Cultivo de la pitaya

Drawing on this source of 'popular legitimacy', the Shah moved

speedily and forcefully to implement his reforms. He started with the

land reform, which had been initiated and executed to some extent by

Amini under the Land Reform Law of January 1962. After approving

some supplementary articles to the Land Reform Law in January 1963, the Shah followed Amini's programme in order to implement the land reform

in three stages. In brief, under the first stage, the Government

purchased a total of 16,000 villages (about 19.5 percent of the arable land) from landowners and transferred them to some 743,406 farm families. It limited the landlords' individual holdings to one village.

Moreover, it launched a campaign urging the newly land-rich peasants to 57

join the Government-guided cooperatives. The second stage of the

reform began in 1965. Under this stage landowners were offered a choice

of five methods of settlement: (i) tenancy; (ii) sale to peasants;

(iii) division of land on the same proportion as the crop-sharing

agreement; (iv) formation of agricultural cooperatives; and (v)

was extended to cover the religious endowment lands and an individual landholding was reduced further to 370 acres. There were, however, many local differences in the execution of the second stage. The peasants were generally given tenure and "(t)hey did not all receive ownership of the land ..., and the conditions under which the land was transferred to them were less favourable than those under the first

58

stage". Nonetheless, during 1965-1969, among other achievements, a total number of: 9,505 publicly-endowed lands were leased to farmers; 211,822 small landowners leased their lands to farmers; 54,480

villages were affected by the land reform; and 5,629 more rural

cooperatives were established, making the total number of cooperatives 59

8,102 with a total membership of over 1,399,000. The third stage of the reform was launched in 1966. This stage, as was put officially, aimed at the expansion of agricultural production in line with the need of Iran's industrial development; a rise in the per capita output and standards of living of peasantry; and the improvement of marketing and production techniques and consequently the stabilisation of food prices.^

Meanwhile, the Government nationalised forests and pasturelands. As was officially stated, this was to put these resources in the service of all citizens; to prevent their misuse and waste in the hands of private owners; to expand and develop them efficiently according to the

needs of the country; and, above all, to support the land reform and strengthen the position of fanners. For the pasturelands, the

Government legislated for "public ownership" to be available to sheep and cattlemen and cancelled all the charges which were collected in the past by private owners.^ In addition, it subsequently nationalised water resources and established the 'Development and

Extension Corps' (trained cadres to help farmers and rural cooperatives). The nationalisation of water, which came into effect in July 1968, was

in support of both agricultural and industrial development. According

to the Government, it was to make water utilisation more efficient and to increase water by whatever means possible so that there should be enough water available for the expanding agriculture, industry and

62

electric power'. As for the Corps, their role in rural development

will be elaborated later on.

The land reform, irrespective of its socio-economic results for the Iranian people — an issue which will be looked at later on — proved

to be politically rewarding for the Shah in several ways. First, he

succeeded in almost liquidating the large landholdings of all major landlords, undermining their traditional power base and consequently weakening their ability to keep apart the central government (or the

Shah himself) and a majority of p e a s a n t s . ^ Second, he was able to

maximise his direct access to the seventy percent of the population in the countryside, who had previously been largely isolated from the effects of his policy actions, and thus endear his leadership to the

newly land-rich peasants. Third, he met one of the popular demands of

his ideological-political opponents who had been advocating land reform

as a popular and democratic measure against the Shah's regime. Thus,

by the end of the 1960s, the Shah could claim not only to have abolished the traditionally land-based feudalism in Iran but also to have

64

'revolutionised' the life of peasantry. In their turn, a large

number of land-rich peasants, whose behaviour was mainly conditioned by their traditional way of living and politically illiterate thinking,

and exalted him for his 'benevolence'. The land reform, consequently, provided a peasant-based start to the White Revolution and opened up a potential source of rural support for the Shah's leadership and rule.

The Shah, however, wanted neither to alienate the landlords

altogether nor to have a prolonged confrontation with them — something

which he could not afford at the time. This was cared for, to a

considerable extent, by the next important reform of the White Revolution: 65

'the public sale of state-owned factories' to private shares. This

reform was intended to achieve two inter-related objectives: (1) to

enrich the Government with an additional source of revenue so that it

could finance the land reform effectively; and (2) to provide the

former landlords with the necessary stimuli to reinvest the money with which they had been compensated for their lands under the land reform,

in industries. In the second objective, the Government sought to buy

off the former landlords and yet increase the share of private

investment under its own guidance in developing the industrial sector.

This, however, had a serious drawback: many former landlords soon

managed to become 'industrial lords' and in thus shifting their power-

base from land to industrial urban centers still found the Shah's pro­

capitalist regime very beneficial.^

Concurrently with land reform, the White Revolution's programme stressed the speedy industrialisation of Iran and improvement in the working and living conditions of the country's industrial labour force. Consequently, while a certain amount of infrastructure had been built during the Second Development Plan, the Government allocated a

relatively larger share of its funds for industrial development under

industries such as steel and petrochemicals; in promoting, together

with private investment, light industries such as making of refrigerators, heaters and assembly factories for motor vehicles, radios and the like;

and in protecting and strengthening the traditional industries like 6 V

textiles, carpet and food processing. The increasing Government

investment, coupled with the growing private investment which was

enhanced by the inflow of funds from former landlords, caused increased economic activities and industrial growth, and furthered job opportunities

in urban centers. During the Third Plan period, therefore, the

industrial sector registered an average annual growth rate of 12.7 68

percent — 2.7 percent more than had been planned. This represented

one of the highest growth rates in relation to other sectors. Moreover,

by the end of the Plan, the number of industrial plants grew from about 69

8,520 in 1961 to over 112,500, including some 4,000 large ones, and

70