should not be over romanticised poor have problems.
What I do not like people having industry just make target of landowners to divert attention.
People like yourself of YLH in electonics , computer and out sourcing and computer prgramming employers will not give same justice to computer coolies working for your companies.
As you have said earlier Indians have no management skills so employ as accounts or engineers in usa in your organization. It will not be right to make manager some south Indian computer man working in factyory batch of Intelligence workers. He will not be able to make proper decision. Same way just they work for you does not mean you need to distribute your wealth to all south Indians as you propose for land reforms. That little Indian feels just like farm hand I work I should have equal share and its wrong. Manager needs to manage.
Now Indians have 12 companies on American markets and that cheat Mittal Steel (MT) is there . How can MT hsa 3.5 P/E ratio. One of natures distribution scheme is good for us. If they had management skills we had ``BIG`` problems.
We do not need commie reforms. If some body wants then let it be for industry and Hightechy industry also. Some times I feel there is no money in high or lowtek but more mone in NO Technology. Look from housing to tanker water providers and teaching classes.
Again let system work its way.

I do not like partisian attitude. Landlords have their land just like factory owners have factory. If you want to confistacate land why not do same with factory. Both should have right to their property and protection. If you take away lands from landowners why not take all money and factory to workers. If YLH, ROmai etc people in High tech making and owning business and nobody says their factory given to all workers why landowners are not provided same laws. Social progress will happen with time and economic progress.

More cruelity will done in name of helping poor. If it is only poor people then why not allow free trade so we can get all cheap goods from china and India.

Landowners is just object of attacks by everybody as most are poor and will not get anything even if all land is taken only there will be famine and no food.

Pakistan could use a few Cesar Chavezs...........

``Chávez was born near Yuma, Arizona. He became a migrant farm worker at age 10.... He attended over 30 schools, but ended his formal education with the eighth grade.......While on leave he sat in the white section of a movie thearter and refused to move, forshadowing his future exploits.......... in 1962 to form the National Farm Workers Association, which became the United Farm Workers.

In 1965, Chávez and the NFWA led a strike of California grape-pickers in demand of higher wages, along with a national boycott of California table grapes, which, five years later resulted in the first major victory for US migrant workers......

He became an American labor rights hero for supporting labor rights for Mexican migrant farm workers. Chávez was also an ethical vegetarian and a strong proponent of nonviolence.........

UFW:

``The United Farm Workers of America were founded in 1962 by César Chávez and Dolores Huerta. This union changed from a workers` rights organization that helped workers get unemployment insurance to that of a union of farmworkers almost overnight, when the National Farm Workers Association went out on strike in support of the mostly Filipino farmworkers in Delano, California in 1965. The NFWA, soon renamed the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee and then the United Farm Workers, launched a boycott of table grapes that, after five years of struggle, finally won a contract with the major grape growers in California. The union then brought in thousands more lettuce workers in the Salinas and Imperial Valleys and orange workers in Florida employed by subsidiaries of Coca-Cola.

The union publicly adopted the principles of non-violence championed by Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Chávez used fasts both as means of drawing public attention to the union`s cause and to assert control over an often unruly union. However, it also resorted to both sabotage and violence, including such things as nail ``stars`` scattered over roadways and throughout crops to flatten tires, two-by-fours straddled off either side of vehicles running between rows of grapes destroying the crops, mobs blocking roads and crop rows, attacking people in their vehicles and other such violence typical of the 1930`s union fights. These measures were used not only against large corporate growers in Tulare, and Kern Counties, California, but also against small ``mom & pop`` family farmers with less than 10 acres (40,000 m²) in places such as Parlier.``

A question for Bina:

``workers` rights organization that helped workers get unemployment insurance``

Do you provide unemployment insurance to your employees (sharecroppers)?............

Aha_Snark #39: ``No matter how humane the treatment of sharecroppers, it is a flawed relationship because continued humane treatment is not a right of the sharecropper but a boon of the landlord.``

You have hit the nail on the head.......

People tend to only look at the size of the land, and comment that Western farms are much larger than Pakistani feudals` landholdings. More important than the size of the land is the control over the employee. In the West, agricultural is basically an industry. And the legal system is so strong, that any landonwer cannot exploit the worker. This is a far cry from the pre-civil war days, when the plantation owner could keep slaves. Eventually a civil war had to be fought, to break the back of the plantation owner........

