Agrarian Transition in Sind: An Analysis of Interlinked Rural Factor Markets

The process of change in the tenurial structure of Punjab’s agriculture from sharecropping tenancy to an owner-cultivation with a wage-labour system of production has been well-documented in. [Alavi (1976); Hamid (1980); Hussain (1980); Khan (1981); Khan (1983); and Mahmood (1977)] . It has been argued that this has come about through the induction of the new technologies (firstly in the form of tube well irrigation and subsequently followed by the biological and mechanical technologies) associated with the “Green Revolution”. In Sind, however, in spite of the use of modern technology, the tenancy-based system of production still predominates. According to the 1980 Census of Agriculture, tenant farms were the largest single category of farms in Sind (with 49 percent of all farms). This study, which reports preliminary findings from lower Sind, uses the framework of interlinked factor markets [Bardhan and Rudra (1978); and Bardhan (1980)] to see if mutually desirable interlinkages for tenants and landlords in their access to land, labour and capital markets can explain the retention of tenancy in the face of exogenous forces of modernization.