THE STATE AS ARBITRATOR: BHUTTO’S LAND AND LABOR REFORMS AND THE CONTAINMENT OF RADICAL PEASANT SOVEREIGNTY IN CHARSADDA, PAKISTAN

Abstract

This paper analyses the role of the postcolonial Pakistani state as an arbitrating authority during the reformist period of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s government (1971–1977), focusing on the impacts of land and labor reforms in Charsadda, Pakistan. While Bhutto’s reforms are often celebrated as progressive measures aimed at dismantling feudal dominance and advancing social justice, this study argues that they simultaneously functioned to contain emergent forms of radical peasant sovereignty. Situating the analysis within debates on state autonomy, populism, and agrarian political economy, the paper challenges reformist narratives that equate redistribution with empowerment. Using a qualitative historical–sociological case study approach, the study draws on policy documents, archival material, secondary literature, and contemporaneous accounts of peasant mobilization. The findings show that although land redistribution and labor legislation expanded the state’s presence in rural society, their institutional design subordinated peasant agency to bureaucratic and legal frameworks controlled by the state. In Charsadda—an area characterized by intense agrarian activism and left-oriented peasant movements—the reforms reconfigured rather than transformed existing power relations. By positioning itself as a neutral arbitrator between landlords and peasants, the state absorbed popular demands while limiting the scope of autonomous collective action. Radical claims to peasant sovereignty were redirected toward formalized, state-mediated channels such as courts, party structures, and administrative negotiations. This process depoliticized grassroots mobilization and integrated dissent into a managed reformist framework, stabilizing rather than unsettling the agrarian order. The paper contributes to scholarship on agrarian politics and state–society relations by demonstrating how reformist states can simultaneously pursue redistribution and constrain popular sovereignty. Bhutto introduced the Land Reform Regulation of 1972 and the Land Reform Act of 1977, setting land ceilings at 150 irrigated and 300 non-irrigated acres. Although these reforms reclaimed significantly less land than Ayub Khan’s 1959 initiatives—0.6 million acres compared to 1.9 million acres—they fundamentally altered rural power dynamics by providing tenants with legal protection against eviction. It underscores the need to critically examine the state's mediating role in shaping, containing, and redefining class struggle in postcolonial agrarian contexts.