The persistence and limits of patronage : a history and present of state-society relations in Naseerabad, Balochistan

Abstract

Conventional scholarship portrays Balochistan as a region dominated by tribes, nomads, and insurgents, a view that obscures the province’s diversity. By focusing on Naseerabad, an irrigated, densely settled division on the Kachhi plains, this study reconsiders state–society relations through the intertwined histories of land, water, and public employment. Archival sources reveal that British administrators granted frontier land chiefly to stabilize the frontier, while the post-colonial state re-negotiated those arrangements via land reforms and an expanding canal network aimed at modernising agriculture and centralising power. Canal construction produced two contrasting village types: early smallholder villagers that converted equal landholding and kinship relations into access to jobs, funds, and political influence through electoral participation, and later settlements that, despite similar internal structures, were handicapped by their topographic position on the canal and powerful neighbouring villages. Comparing these villages shows that settlement form, unintended policy effects, topography, and local power—not a single colonial legacy—shape contemporary politics. The analysis widens the debate on Pakistani rural politics by tracing how post-colonial interventions have both extended and constrained patronage in the province’s periphery.