Pakistan emerged from the turmoil and trauma at the turn of the 1970s, as major political forces including nationalists such as Wali Khan and Ajmal Khattak from NWFP, Ghaus Bux Bizenjo, Atta Ullah Mengal and Khair Bux Marri from Balochistan, and Z. A. Bhutto from Sindh, prudently mustered their forces to strengthen democracy in the country. However, the newly founded Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), under Z. A. Bhutto, emerged as the principal beneficiary of this political conjuncture. His anti-feudal and anti-capitalist rhetoric, combined with socialist and anti-establishment discourse, resonated with the rising rural middle classes while attracting students, workers, and peasants. In Sindh, it contained the nationalist tide while consolidating a broader support base in Punjab. Consequently, both the right and the left found themselves politically constrained, as Bhutto had emerged from the 1968 movement as its first major popular leader, drawing on the progressive mobilization of students, workers, and peasants and subsequently attracting radical liberals and sections of the left.

At the same time, the Green Revolution transformed the social and economic structure of the countryside, particularly in irrigated Punjab, disproportionately benefiting middle and larger farmers and strengthening a politically significant rural middle and upper peasantry. As sections of the feudal classes lost economic and political power, these farmers became increasingly economically independent and politically organized, weakening their traditional relationship with the peasantry and reducing their need to mobilize or protect the rural poor. At the same time, the Green Revolution initiated pauperization among sections of the rural population, prompting migration that fueled urban industrial growth in the big cities much like the phenomenon observed by Karl Marx in England during the Enclosure movement, a process that would intensify in the later decades.

The PPP was therefore able to consolidate its political influence and form governments at the center and in Punjab and Sindh, while nationalist forces, in alliance with the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI), formed governments in NWFP and........

© The Friday Times