Hari Welfare Association (HWA) urged the Sindh government to implement immediate land reforms, redistributing millions of acres of state agricultural land currently controlled by feudal and tribal elites.
This call to action, on the International Day of Peasants, comes in response to the concentration of approximately 80% of agricultural land in the hands of just 5% of families in Sindh, leaving sharecroppers and rural workers struggling, stated in a press release.
Akram Khaskheli, President of HWA, highlighted that since the land reforms of the 1970s, rural communities have reaped little benefit from the region’s agricultural wealth. He emphasized that the absence of land distribution perpetuates debt bondage, with peasants lacking resources despite their contributions to food and cotton production.
The HWA criticized the tokenistic Landless Hari Project of 2008 and the ineffectiveness of schemes under Benazir Bhutto’s name, which have fostered dependency on state support. They lamented the lack of substantial measures to assist landless sharecropping peasants, who form a significant portion of Sindh’s agricultural workforce.
The association expressed disappointment over the government’s stance against the Sindh High Court’s pro-peasant judgement of 2019, arguing that the government’s actions contradict its pro-peasant policies. HWA also noted that despite receiving significant electoral support from rural workers, the government has failed to implement laws beneficial to peasants, like the Sindh Tenancy Act of 1950 and the Sindh Women Agriculture Workers Act of 2019.
HWA called for immediate distribution of state agricultural lands among landless peasants, stressing that such reforms are crucial for the genuine development of Sindh’s rural areas.