68 • THE LANDSCAPE OF RESISTANCE

If the boon of staying at home was to prove brief, the effect of double-cropping on landholding appears far more durable. Two harvests, steadier yields, and paddy prices that no longer fluctuated wildly over the crop season served in most cases to break the cycle of indebtedness which, fOllowing a bad season, might mean the loss of land to creditors. Seasonal credit from shopkeepers and pawnbrokers is still the rule fur much of the Muda peasantry, but such loans are typically cleared with each harvest and only rarely take the fOrm of jual janji, which jeopardizes future ownership. The effect has been to stabilize the class of smallholders and to slow the process of proletarianization in the countryside. 41

The changes noted thus far-in amenities, consumer goods, rice supply, nutrition, employment, and household solvency-might be appropriately termed the good news of the past decade in Muda. There is, however, other news too-- news that can only be termed ambiguous, inasmuch as its evaluation depends a great deal on one's class position. Here again, the effurt is to convey merely the basic documented facts, leaving the social interpretation to chapter 5. In dealing with the entire Muda region, resort to some statistical presentation should be helpful befOre we move to the village level ("fOreground"), where such data acquire flesh and blood.

Land Ownership

The first fact that one would wish to know about any agrarian setting is how the ownership of the principal means of production-land-is distributed. 42 In Muda the land is distributed quite unequally (Gini coefficient of 0.538), although this is not a latifundia situation where a few massive holdings dominate most of the landscape. There is, furthermore, no evidence that the distribution

41. No precise figures are available but, as we shall see below, the statistics on the distribution of paddy-land ownership from 1966 to 1976 suggest the survival, if not the proliferation, of smallholding. Such holdings, however, are also produced by the fragmentation of ownership through inheritance.

42. Data in this section and in those immediately following are derived largely from the superb, detailed report by D. S. Gibbons, Lim Teck Ghee, G. B. Elliston, and Shukur Kassim, Hak Milik Tanah di Kawasan Perairan Muda: Lapuran Akhir

(Land tenure in the Muda irrigatiaon area: Final report), Pt. 2, Findings (Pulau Pinang: Pusat Penyelidekan Dasar and Universiti Sains Malaysia, 1981). It will be cited hencefOrth as USM-MADA Land Tenure Study. It is based on a 1975-76 survey of all farms in the Muda region. Comparisons are drawn with previous sample surveys in the Muda region to reach conclusions about shifts in land tenure over time. For my purposes it has only two disadvantages: it provides no information beyond 1976, and the scope of the inquiry is limited to questions of land ownership, farm size, and tenure. Thus, fur data since 1976 and for issues not covered in this study, I have had to rely on other sources that are less comprehensive. The care with which the basic data in this report were collected, checked, and interpreted make it a model fur emulation elsewhere.

THE LANDSCAPE OF RESISTANCE • 69

of paddy-land ownership has become any more unequal or concentrated since the initiation of double-cropping. The basic situation is summarized in table 3. 1. 43 It must be kept in mind that the figures in table 3. 1 cover only owners of paddy land and therefOre exclude nearly 14,600 pure tenant and 8, 000 landless labor households (37 percent of paddy sector households). Even then, the disparity is striking. Large holdings above 7 acres (10 relong) account for only 11 percent of the holdings but occupy 42 percent of the total paddy land. It is this strata of relatively well-to-do owners who, together with some largescale tenants, from the core of the commercial farming class in Muda, selling perhaps three-quarters of all the paddy marketed in the region. 44 At the other end of the scale stand the great majority (61.8 percent) of owners with holdings below what is required fur a poverty-line income. Fully 40 percent, in fact, own less than 1.42 acres (half the paddy land necessary fur a subsistence-level income) and are insignificant as sellers of paddy.

TABLE 3.1 • Size Distribution of Paddy-Land Holdings, Muda Irrigation Scheme, 1975-1976

Along with double-cropping has come a roughly fivefOld leap in paddy-land prices, far outdistancing the rise of the consumer price index or paddy incomes and fraught with implications for future social mobility. Before 1970 it was possible, though rare, fur an industrious and thrifty tenant to buy a small plot of land, thereby improving his situation. With the prevailing land prices, it has become virtually impossible fur anyone but the richest owners to expand their

43. USM-MADA Land Tenure Study, 145. The odd cutting points of the size categories arise from the fact that the original data were collected following local units (1 relong equals .71 acre) of land measurement. Thus 0.01 to 2.83 acres is equivalent to 0.01 to 3.9 relong; 2.84 to 7.09 acres is equivalent to 4.0 to 9.9 relong; and above 7. 1 acres is equivalent to 10 relong and above.

