Thursday, June 27, 2013
2.03 (Binnengasthuis)
This paper explores the historical and institutional origins of underdevelopment in Pakistani Punjab. Regional differences in development across Punjab are both systematic and persistent: the South-Western part of Punjab is poorer, more unequal and more illiterate than the central and northern Punjab. This paper traces these differences to the historical experience of Canal Colonization under British rule, which created the world’s largest irrigation system in Punjab by building an extensive network of perennial canals that extended cultivation to vast tracts of un-irrigated land. The wasteland of Punjab, which now became cultivable, was distributed by the British to loyalist agrarian and military classes. Simultaneously, population from the congested parts of Punjab was settled in these newly irrigated lands. By strengthening the upper segment of agrarian hierarchy, canal colonization radically altered the political economy of Punjab with far-reaching consequences for development. Drawing upon extensive archival research, including many previously un-consulted sources, this paper probes, for the first time, the geographic drivers of canal colonization and relates these systematically with contemporary outcomes.
