Resource information
There are many commendable successes with respect to relief, recovery, reconstruction and rehabilitation to assist the earthquake affected districts of North West Frontier Province3 and Azad Kashmir. The same, however, cannot be said unambiguously about housing reconstruction. Partly, the obstacles are rooted in Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (ERRA) rigid procedures. In many areas, though, housing reconstruction has also become mired in the traditional land tenure regime.
This paper deals primarily with issues of land tenure, its impact on housing compensation benefit incidence and ERRA’s handling of the matter. It also looks at the income implications of land tenure patterns and compares the situation in Hazara with that in Azad Kashmir. The study is based on a survey of two affected districts in Hazara: Mansehra and Batagram.
Obstacles in housing reconstruction and low employability and incomes both are outcomes of land tenure related constraints. While the early response to the earthquake was excellent, the rehabilitation effort has been less successful on account of deeper structural problems that the earthquake has aggravated. The situation not only provides an opportunity to rebuild houses, but also presents an opening to improve the land tenure equation and, as the Azad Kashmir case shows, create the conditions for enhancing incomes and for realizing the region’s economic potential. There is, thus, a case for land reform.
Any mention of land reform generally brings to mind a scenario where the landowner is removed and ownership is transferred to the cultivating tenant. This does not necessarily emerge as the preferred option in Hazara. Given the already small unit size of farms, even of farms reported as self-cultivated, transfer of ownership to tenants is likely to further reduce land size and lock the rural economy at the subsistence level. It may, therefore, be more feasible to consider measures to removing the tenant and turning farms into self-cultivated units.
The larger self-cultivated farms are likely to be more efficient and accrue greater income for the landowners. The displaced tenants in Hazara can be expected to be absorbed in the new industrial/tourist sector in the area. The strategy is likely to inject an element of dynamism in the local economy and provide employment opportunities to local labor force, instead of leaving them with little choice but to look for employment as expatriate labor in other areas of the country and abroad.
