The Agircultural Development And Rural Social Change In The Process Of Modernization In Iran

The wars with Russia and Britain in the early19thcentury promoted themonarchs to introduce reforms from above to down, which marked the openingmoment of Iran’s modernization. The dumping of industrial products, and theplundering of raw materials involved Iran into the world economic system, and thenmelted the the iceberg of Iran’s traditional society gradually. The widespreaded statelands, crop-sharing, individual production, natural economy, generally dependency,and the closed tendency of rural social life constituted the important characteristics oftraditional rural economic-social order, but the development of foreign trade, which isone of the most important patterns, changed it deeply. The logic results of this werethe commericialization of agriculture, the changement of crop-structure, thenon-nationalization and annexation of lands. The economical development promotedthe social changement in rual Iran. The expansion of the private estates caused thedominance of the villiages by landlords, and the tenants who dependented onlandowners as a vulnerable group, were on the periphery of the political, economiclife. In the other hand, within the rural socity, a gradual differentiation started duringthe development of the commodity economic and the market-oriented agriculture.Under Reza shah’s rule, the ownership of private lands was consolidated, and theannexation of lands was more intense. In the early rule of Pahlavi, the monarch didnot reform the land-onwership of the absentee landowners, and the sharecropping wasalso in the dominant position. The combine of abseteen land-ownership andsharecropping was the basical characteristic in the rural areas before1962’s landrefom, and it was the root which caused the lagging of Iran’s agricultural productivity.In the one and a half century, the development of Iran’s agriculture and rural societystill limited within the traditional framework, the development of totalitarian politicsbecame a powerful lever which profoundly changed the tradional ruraleconomic-social structures.The land reform drived from above, by the shah Pahlavi, was the most important factor which profoundly changed the tranditional rual economic-social order. On onehand, the sharecropping weakened apparently, at the same time the independentpeasant farming and the capitalist relation of production expanded extensively. On theother hand, the absentee landowners declined generally, a largepart of traditionaltenant became independent peasant, and the agricultural workers and agriculturalbourgeoisies increased largely. However, in the pattern of industry priority, the inputson agriculture was lacked relatively, the increasing of agricultural production laggedbehind the population growth, which then caused the Iran’s heavily dependent onimported foods. The real purpose of the White Revolution was to exclude the powersof absentee landowners out of rural areas, and then strengthen the rule of governmentin rual Iran. The shah Pahlavi did not intend to improve the living standard of ruralpeople. After the land reform, there were still significant differences on land scales, alarge number of villgers are still povery. In the implementation of Whit Revolution,the bureaucracy expanded rapidly in rural areas, then the shah replaced absenteelandowner and became the new ruler on rural society, which led the peasants whodepended the landowner became to under the Pahlavi government direclty.Under the so-called ‘Authoritatrian mole of development’ in the Pahlavi period,the industrialization and urbanization developed quicly, however, the agriculture andrural society which developed slower largely, showed a trend to marginalization.After the Islamic revelolution, in reaction to the economic and social policies of thePahlavi regime, the Islamic government declared agriculture the “axis” of department.Increase the agricultural production, achieve agricultural self-sufficiency and improvethe living standard of lower-class, consisituted the important objectives of the Islamicgovernment. Many policies like land reform, reorganization of the agriculturaladministration, changing land exploitation systems, increase agricultural inputs,pricing policy, and so on, were adoped by the government to realize these objectives,and because of these policies, the Iran agricultural production increased obviously.And the more important thing was that, accompanied by the process of politicaldemocratization and rural economic-social devemopent, many villigers participated inthe national and local affairs broadly. The remarkable development of agriculture, andthe non-marginalization of rural people’s economic and political status, highlighted the considerable progress of rural economic and social in the post-revolutionary Iran.