The only sharecroppers left in the USA now are the Mexican illegal immigrants who come in to pick strawberries and apples. And they do get exploited. However, even they have some legal rights and unions supporting them............

In Pakistan, the legal system cannot be developed nor enforced in favor of the sharecroppers. Because the political offices are dominated by landowners, themselves. This is why landowners are always in politics, in any country of the world. They want to ensure that the labor is not liberated.

People had been writing about the strikes at the privitization of PTCL. Why are there no strikes in the feudal areas? Why are the sharecroppers not able to form powerful unions and demand rights, facilities, etc. Why are they still dependent on the mood of Bina Shahs of the world? The average employee of PTCL has many times the rights of the average sharecroppers. The heads of some of these labor unions in Pakistan, specifically the govt. owned companies, are as powerful as the Vice-Presidents of the company............

Even if we assume Bina Shah`s statements about the benevolence of her family are accurate, as long as the structure for exploitation remains, sooner or later someone in her family will go off the track, and will start using it to carry out all types of crimes against the labor............

There is only way to solve this problem. Give the land to the person tilling it, and get rid of sharecropping and the exploitations that go around it. And then provide enough stability to the sharecropper to allow him to establish his farm. This does not mean every single one will get land. That will divided the land into tiny pieces. But the distribution should be enough to ensure that no one can dominate the life of the laborer.........

Otherwise, Bina Shah`s daughter will go to Harvard and write articles on Chowk. While her sharecroppers` daughters will still be a sharecropper, dependent on the mood swings of Bina`s relivatives............

In my home state, Kerala, which had the first democratically elected communist government in the world, many many decades ago, land reforms were carried out with vigour. Some of my richer relatives also owned excessive land and this land was duly redistributed. The palatial bungalows and imported 1950s American cars decayed slowly year after year. Some would calle that sad. Yet, the fact that a manual labourer, a tapper of rubber, who now owned his own sliver of land, and still works for my relatives, was educated enough to have life insurance, send his daughters to medical school and discuss world politics with his friends is cause for some amount of joy.

In states such as Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh in South India, land reform was never carried out with any sort of vigour and therefore, large landowners and bonded labour[1] has persisted to a large scale in those areas.

No matter how humane the treatment of sharecroppers, it is a flawed relationship because continued humane treatment is not a right of the sharecropper but a boon of the landlord.

regards,
A_S

[1] http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl1716/17160450.htm

Romair,
Thank you for sharing your ideas. Very useful!

Regards

Bina,
The backlash against Feudalism in this country (and indeed any country) is a simple case of a reaction against too much political, financial and psychological power that naturally tends to accumulate into the hands of a feudal family. There is really no mystery to it: Power corrupts - it is human nature - and every society tries to do its best to safe-guard the collective interest of its people by dissolving this power through land-reforms and land value taxes etc.

It`s nothing personal against the feudalist - merely a case of a society trying to protect itself.

Faithless-Pakistani,
http://pakistan-sucks.blogspot.com/

Zakk #35: ``Omair your observations are accurate but only to a pointin economic terms what a landlord represents is a monopoly.``

The observations are not just mine. They are internationally recognized and accepted. There is not a country in the world, which views feudalism as a positive. And there is not a country in the world, which has built successful first world economies, based on feudalism. Even, in South Asia, the countries that had the opportunity to remove it, like India, did so immediately............

The landlord represents more than a monopoly. The term monopoly is primarily used in the economic context. A person who owns all the textile mills in a city has a business monopoly. A feudal has a business monopoly, as well. But he also has a social monopoly. He controls the livelihood of the employee, because he owns the land that the employee lives on, and the complete social structure around it.

It would be the equivalent of a textile magnate who owns all the textile mills and the land of the city in which the mills are located. He could not only fire the employee, he could kick the empolyee out of the city...........

Omair your observations are accurate but only to a point..in economic terms what a landlord represents is a monopoly. Pakistan is filled with monopolies...while you say the Legharis could get a dog to win..that is not true the Legharis have suffered several famous reversals at the polling booth..the dynamic changes when the establishmet gets involved..Pakistans ruling class ( very Mughalesque..) creates new family dynasties at will..

