THE STATE AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT IN POST-REVOLUTIONARY IRAN, written by Ali Shakoori, LONDON, PALGRAVE, 2001, ISBN 0-333-77613-5, Pp217, price?


Since the 1979 Revolution the Islamic state has grappled with the problems of running the rural economy inherited from the Shah’s regime. Criticizing the Shah’s agrarian reform and rural policies as a conspiracy of the United States to bring on the decline of agriculture production and the dependency of the country on American grain and foodstuffs, which led to pauperization of peasants and their exodus to urban areas, the Islamic state set out to revitalize the agrarian sector and to increase agriculture production so as to achieve self-sufficiency. Although the villagers, comprising about half the country’s population, remained either indifferent to the uprising the Islamic revolution in the cities or participated in counterrevolutionary actions during 1977-1979, the Islamic revolution, as a modern-urban revolution, led to a number of broad, significant social and political changes in rural Iran, and the Islamic state espoused socio-economic justice and equality more for the rural areas by putting the rural development at the centre-piece of the state political agenda.

Ali Shakoori’s book provides a comprehensive account of the post-revolutionary rural development policies and their impact on rural life at the macro and micro levels. It is designed in six chapters. Chapter one builds a theoretical framework to explain the process of rural development and the nature of change in rural society discussing concepts and definitions of modernization theory, and debating on the meaning of development and rural development in a historical context. Chapter 2 examines mostly a historical background of agricultural modernization in the pre-Revolutionary era. The author argues that the land reform of 1962 had political goals as well as the socioeconomic goal of adapting the structure of society to capitalist requirements. The old regime tried to strengthen the political role of the state in rural communities mainly by substituting traditional leverage such as headman of the village (kadkhoda), who served as an institutional connection of the government and the villages, by a variety of new organizations controlled by government agencies, penetrating the village life and agrarian relations. Shakoori concludes this chapter arguing that the land was unequally distributed among the peasants, and the wealthier peasants benefited this program. ‘The land reform and other rural development policies did not substantially increase the supply of food to urban centers, and neither did overall agricultural productivity rise relative to the rapidly growing population.’(p.59)

Chapter 3 analyses the agricultural policies after the Islamic revolution. The Islamic state policies were mainly a reaction against the pre-Revolutionary, which were modernistic with a strong emphasis on mechanized and capital-intensive farming. The main post-revolutionary policies was the implementation of land reform, the creation of Jihad-e Sazandegi (later converted into a ministerial system), mosha cooperatives and the establishment of Islamic rural councils. The chapter points out that these policies were a prime response to pressure from a number of socioeconomic forces to deal with the rural problems such as the rural poverty, social inequality and widening gap between city and village. The author argues that in spite of the great emphasis on reform of the state’s agricultural and rural organizations, they have far from achieved their objectives. For instance Jahad, as a revolutionary administrative system, which enjoyed a generous supply of financial resources failed to combat rural deprivation. The author suggests that this organization never had a coherent strategy based on scientific study for rural development. ‘The post-revolutionary administrative organizations went through a period of competition and duplication of responsibilities, rather than cooperating with each other and coordinating their efforts.’ (p.165) The land reform was another significant event in the post-revolutionary rural life, which had significant differences with the Shah’s land reform.

Chapter 4 discusses the effects of the government’s agricultural policies and other factors on agricultural output. Unlike the Shah’s agrarian policies, the post-revolutionary rural policies focused more on strengthening the small and medium-sized farms. Its policies were based on the assumption that agriculture was the ‘axis’ of development and consequently the five-year plans gave the agricultural sector top priority. The ultimate aim of the government was to achieve self-sufficiency within a decade mainly by investing indirectly in agricultural infrastructure, and populist economics policies such as supplying inputs, granting loans, subsidies and pricing policy. Nevertheless, despite all these measures capital formation in the sector remained low due to weak private sector participation in this sector’s investment and low productivity. The impact of rural development programs on the process of change in rural life at the micro level is examined in Chapter 5 in terms of income, wealth, social mobility, participation and the well being of the sample households. The empirical research on the selected villages in terms of the Gini coefficients indicates that in spite of the state’s rural distribution policies, inequality was greater in the villages where the maximum number of rural programs were carried out than in those which received fewer or no programs. ‘The decile distributions show clear differences in respect of income, wealth and well being between richest and poorest groups. Although some of the programs were targeted at the poor and benefited the lowest social groups, on the whole it was the upper classes who gained most from the rural efforts.’ (P.163)

As a whole the book succeeds in delivering informative discussions on many of the pre- and post-revolutionary land policies. However, the discussions provided for some of the important changes are not very convincing. For instance, in Chapter 2 the fall of old landowning class from the state's structure of power and destruction of traditional organization of production such as the boneh teamwork system, and the rise of big agricultural bourgeoisie and commercial farmers after the land reform of 1962 have not been paid in-depth attention. Another shortcoming of the book is to analyze the socio-economic obstacles to the implementation of an efficient rural program. One of these issues is extend to which a reform should be radicalized. In both pre- and post-revolutionary programs, deviations from the Islamic principles of the sanctity of private proprietorship led to the protest movements of the ulama. The post-revolutionary rural policies, particularly the land reform, were initiated from the middle, primarily by the young urban intelligentsia, to radicalize the whole revolutionary movement. It unleashed the covert group conflict and led to a new struggle over land. The radicalization of the reform policy – imposing a ceiling on the size of landownership- acted as a major obstacle to the reform since the sanctity of private property in Islamic jurisprudence received the emphatic support. The debate on the question of the legality and legitimacy of the main part of land law, Clause C, divided the ulama into opposing camps. Most of Ayatollahs such as Golpayegani, Marashi, Ruhani, Qumi and Shirazi, who seemed to have constituted the core of the high clerical opposition to the land reform, strongly believed that Clause C of the reform was in direct violation of Islamic principles, and defended the sanctity of property. Others such as Ayatollah Montazeri, an ardent supporter of land reform, considered land ownership un-Islamic and illegitimate, arguing that, like air and water, land belongs to God alone. Finally Imam Khomeini left the final decision to the Majlis. Although the Majlis ratified a modified version of the law, the conflict between the Majlis and the Council of Guardians remained for years, and the issue had the significant impact in the process of establishment of the Council for Expediency of Interest of the System. Nevertheless, the post-revolutionary rural policies led to the fall of the big agricultural bourgeoisie and the survival of middle-size commercial farmers. It resulted in the decline of agricultural output, despite of increasing the state financial support. Thus, the nature of program led to a much greater control by the state over rural areas than the Shah’s regime. However, to some extend, the magnitude of land concentration in large holdings was decreased.

Furthermore, many significant pre-revolutionary rural debates do not investigate in the book. For instance, whether the acceleration of rural-urban migration was resulted from the land reform of 1962 or the growing the urbanism itself, which started earlier. New studies likewise claim that there was a net financial inflow into Iranian agriculture after the Shah's land reform, and thus contrary to the common belief, the agricultural sector was not financially squeezed on account of the old regime's industrialization bias.

Despite its shortcoming, this book is a very welcome addition to the limited set of writing on the post-revolutionary rural policies. Written in a lucid style, the book is accessible to general readers while also providing the data and documentation and analysis demanded by specialists.

Ali Saeidi
Published in Muslim News December 2001