KARACHI: On the occasion of the ‘International Day of Peasant Struggles’, the Hari Welfare Association (HWA) has demanded immediate land reforms to distribute lands among landless farmers in Sindh.
It said in a statement issued on 17th April that millions of acres of state land along the banks of the Indus River should be given to haris (farmers). It deplored that these lands were occupied by feudal and tribal elite across all rural districts of Sindh.
Of the existing landholdings of around 80 percent of agricultural lands, only five percent are under the control of peasant families in Sindh.
HWA President Akram Khaskheli said in the statement that despite the 1970s land reforms, rural people of Sindh could never benefit from the agriculture economy and land resources. “Thus, debt bondage has increased steadily. Food sovereignty is the fundamental right of everyone, including sharecropping peasants and rural workers, but that is not possible without distributing agricultural lands among them,” he said. “Those who cultivate land for food and cotton do not have enough to eat and wear. In 2008, the [Sindh] government launched the Landless Hari Project, which provided a lease to people for only 15 years. But it was only a token project,” he added.
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The elite and feudal lords have occupied or purchased more lands as they continue to subjugate poor rural workers and sharecropping peasants. Thus, rural poverty has not decreased but increased, according to Mr Khaskheli.
The statement also said that schemes under the name of Benazir Bhutto have turned people into beggars and created a vicious habit of depending on state support.
The HWA regretted that except for rosy laws, such as the Sindh Women Agriculture Workers Act of 2019, the government has not taken much measures to support millions of landless sharecropping peasants, who constitute around 80pc of the total agricultural workforce.
It also added that all agriculture-related schemes aim to benefit the big landlords, whether it is the provision of tractors on easy instalments or subsidies on account of floods and rains.
However, sharecropping peasants receive nothing. Therefore, a large section of the rural population barely survives on meagre livelihood sources. Their children remain malnourished and they are compelled to send or take their children to work; thus, 6.4 million children are out of school in Sindh.
HWA also regretted that it has been five years, and the government of Sindh has not yet withdrawn its application from the Supreme Court against the Sindh High Court’s landmark pro-peasant judgement of 2019. This reveals the government’s practical anti-peasant approach, quite against its verbal and written policies and laws. The government stands firm in going against the pro-peasant rights judgement of the court.
The HWA lamented that the current government has received a large number of votes from peasants and rural workers thanks to which it is able to form a government for a third time. However, those people who have helped them to come into power are not treated well in any matter of agriculture, especially when it comes to the implementation of the pro-peasant provisions in the law.
Moreover, the HWA statement said, for around 75 years, the Sindh Tenancy Act of 1950 has not been implemented; rather, in 2013 and in other years, the government changed certain provisions in the law to favour landlords.
The law governs the rights and relationships between landlords and tenants, including sharecroppers, in the rural areas of Sindh. However, practically, only landlords govern this relationship and enjoy all rights, and peasants remain poor and marginalised.
The statement also said that peasant and rural women are unable to utilise provisions provided in the Sindh Women Agriculture Workers Act of 2019, and they do not know how to unionise and be able to access food and livelihood resources. It said that Sindh has created many human rights institutions dealing with different groups of the population, such as the Sindh Human Rights Commission, Sindh Commission on the Status of Women and Sindh Child Protection Authority. However, human rights institutions have done no appreciable work for peasants and rural workers, largely because the government controls them; thus, they are unable to hold them accountable.
The HWA urged the Sindh government to first distribute state agricultural land among the landless peasant men and women, which would bring real change and development in the rural areas of Sindh.
Published in Dawn, April 18th, 2025