After the Flood in Pakistan 38 Berlin Geographical Papers - Freie ...

agricultural inputs and machinery have to be paid for by the tenant, in almost all cases on
credit-terms dictated by the landowner. This reduces the share of the harvest at the
tenants’ disposal. Even in good years, the remainder is hardly enough to keep a household
afloat and new credit for food and agricultural supplies becomes a necessity. During the
flood, however, the entire harvest was lost and tenants are forced to repay their debts
taken for seeds, fertilizer, and machinery. No amnesty was granted by the landlords, and
in many cases encountered during fieldwork a share of 80-90% of the upcoming harvest will
have to be delivered to the wadera, leaving almost nothing but debts for the tenants.
Roughly 35% of people working for income in Dadu are bound into such oppressive
sharecropping arrangements (55% in Mehrab Qambrani, nearly 50% in Zafarabad, and 14% in
Wali M. Laghari). Other forms of debt that affect the rural population in Dadu refer to
outstanding loans at high interests with shopkeepers or wholesalers. This permanent
indebtedness for most – either in form of sharecropping or the need to access credit to
afford basic food and healthcare – is a striking feature of the entire sample of 140
households in Dadu District. As many as 96% of all households in Mehrab Qambrani where
all resident households have been interviewed, have outstanding credits. The figures for
Wali M. Laghari (80%) and Zafarabad (79%) hardly look any better.
The amounts of outstanding credit is highest in the villages of Dadu too, with an average of
106,000 Rs per household in Mehrab Qambrani where debt bondage is strongest, and
36,000 Rs in Wali M. Laghari and 32,000 in Zafarabad.
Another general feature across all three villages is the heavy loss of livestock in the flood.
Those few animals that could be saved had to be sold usually below market prices after
the flood, for need of cash to afford basic foodstuff.
5.3.2 Wali Mohammad Laghari – small landowners at the tail-end of the irrigation
system
Wali Mohammed Laghari has a compact spatial structure. Located at the tail-end of the
Meer Mohammed Canal and the irrigation system as a whole, the village presents itself as a
typical canal colony accessible via one main road (cf. Fig. 5.32).
The settlement has a rather homogenous population with the Laghari as major social group
engaged in the agricultural sector and with access to small plots of own cultivable lands
(between one and 40 acres), on which they farm wheat, cotton, sugarcane and rice. A
separate hamlet is populated by the Birhamani that predominantly work as camel-breeders
that use their animals to provide the means for transport of goods. The women of the
group often weave cord from date palm leaves, producing the prime material for khat, the
traditional Pakistani beds. This home-based activity sustains an important part of the
Birhamani village economy. Goods produced by women are usually traded in the nearby
urban center of Khairpur Nathan Shah.
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