Mechanisms of Impoverishment of the Rural Poor in Contemporary Egypt

Prevailing poverty and culminating social crises in Egypt are the final products of development failure in the last 50 years, first in the context of state control and then the restructuring of uncontrolled capitalism. This bad mixture has ended up with less accumulation of all forms of capital assets and an uneven access to those assets, which resulted in deprivation of the absolute majority and hence less opportunities, less freedom and low level of well being. The market-led strategies and policies, adopted gradually since 1974, and reached a peak in the early 1990s, have drastically affected both urban and rural poor. The majority of the population is politically and socially excluded. However, most of the poor live in rural areas and are engaged in agriculture. The access to land and water is vital for sustainable livelihood in rural communities. This basic human right has been seriously threatened by redistributing the land, and consequently the water, in favor of the big landlords. Now, it became very obvious that the poor are excluded from active participation in political and social institutions and are deprived from any share in the decisionmaking process. The costs of the market-oriented reform package on rural population were tremendous. These included growing unemployment, falling real wages, higher prices for basic goods and services and loss of economic and social security. There are justified speculations that the ultimate goal of this impoverishment strategy is to push down many small farmers into a status of laborers or push them out of agriculture and perhaps the rural areas altogether. This paper tries to examine the main mechanisms of impoverishment of the rural poor that took palace in the last 30 years. Particular emphasis will be given to the new land tenancy law of 1992, and the progressive privatization of the management of water resources and the attempts to transfer the burden of water management to the poor farmers without even asking the legitimate question: are they able to pay?.