Sindh: 3,459 peasants to get land: Micro-credit, housing perks planned

[Naveed Yaseen]

By Sabihuddin Ghausi
KARACHI, Sept 4: The coalition government of the Pakistan People’s Party and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement plans to launch shortly a series of populist social welfare projects that include allotment of land to landless farmers, training programme for unemployed young people and housing and health insurance for the poor.

To what extent the Sindh government would be able to implement these projects is a question that needs to be answered by the leaders of coalition parties with reference to availability of resources.

These projects have been avowedly designed for empowerment of haris in rural areas. The second question is how haris could be empowered in the presence of mighty landlords in Sindh who enjoy all political, social and economic power and who do not hesitate to torture and kill their own daughters when they wish to marry a man of their choice.

A few PPP stalwarts do not consider grant of land to the landless an alternative to land reforms given by their late leader Zulfikar Ali Bhutto on January 5, 1977, under which the maximum holding had been fixed at 12,000 production index units (PIU) per farmer.

“We are organising a grand ceremony very soon to hand over ownership documents to 3,459 peasants,’’ a senior official of the government informed, who said 24,527 acres of barrage land is being given in six districts.

“Each hari will be given eight acres,’’ he said while stating that quite a good number of women are being given ownership of the land.

Immediately, after this announcement, the Sindh government invited applications from farmers. The last date is Sept 10 for which various hari organisations and NGOs are now demanding one month extension.

“The applications are being scrutinised by the Population Rural Support Programme (PRSP), an offshoot of the Aga Khan social network,’’ the official said.

He informed that PRSP was drawing up poverty profiles in rural districts and identifying appropriate farmers, who deserve.

The government has designed a programme under which beneficiaries of land grant policy would be given micro-credit facility with a full package of inputs for next rabi crop.

A total amount of Rs2 billion is said to have been provided to support the new owners of land.

Simultaneously, the PRSP is drawing up a scheme for bringing at least 600,000 poor households in rural areas under a health insurance scheme for which the annual premium of Rs250 per policy would be given by the Sindh government.

Under this scheme, the policy holder and his or her family members would be given an annual expenditure ceiling for hospitalisation, medicines purchase and consultancy.

A housing scheme for the poor is being launched in rural and urban areas.

To begin with, the government plans to set up two model villages in every district of the province where a comfortable house equipped with water supply, sanitation and power supply would be given to the poor.

To finance all these ambitious pro-poor programmes, the federal government is targeting poor to raise resources.

“When you increase sales tax rate from 15 to 16 per cent, the victim is poor,’’ an analyst in an international bank explained. He said a political party projects its socio-economic objectives and its social priorities through its taxation policies.

“Whom are you targeting to mop up money?’’ he asked.

The PPP government granted tax exemption to the filthy rich stock exchange operators from all gains of their business.

The Sindh government does not recover even Rs400 million tax on income of rich farmers, who still depend on government subsidy for irrigation, fertiliser and many other inputs.

About 250,000 small farmers with holdings as small as two and three acres have not been issued any ownership and title document for the last several years.

“Hardly 250 to 300 big landlord families are fleecing more than 20 million small and landless farmers in the province,’’ an activist of a Hari committee disclosed.

There is a Sindh Tenancy Act, 1950, but tenant farmers are most exploited.

“Even a popular party, like PPP, is dominated by ruthless waderas,’’ remarked a well-known PPP leader from Karachi, who is virtually sidelined.

As far as programmes, like housing and health insurance for poor, there are many in Pakistan, who recall populist employment generation programmes, like yellow cab, self-employment scheme of late Benazir Bhutto, which benefited the rich businessmen. “Unless you break the political, social and economic power of the super rich speculators, profiteers and hoarders in urban areas and 300 rural-based powerful landlord families, there is no chance of emancipation of women, prosperity of poor and economic progress and development of the country itself,” the dissident PPP leader remarked.

http://www.dawn.com/2008/09/05/ebr1.htm