16 The Rural Elite and Agricultural Development in Pakistan

Abstract

An extraordinary air of optimism pervades most discussions of the 'Green Revolution' in Pakistan.1 It is a kind of optimism which perhaps obscures some fundamental questions which might be raised about its characteristics and consequences and about alternative paths to development. Scholarly debate has, in the past, been focused on explanations for the breakthrough in the application of new technology in and, by that token, for earlier stagnation,2 or it has been concerned with incidental difficulties to be resolved to allow the 'Green Revolution' to continue on its course.3 There is, however, a growing uneasiness about some of the implications of the current pattern of development.4 The essentially optimistic view of the 'Green Revolution' in the economic sphere is translated into the political and social spheres by Burki.5 He argues that Middle class farmers owning between 50 and 100 acres of land in the Punjab (have) produced the revolution in West Pakistan's agriculture and are its main beneficiaries and, furthermore, that a new political equation was established between the political regime in Pakistan and this class, with its new found economic power and local influence, whom the regime has 'helped to emancipate politically'. The rise of the capitalist farmer, the rural middle class, Burki argues has eroded the political and economic power of the 'landed aristocracy' Our analysis does not support such a conclusion.