Your comment about the Jatt biradri..surley voting for someone on the basis of biradri or tribe is the same? Pakistans ruling establishment ..despise political parties and prefer creating candidates elected on the basis of biradri, feudal agrarian/Industrial strength. The solution is far more radical and is not solely restricted to land owners..I know families who own land ..have not sent their kids overseas..and while having relatives in politics they may not be on friendly terms with them or those people may not be very influential in politics..do they constitue feudals?

Also the Sharifs hold over Lahore is considerable..they swept most of the seats from Lahore and many of the people left who were elected had very little in the sense of political name...

The key factor is development..Imran Khan has been pouring in funds into Mianwali and because of that he defeated the Shadikhel-Rorki alliance against him in 2002..in Swat the old ruling class while influential are not guaranteed to win electorally.

Bina, thanks for this fascinating, candid, and of course very personal insight. I do (did) not know too much about the feudal structure in Pakistan but always suspected that it would be similar to what we had in Bihar (let me hasten to add, before I was born). I think you are more in tune with the reality than some of these “professor-types” who grace these pages.

Several generations ago, Bihar had many, many zamindars. When that system was dismantled and land ceilings imposed, many such individuals simply cooked the books and divided up their land holdings under names of other (real or non-existent) family members. So, while the ex-zamindars were officially no different from other citizens, their economic clout remained the same and they continued to dominate their localities. Mistreatment of poor people was relatively rare (most of these ex-zamindar were individually benign despots at a local level and many in their next generations became members of the intelligentsia and had a quite liberal outlook) but mistreatment of “commoners” did occasionally take place, partly because there were no checks and balances of any kind. This situation continued for approximately two generations until their own families grew large enough to divvy up the economic power and simultaneously the clout of Marxist-type outfits rose. Unfortunately, very few of these families thought of switching to an industry mode (like your family seems to have done), or Bihar would not have been in such dire straits (at least in my view) as it is now; but the mindset was very different back then (and continued to remain so, until perhaps very recently).

In any case, I see no reason for you to be forced (or to feel a need) to defend what your family members or forefathers may or may not have done. A person’s life and work must speak for itself and for nobody else’s. Pure and simple! If anyone disagrees, just ask them to take a hike!

Notes:

[I have seen my father and my uncle and cousins travel to the lands for days, standing in the fields in 110 F heat, … week in and week out, in the heat, in the cold, whether or not they`re sick….]
The farmers’ lot is a hard one – all over the world! (Yes, including the U.S.A.)

Re: # 32
I agree with Most of what Romair has said.... its a pretty good Insightfull Observation.

I aslo agree with his analysis about the compostion of Military..... but then thats another topic..

....... It all boils down to One factor..... the desire for Power /privilages/and control...
No one Once in power.... likes to loose it.....

The other thing.... i want to add is... they are pretty adaptable.... like romair said....
they have recognized ......and have elevated themselves....to the More advanced ..and more worldly crowd..... thus actually widening the advantage gap......
During Nawaz ERA many even tried their Hands at becoming Industrialists..... as that was another way to consolidate and keep their relative advantage intact....


....But I would like to point out a New phenomenon..... It deals with the so called most middle .... most educated....and most literates...... claimnts in Pakistan...which are concentrated in a WELL called Karachi....
...especially Altaf Hussain of MQM.... this urban phenomenon is also driven by the same desire.... to OWN .... and Control Lives of people....
....The Path he took is debatable......and needs more analysis..... unbaised....scrutiny..and clear analysis..... But then thats another Topic....
The bottom Line is..... He too now enjoys the Same position.... ... which the feudals
enjoy...... that is complete control and complete immunity regarding that control over the Lives of the Subjects.....
........LIke Feudals.... who perpetuate their control using the FEAR factor....and denial ..... this Phenomenon also does the SAME........and I can safely Call that...
A New Blood sucking Plant....in the Jungle where Older Blood sucking Plants like
feudalism..... Army......and Industrialists.... live.....

..... what intrigues me......... a hari.... is at best hazily aware of his rights....and has no concept or awareness of any way to escape ..... Yet... here in this urban phenomenan..... .... most of them are willing to be.... exploited and killed and blinded
by It......infact .... they jealously gaurd their inability


Any insight on that....?