Small Farmers in Pakistan: Voiceless Majority
Poverty in Pakistan is both increasing and taking different forms and shapes. Current estimates conclude that more than one third population of the country is living below poverty line and majority of them is rural population including small land owners, sharecroppers, farm labourers and rural workers. Women (including farm labourers, craftsmen, peasants and other agri-based occupations) for the major part of this poor population face double burden of poverty and patriarchal oppression. Several policy changes and reforms in Pakistan over the last four decades have serious effects on the lives and conditions of farmers and labour force in agriculture.

These structural adjustments and policy shifts, under the pressure of International Financial Institutions, capital and market driven changes in agriculture sector have changed the shape and nature of the agriculture and farming sector and lives of million associated with these sectors. Facing the un-friendly investment policies, hostile market, exploitation by commission agents, substandard and uncertified seeds, fertilizers and pesticides, natural calamities and multiple other factors have pushed the farmers to the economic shambles. Vulnerable and excluded from policies and plans of the countries that drive their lives, these godforsaken farmers are unorganized, unskilled and voiceless in national policies and decision. Ironically despite several attempts to organize and politically mobilize small farmers and peasants no effective and strong farmers movements could be formed in the country;s history. Ironically they do not get any prominent place in any government departments, deprived of leadership positions in political parties, neglected in governments policies and laws, marginalized in economic and social plans, excluded from any decision or policy formulations processes the neglected population is deprived of most of the rights and entitlements ensured in laws of land or human rights conventions.