There is an assault underway on the natural resources of the world. The assault is spearheaded by multinational capital, which needs to consume more and more to be able to continue thriving. Capital has been on the rampage throughout history, but today it has surpassed all previous imaginable limits of resource capture and expansionism. The rationale is simple and circular–to continue generating profit, there is a need for resources.
The resource situation is most acute in the periphery where the ruling elite in post-colonial states are ever willing accomplices of profiteers from the core. Meanwhile, there is hardly a semblance of regulatory mechanisms to slow the onslaught. In Pakistan, land remains the most valuable resource, given the fact that the vast majority of citizens derive their livelihood either directly or indirectly from it. In recent years, the usurping of land by the state and its profit-making corporate cronies has reached incredible proportions, and it may well be argued that it is the increasingly visible struggle over land between the establishment and the people of the country that will have a heavy bearing on the political direction that Pakistan takes in years to come.
Compared to other countries in South Asia, including India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, Pakistan has never wholly implemented a nationwide land redistribution policy. On record, there are three land reform legislations from 1958, 1973, and 1977. Unfortunately, the persistence of the nexus between the old feudal elite and the civil and military bureaucracy that developed at the early stages of the country's existence has ensured that land reform still remains a pipe dream. Urbanisation and out-migration, especially to West Asia, provided the majority rural population temporary avenues for alternative livelihoods through the 1980s. The situation since the beginning of the 1990s however, has been deteriorating rapidly.
The terms of trade for agricultural commodities have been worsening steadily for many decades now. However, the attack on rural livelihoods due to the increase in prices of agricultural inputs and reduction in subsidies and price supports is specific to the adjustment craze that was set in motion by the international financial institutions (IFIs) in the late 1970s. These phenomena have intensified over the past few years. Therefore, subsistence growers are being steadily pushed to the limit, with the adverse climatic conditions over the past couple of years only aggravating the situation.