44. No figures fur the Mmilnifea as a whole appear to be available, but this figure, derived from a careful study of selected districts, is likely to be close. ~ee Masanabu Yamashita, Wong Hin Soon, and S. Jegatheesen, "MADA-TARC Cooperative Study, Pilot Project ACRBD 4, Muda Irrigation Scheme, Farm Management Studies" (May 1980, mimeo.), 5. Hereafter referred to as "MADA-TARC Farm Management Studies, 1980."

70 • THE LANDSCAPE OF RESISTANCE

holdings. A traditional, if limited, avenue of upward mobility has been all but definitely closed.

Farm Size

The distribution of operated farm size is a good indication of access (whether by ownership or rental) to the primary factor of production. Comparative figures for before and after double-cropping are given in table 3. 2. 45 Inequalities in actual farm size, while not as marked as in the case of ownership, are nonetheless apparent. Small farms, nearly half of Muda's households, cultivate a mere 17 percent of the paddy land, but large farms, only 14 percent of households, claim virtually 40 percent of the rice land. Between these two classes is a large middle peasantry cultivating modest farms. The most striking trend in the past decade is the growth in the proportion of small farms coupled with no appreciable change in their share of land resources, such that the mean small farm size has been driven down to a historic low of 1.4 acres.

Tenure

It is above all in the social arrangements for cultivation that the most dramatic transformations have taken place. Land tenure in Muda is both complex and flexible: It is not uncommon, fur example, to encounter farmers who farm some of their own land, rent out a small plot, rent in another, and even harvest others' land fur wages occasionally. Nevertheless it is possible to identifY three major tenure categories: owner-operators who farm their own land, pure tenants who rent all the paddy land they cultivate, and owner-tenants who farm land that is both rented and owned. 46 The precipitous decline in the proportion of pure tenants is the most striking feature of land tenure patterns since 1966, as shown in Table 3. 3. There is some evidence that this trend was observable even befOre double-cropping, but there is no doubt that it has accelerated greatly since

45.USM-MADA Land Tenure Study, 167.

46.Ibid., 164.

THE LANDSCAPE OF RESISTANCE •71

1970. 47 Pure tenants, who were in 1955 the dominant tenure category in Muda, had by 1976 become less than one-fourth of the farmers and cultivated less than one-fourth of the land. The evidence suggests that we are witnessing the not- so-gradual liquidation ofMuda's pure tenant class. The overall picture from farm size and tenure data is one of gradual polarization-an increase in the proportion of small farms (mostly owner-operated) that produce a bare subsistence income, an across-the-board decline in tenancy, and a growing class of larger-scale commercial farms. This is very much in keeping with the results of the green revolution elsewhere in monsoon Asia. 48

The explanation for these structural changes, which have produced a numerous, marginal, poverty-sharing class of small farmers at the bottom of the heap, a robust class of capitalist farmers at the top, and a still significant middle peasantry in between, is complex. Double-cropping, higher yields, and mechanization have made it increasingly profitable and feasible for landlords to resume cultivation. This would help account for the displacement of tenants and the growing share of owner-operators in both small and large farm categories. Demography has also played a role. Despite steady out-migration from Muda, the population grew by nearly 30 percent between 1957 and 1976. In the decade ending in 1980, Muda's population grew by more than 18 percent to 539,000. Given the nearly static area of paddy land over this period, population growth has encouraged owners to take back tenanted land for their children and to divide among their heirs land they previously farmed alone. This would also help account for the proliferation of small farms and the dismissal of tenants.

47. Ibid., 167, gives comparable figures for 1955 and for 1972-73 as well. It is not clear exactly what happened to these ex-tenants. Some have undoubtedly become landless laborers in the village, while others, particularly if young, have emigrated temporarily or permanently to urban areas for work. A small proportion have perhaps been tenants who have retired from active farming and who have then not been replaced.

48. See Keith Griffin, The Political Economy of Agrarian Change: An Essay on the Green Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1974), chap. 3. The one exception is that, while the green revolution has occasionally resulted in the near liquidation of small owner-operators, this class has more than held its own in Muda despite the fact that it is increasingly marginalized in economic terms.

72 • THE LANDSCAPE OF RESISTANCE

There is every reason to believe that these trends, solidly documented until 1976, have continued and probably intensified since then. More important, changes in technology, costs of production, and rice prices since 1976 provide further incentives to displace small tenants. Combine-harvesters, by reducing supervision costs and by gathering the off-season harvest quickly, favor owner cultivation of larger farms. The provision of free fertilizer sin~ the off-season ·of 1979 and a 30 percent increase in the farm-gate paddy price in late 1980 have also, given the "stickiness" of rents in Muda,49 made self-cultivation more attractive than ever. What recent evidence is available supports this contention. 50

Two other notable changes have taken place in the fOrm of tenancy since 1966, both of which tend to favor large-scale tenants with capital-in particular, owner-tenants-at the expense of small-scale tenants. The first concerns when and how the rent is paid each season. In 1955 more than three-quarters of Muda's tenants paid their rents after the harvest was in and paid that rent in the fOrm of a fixed quantity of paddy51 or its cash equivalent. Cash rents (sewa

