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Iran
Rural Society
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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