Poverty and Property Rights in Pakistan
Policy debates aimed at alleviating poverty usually emphasize on the
monetary aspects of the issue. They tend to overlook the fact that factors like
access to and ownership of the natural resources and land has also got a crucial
role to play in this regard. They usually disregard the historical evidence
that whenever poor people and natural resources had been misused or abused, it
was due to the absence of the clear property rights.
Perhaps that is the reason that while reports generated by some of the top
institutions working on poverty alleviation and sustainable development in
Pakistan have been insisting upon the rights of the poor, including the human rights,
environmental, legal, political, women’s or collective rights, there is none
who would take into account the importance of the property rights.
Matter of fact, there are no two opinions on the point that property or land is
one of the most critical assets, particularly for the poor dwelling in the
rural settlements as it ensures a means of livelihood for them through the cultivation
and sale of crops and other products. For the poor, regardless of living in
urban or rural areas, property rights ensure housing, self respect and a
significant means of accumulation.
However, without having a clear title to their houses, farms, stores or so
forth, the poor cannot sell their assets or use them as collateral for credit
to invest into the land. Moreover, since most of the times such assets are subject
to seizure at the whim of the revenue department, assertion of ownership by the
government or the rich and the powerful land mafia, the poor always remain
reluctant to invest in improving them. Besides other virtues of the property
rights, studies
in the South Asia have proved them as important determinants to food
entitlement, amid which, they are the most essential means of perpetuating or
breaking transmission of the poverty.
In context of gender differentiation, importance of property rights tends to
increase further. Developing countries (Pakistan in particular) are comprised
of the social structures where women’s property rights are limited by social norms
and customs which not only hamper their economic status and opportunities to
overcome the poverty, but also entitles them to a lower social status.
Ownership of land and property empowers women and provides income security.
Without the right to property or land entitlement, women have limited say in
household decision making, and no recourse to the assets during crises, which
usually culminate in rendering them vulnerable to the domestic violence.
While digging deeper into the phenomenon of prevailing deprivation of the
rights to property entitlement among women, though no solid study has yet been
conducted in this regard, one discovers the reasons like prevalence of system of
patriarchy, which invariably exclude women from ownership of land, indigenous
customs and practices, statutory laws which re-affirm those systems, customs
and practices especially in relation to the right to inherit property, and land
governance system behind the phenomenon.
When it is about giving women the right to have a share in the family property,
the otherwise quite religious society of ours prefers to follow the cultural
norms that are totally opposite to the teachings of Islam. To deprive them of
the family inheritance, either they are killed or married to Quran.
Realizing the importance of land or property rights and their role in
alleviating poverty and abolishing the heinous crimes of Swara and Vani (honour
killing) in Pakistan, it is high time development and research organizations had
planned and initiated thorough studies into the issue and conducted brief
programmes to spread awareness and empower women to demand their right to own
land.
Given the multiple hindrances for women to claim their right to own property,
and consequently to do business or live a financially independent life, the
development organizations, research institutes along with civil society will have
to simultaneously work on many fronts. The irony is that unlike Vani and Swara,
deprivation of women from property rights is not considered a crime in our
society. Thus, they will have to start from sensitizing the society first, and
later on, will have to struggle for proper implementation of the relevant
legislation.
For sensitization of the society, case studies about how deprivation of the
property rights can ruin women’s life and how the opposite can empower and
positively affect and improve the quality of their lives should be brought
forth.
This dissemination of knowledge will gradually enable the stakeholders,
particularly women, to identify impediments to secure access, effective control
and sustainable stewardship of land and to remove them accordingly.
Moreover, such work will also trigger research on key questions encompassing
the areas like culture, law and norms and practices and their role in hindering
the way of women from assuming property rights and economic independence.
At a time when the democratic government in Pakistan claims to be the protector
of women rights, and it is doing valuable legislation to ward off sexual
harassment at work places and to uproot the dreadful crimes of child marriage and
honour killing, it must also opt for guaranteeing the women their share in
inheritance, and to have the property rights and consequently, to independently
secure loans and to do business. If the government succeeds in even initiating
work in this direction, it will witness a greater success in positively
changing lives of the women than the ongoing Benazir Income Support Programme
did in last four years.
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