49. A majority of tenants in Muda are related to their landlord and rent land at prices below market rates. See the fine case study by Mohd. Shadli Abdullah, "The Relationship of the Kinship System to Land Tenure: A Case Study of Kampung Gelung Rambai, Kedah" (Master's thesis, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 1978), and the remarkable analysis of the same phenomenon elsewhere in Malaysia by Akimi Fujimoto, "Land Tenure, Rice Production, and Income Sharing among Malay Peasants: Study of Four Villages" (Ph. D. diss., Flinders University, Australia, 1980). Paradoxically, it is easier to withdraw the land from related tenants in order to farm it oneself-villagers accept that the owner and his children take precedence over more distant relatives-than to raise rents that kin must pay. This explains why landlords cannot simply take advantage of land hunger and higher returns from cultivation by extracting the full economic rent from tenants who are close relatives.

50.A recent restudy of a village near Alor Setar by Rosemary Barnard notes the importance of combine-harvesters in influencing landlords to rent out less land. "Recent Developments in Agricultural Employment in a Kedah Rice-Growing Village" (Paper presented at the Second Colloquium of the Asian Studies Association of Australia, James Cook University, August 29-31, 1979), 30. Increasing displacement of tenants is also noted by the head of the agricultural division of the Muda Agricultural Development Authority, Afifuddin Haji Omar, in "The Pivotal Role of an Integrated Institutional RefOrm in Socioeconomic Development of Rice Peasantry in Malaysia" (Paper presented at Conference on Development: The Peasantry and Development in the ASEAN Region, University Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi, May 26-29, 1980), 12.

51.For the statistics on paddy rents and cash rents from 1955 to 1976, see USMMADA Land Tenure Study, 66. The term "paddy rent" (sewa padi) is always treated

by studies as if it was actually paid in kind. It is my experience, however, that it has come to mean only that the rent is fixed in terms of the market price of a predetermined amount of paddy, which is usually given to the landlord in cash. It should also be noted that paddy rents were not crop-sharing arrangements, as the paddy rent was a fixed amount of grain, not a fixed share of the crop, which would have fluctuated with the harvest.

THE LANDSCAPE OF RESISTANCE • 73

tunat) unrelated to an amount of paddy were rare, amounting to only 12 percent of all rental arrangements. By 1966 cash rents had become nearly as common as paddy rents, and by 1975 three-fuurths of all tenancies were for cash rents, a reversal of the pattern twenty years earlier. While paddy rents may be paid out of the proceeds of the harvest and were therefOre often negotiable depending on the size of the crop, cash rents require that the tenant raise the capital before the season opens and are not negotiable. At the moment the landlord moves to cash rent, the tenant is therefOre subject to a one-time-only double rent, one fur the past season and one fur the coming season. No study has ever been made of the consequences of this shift, but there is no doubt that a good many poor tenants who were unable to raise the cash required were replaced by those who could. ' 2 Except fur land rented from parents by children, most tenancy in Muda has now become pure rentier tenancy in which all the risks of cultivation are borne exclusively by the cultivator, who pays an invariable cash rent befure the season opens.

A more momentous shift in tenancy relations is the increasing resort to pajak, or leasehold, tenancy in recent years. Pajak tenancy is the long-term rental of land over at least two seasons and may in fact extend to as many as ten or twelve seasons. The entire rent is paid in a lump sum and is in most cases covered by a written, notarized contract. As a furm of tenancy, pajak has existed fur a long time and was often a means by which farmers of modest means raised a substantial sum fur such purposes as an important marriage, a new house, a pilgrimage to Mecca, or paying off an outstanding debt. The pressing need of the family renting out the land was usually reflected in rental rates that worked out to be well below the current market rents fur seasonal tenancy. Now, however, pajak tenancy is increasingly at, or above, ' 3 market rents and is often resorted to by wealthy landowners seeking to raise cash fur investment purposes.

For the landowner, leasehold rental has the advantage over jua! janji that ownership of the land is retained even though use rights may be transferred fur many years. For the small tenant, however, the effect is to price him out of the

M$2, 700 to M$4,000 in advance. As this represents two to three times the mean income of Muda peasants, it is far beyond the reach of the vast majority

52.The only figures I have are for Sedaka, where something like one in seven tenants may have been displaced, but it would be hazardous to project similar rates for all of Muda.

53.The authors of the USM-MADA Land Tenure Study found, to their surprise, that pajak rents worked out to M$122. 74 for the main season as compared with M$112.49 for cash renting season by season. One interpretation they offer is that such leases "are highly commercial transactions struck up between landlords who are sensitive to market conditions of rent and well-to-do tenants (possibly including nonMalays who experience more difficulty in obtaining land and are anxious to obtain some degree of security of tenure)." P. 72.