The Segmented ‘Rural Elite’: Agrarian Transformation and Rural Politics in Pakistani Punjab

Awkward Classes and India’s Rural Development

“…It cannot reproduce outside capitalist relations: they are its existence conditions. Second, while the units of PCP are households, petty commodity producers can develop ‘micro-conglomerate’ portfolios of gendered activity, varying seasonally, straddling economic sectors, displaced across territory, bridging rural and urban, fusing (migrant) wage-work and its remittances with PCP, able to be destroyed yet easily resurrected (Chattopadhyay, 1965; Harriss-White 2008; Jan 2017). While it may include a stream capable of differentiating into capital and wage labour, most PCP households reproduce themselves as PCP while spaces are created into which PCP can expand.…”

“…So PCP remains as a residue, effectively part of the reserve army of labour (Patnaik, 2012). The second awkward class is the class presiding over circulation—‘merchant’s capital’, also known as ‘commercial capital’ (CC) and/or the ‘produce traders’ (Banaji, 2016a; 2020; 2021 6 ; Jan, 2017).…”

Agrarian change, populism, and a new farmers' movement in 21st century Pakistani Punjab

“…Due to demographic division over time, individuals may own upward of 100 acres of land and, operating through families, may control thousands of acres. The third stratum comprises what Jan (2019) has referred to as the “second tier” of the rural elite: capitalist farmers below the aristocracy who tend to control from 25 up to 100–200 acres. As of 2010, even a 25‐acre farm was among the top 2.5% of farms by area in Punjab (see Table 1).…”

“…As of 2010, even a 25‐acre farm was among the top 2.5% of farms by area in Punjab (see Table 1). The second‐tier capitalist farmers are different from the aristocracy because the former, from their emergence in the 1960s, have “farmed more intensively and had lesser political influence” (Jan, 2019, p. 184). However, the distinction between the two strata requires some nuance: Despite caste differences (that we describe in Section 3) some of the former have been able, through legal and illegal business acumen, to acquire considerable political and economic influence at local and national levels (see Martin, 2016 for a paradigmatic example).…”

“…The state also regulated prices of key food and cash crops (wheat, rice, sugarcane, and cotton) to incentivize their production and ensure food security. Yet, as Jan (2019, p. 184) notes, there was segmentation in Punjab among capitalist farmers between a landed aristocracy and a second tier of relatively smaller landowner (variably estimated as owning 25–100/200 acres) whose holdings were large enough to capture “economies of scale of tube wells and tractors, but who farmed more intensively and had lesser political influence.” Regional variation was also important: By the mid‐1970s, leaders of the Maoist‐oriented Mazdoor Kisan Party noted that central Punjab districts, where landholdings were relatively smaller, had more fully developed capitalist relations of production, while in the southern Punjab districts (e.g., Dera Ghazi Khan, Rajanpur, and Rahim Yar Khan), capitalist relations were developing more slowly insofar as these remained dominated by large estates farmed by sharecroppers (Ali & Raza, 2022).…”