Pakistan Kisan Rabta Committee, a coalition of 23 organisations of farmers and labourers from all over the country, is meeting today at Minar-e-Pakistan to voice its concerns and demand its rights. The last historic Kisan moot was held in Lahore in 1952 at Mochi Gate.

The agenda of this conference is to eliminate feudalism from the country and voice small farmers’ right to own the lands they have been cultivating since centuries. “It will be a good opportunity for small farmers (mazaareen) of the country to raise their voice because no mainstream political party is interested in solving their problems as landlords and feudals hold key positions in all major political parties of the country,” says Afzal Saroya, Coordinator Pakistan Kisan Rabta Committee.

According to him more than 55 per cent of Pakistani farmers own less than five acres of land while many of them have none. Most of the farmers do not even know what the government is doing with them by introducing corporate farming and inviting multinational companies in this field. “This will finish off millions of small tillers and reduce national food supply,” he says.
“Pakistan is already facing a situation where small farmers, unable to produce enough to support their livelihood, are abandoning farming in search of employment in urban areas. Corporate farming will only aggravate this problem,” says Saroya. “Farmers are not being educated on how to survive in WTO regime. We are trying to educate them on these issues through Kisan Conference.”

Talk to farmers and most of them do not know about corporate farming or WTO. 60 years old Muhammad Ali who is a farmer of Wasanky, a village in Sialkot district, has heard these words for the first time in his life. “What is this?” He asks, when I questioned him about WTO and corporate farming. His problem is that his children want to sell their agricultural land to some land developer. “They are unable to earn their livelihood from this land,” he tells TNS.

Farmers who make almost 60 per cent of the total population of Pakistan are perhaps the most backward and unorganised community in the country. According to Economic Survey of Pakistan 2005-06, 44.8 per cent of total labour force in the country is directly employed in agriculture while 66 per cent of the country’s total population living in rural areas is directly or indirectly linked with agriculture for their livelihood and its contribution to total output (GDP) is just around 22 per cent. The figures depict a very obvious picture of the state of agriculture as well as that of the farmers of Pakistan.

The history of Kisan Conferences in Pakistan is very old but the most successful conference in the history of Pakistan was held in Toba Tek Singh back in March 1970. It was arranged by Chaudhry Fateh Muhammad, the then president of Kisan Committee, West Pakistan. “Around 0.5 million peasants from all over the country participated in that conference,” says Fateh Muhammad who is president of Pakistan Kisan Committee, while talking to TNS on telephone from Toba Tek Singh. The most prominent people who spoke on that conference, according to him, were Maulana Abdul Hameed Bhashani, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Ahmad Rahi, Mairaj Muhammad Khan and Abid Manto. “Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s land reforms of 1973 were an outcome of that Kisan Conference,” he says.

Chaudhry Fateh Muhammad says after that successful show Pakistan People’s Party hijacked the farmers’ agenda. “Most of the people from our party also joined Bhutto when he raised slogans of ’Roti, Kapra aur Makan’. Bhutto wanted to do a lot for small farmers and he actually took initiative in the form of land reforms but that was subverted when most of the landlords and feudals joined PPP. These feudals exerted so much pressure upon Bhutto that he changed his mind,” he tells TNS.

At present farmers are facing a lot of problems because of their sheer backwardness. “Farming is a tough job that does not earn much at the end of the day. This is why farmers, especially smaller ones, have found it so hard to educate themselves or their children.” According to him this is also the reason why farmers have been unable to raise their voice even for their very basic rights.

Chaudhry Fateh Muhammad thinks that farmers need to have their own political party to solve their problems. “Kisan Conferences can prove a very good opportunity to launch a purely political party of farmers,” he thinks.
Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan, leader of Pakistan Peoples Party, does not agree with the view of Chaudhry Fateh Muhammad. He thinks in fact it was PPP that provided opportunity to farmers to join mainstream politics. “The 1973 Federal Land Reforms Commission was headed by veteran peasant leader Sheikh Muhammad Rasheed and Bhutto respected all the recommendations of that commission,” he tells TNS. “PPP is not a party of peasants only; it is a coalition of all classes of society, so nobody should blame PPP alone for not working for it.”

This is the fourth Kisan Conference being held by Pakistan Kisan Rabta Committee; the first one was held in Chishtian in 2003, second in Mirpur Khas in 2004, third was held in Toba Tek Singh in 2005. Organisers think that Kisan Conferences have been helping a lot in organising farmers’ community.

According to Farooq Tariq, general secretary Labour Party Pakistan, ten thousand farmers and labourers from all over the country are expected to attend the conference to discuss the issues of peasants and labourers. “Kisan culture is on the verge of extinction. Farmers are facing high costs of production due to excessive use of fertilisers, pesticides, commercial seeds and high cost of irrigation water,” Tariq tells TNS. In this scenario farmers are tempted to sell off their land at the first opportunity they get. Farooq Tariq is of the view that government should ban construction in the name of industrial development on prime agricultural lands.

Farmers from different areas of Pakistan are facing similar problems. Gul Hassan of Sindhi Haari Tehreek (member of Pakistan Kisan Rabta Committee) thinks that feudalism is the biggest problem small farmers and haaries of Sindh are facing these days. He says that Sindh played a vital role in the development of agriculture in the country as it remained the native place of many crops. Unfortunately, the farming community of this region is beset with multiple problems like economic traps by multinational companies in the shape of high yielding varieties and pesticides, inappropriate policies of governments and existing social conditions.

“The whole scenario is creating an unsuitable environment for the farming community of Sindh. This has resulted in destruction of agriculture and has damaged socio-economic conditions in Sindh,” Hassan tells TNS. “Platforms like Kisan conference can prove a very good opportunity to act as a pool of problems of farmers of different areas of the country and to raise a collective voice against all these issues.”

Organisations including Pakistan Kisan Committee, Anjuman Mazaraeen Punjab, Sindh Haari Tehreek, Sarhad Agriculture Development Board, Anjuman Zameendaran Chaghi and Labour Party Pakistan are in the coalition arranging this conference.