Among the policy measures used by governments of less
developed countries in their effort to promote economic development,
land reform occupies a place of great importance. In West Pakistan, the
area under discussion in this paper, land and tenancy reform laws aimed
at changing the existing agrarian structure have been enacted
periodically before as well as after partition by the governments of the
formerly individual provinces (Punjab, NWFP, Sind)1. In January 1959,
shortly after the present government came to power, a land reform law
covering the entire province of West Pakistan was passed. It introduced
a laige number of reform measures designed to bring about a more
equitable distribution of land ownership rights as well as to provide
the basis for a gradual increase in the productive capacity of the
agricultural sector through appropriate tenancy reforms2. No systematic
studies are available which show to what extent and how successfully the
earlier laws have been implemented. As regards the law presently in
force it might still be too early to try to assess the impact on
agricultural production or to determine the number of rural people and
agricultural holdings which have been actually affected. Nevertheless,
it seems worthwhile to study some of the data on size of holdings and
land fragmenta-
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