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Iran
Index
At the time of the Revolution there were about 68,000 villages
in Iran. They varied from mere hamlets of a few families up to
sizable settlements with populations of 5,000. Social organization
in these villages was less stratified than in urban areas, but a
hierarchy of political and social relationships and patterns of
interaction could be identified. At the top of the village social
structure was the largest landowner or owners. In the middle
stratum were peasants owning medium to small farms. In the larger
villages the middle stratum also included local merchants and
artisans. The lowest level, which predominated in most villages,
consisted of landless villagers.
Immediately before the Revolution in 1979, Iran's
agriculturally productive land totaled about 16.6 million hectares.
Approximately one- half of this land was owned by some 200,000
absentee landlords who resided in urban areas. Such owners were
represented in the villages by agents who themselves were generally
large landowners. The property of the large-scale owners tended to
be among the most fertile in the country and generally was used for
the production of such cash crops as cotton, sugar beets, fruit,
and high-demand vegetables. Agricultural workers were recruited
from among the landless villagers and were given either a share of
the crop or a cash wage. In some cases, landlords contracted with
small peasant owners to farm their fields in return for a share of
the crop. Such agreements netted for the landlords from 20 to 70
percent of the harvest, depending upon the crop and the particular
inputs provided by the respective parties.
In 1979 about 7 million hectares were divided among
approximately 2 million peasant families, whose holdings ranged
from less than 1 hectare up to 50. They had acquired ownership as
a result of a land reform program implemented between 1962 and
1971. In a typical village a few families owned sufficient
land--ten or more hectares--to engage in farming for profit. About
75 percent of the peasant owners, however, had less than 7
hectares, an amount generally insufficient for anything but
subsistence agriculture.
Approximately 50 percent of all villagers owned no land. Within
individual villages the landless population varied from as little
as 10 percent of the total to more than 75 percent. The landless
villagers were composed of three distinct social groups: village
merchants, village artisans and service workers, and agricultural
laborers. Village merchants were found primarily in the larger
villages. Their interests tended to coincide with those of the
peasant owners, and it was not uncommon for the better-off
merchants to acquire agricultural landholdings. Village artisans
included blacksmiths, carpenters, cobblers, and coppersmiths. The
increasing availability of urban-manufactured goods throughout the
1960s and 1970s had caused a sharp decline in the numbers of
village artisans, although carpenters were still important in the
larger villages.
The largest group of landless villagers consisted of
agricultural laborers who subsisted by contracting with landlords
and larger peasant owners to work in their fields on a daily or
seasonal basis. In return for their labor they received a wage,
based upon the nature of the work performed, or, in some cases, a
share of the crop. This group also provided many of the migrants
from rural areas in the 1970s. In some areas the migration rate was
so great that landlords were compelled to import foreign workers,
primarily unskilled Afghans, to work their lands. The Afghan and
other foreign workers were rounded up immediately after the
Revolution and expelled from Iran.
Traditionally, in each village the
kadkhuda (see Glossary)--
not to be confused with the head of the smallest tribal
unit, a clan--was responsible for administering its affairs and for
representing the village in relations with governmental authorities
and other outsiders. Before land reform, landlords appointed the
kadkhudas from among the peasants. Sometimes
kadkhudas also served as the landlord's agent in the
village, although the tendency was for these two positions to be
filled by separate persons. After land reform, the office of
kadkhuda became, at least in theory, elective. However,
since the kadkhuda was the primary channel through which the
government transacted its affairs with the villages, any villager
desiring to be a kadkhuda had to demonstrate that he had
sufficient political access to government officials in the nearest
town to protect the interests of the village. In effect, this meant
that kadkhudas were actually selected by government
officials. In general, "elected" kadkhudas tended to be
among the richest peasant landowners. The land reform and various
rural development programs undertaken prior to the Revolution did
not produce positive results for the majority of villagers.
Economic conditions for most village families stagnated or
deteriorated precisely at the time that manufacturing and
construction were experiencing an economic boom in urban areas.
Consequently, there was a significant increase in rural-to- urban
migration. Between the 1966 and the 1976 censuses, a period when
the population of the country as a whole was growing at the rate of
2.7 percent per year, most villages actually lost population, and
the overall growth rate for the rural population was barely 0.5
percent annually. This migration was primarily of young villagers
attracted to cities by the prospect of seasonal or permanent work
opportunities. By the late 1970s, this migration had seriously
depleted the labor force of many villages. This was an important
factor in the relative decline in production of such basic food
crops as cereals because many farming families were forced to sow
their agricultural land with less labor-intensive crops.
The problems of rural stagnation and agricultural decline had
already surfaced in public debate by the eve of the Revolution.
During the immediate turmoil surrounding the fall of the monarchy,
peasants in many villages took advantage of the unsettled
conditions to complete the land redistribution begun under the
shah, i.e., they expropriated the property of landlords whom they
accused of being un-Islamic. In still other villages, former
landlords who had lost property as a result of land reform tried to
regain it by flaunting their commitment to Islam and their
antagonism to the deposed shah.
Thus, from the beginning the republican government was
compelled to tackle the land problem. This proved to be a difficult
issue because of the differences among the political elite with
respect to the role of private property under Islam. Some officials
wanted to legitimize the peasant expropriations as a means of
resolving the problem of inequitable land distribution resulting
from the shah's land reform program. Such officials generally
believed in the principle that the peasant who actually tilled the
soil should also be the owner. In contrast, other officials opposed
legitimizing land expropriations on the ground that private
property is both sanctioned and protected by Islamic law. By 1987
no consensus had been reached, and the question of land
redistribution remained unresolved.
The government, however, has demonstrated considerable interest
in rural development. A new organization for rebuilding villages,
the Crusade for Reconstruction (Jihad-e Sazandegi or Jihad), was
created in 1979. It consisted of high-school-educated youth,
largely from urban areas, who were charged with such village
improvement tasks as providing electrification and piped water,
building feeder roads, constructing mosques and bath houses, and
repairing irrigation networks.
Data as of December 1987
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