[3][4] Large joint families in Pakistan may possess hundreds or even thousands of acres of land, while making little or no direct contribution to agricultural production, which is handled by "peasants or tenants who live at subsistence level.
[5] Pakistan's major political parties have been called "feudal-oriented", and as of 2007, more than two-thirds of the National Assembly (Lower House) and most of the key executive posts in the provinces were held by feudals, according to scholar Sharif Shuja.
[5] Explanations for the power of "feudal" landowning families that has waned in other post-colonial societies such as India include lack of land reform in Pakistan.
Yet, to my knowledge few serious studies have been published on the nature and extent of feudal power in Pakistan, and none to my knowledge on the hegemony which feudal culture enjoys in this country.” Nicolas Martin's[12] work is in this respect an exception, although he argues that it is politically influential landlords, and not all landlords, who wield the despotic and arbitrary powers that are often attributed to the landed classes as a whole.
[3] In media portrayals, the very popular 1975 Pakistan Television (PTV) series Waris centered around a feudal lord (Chaudhry Hashmat) who rules his fiefdom, "with an iron grip".
In due time, with the introduction of the British Raj, they would stamp their legal authority over the Undivided India by introducing a number of reforms that would systematically create a new breed of intermediaries in the revenue system.
[14] Almost half of Pakistan's GDP and the bulk of its export earnings are derived from the agricultural sector, which is controlled by a few elite feudal families.
Some of the most powerful feudal dynasties include the Jatoi, Zardari, Mazari, Mamdot, Noon, Tiwana, Bhutto, Mirani, Daultana, Ranjha, Zehri, Khar, Gillani, Qureshi, Makhdoom, Mulqani, Mehr, Khan, Laleka families each own thousands of acres of prime agricultural land with thousands of villagers living on and tending to the family land.
The former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Yousuf Raza Gilani, is a major landowner from South Punjab (Multan) and from a long-standing political family.
Shah Mehmood Qureshi (MNA former Federal Minister of Foreign Affairs) hails from a prominent feudal Sufi family in Multan and is also followed as a religious saint.