Two steps backward

Rural development ministry's odd suggestions on land

The drafts of the National Land Reforms Policy and the National Right to Homestead Bill put together by the task force set up by the rural development ministry have understandably evoked sharp criticism from states for being impractical and ill-advised. The suggested land reforms policy says states should lower the land ceiling to 10 acres (roughly four hectares) for irrigated land and 15 acres (approximately six hectares) for unirrigated land. Worse still, the same cap is sought to be applied to research, educational and industrial organisations currently exempted from land ceiling regulations. Operational landholdings, comprising owned and leased-in land, too, are to fall within this limit - implying a virtual end of the much-needed system of land leasing. This is a step backwards. Most existing holdings are already too small - the average being just 1.23 hectares, or around three acres - to provide adequate livelihood support for rural households. Only 5.7 per cent of farms hold over 10 acres, according to the 2005-06 agricultural census. The task force's suggestion comes after Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and even West Bengal have amended their original land ceiling statutes to raise the landholding cap.

The proposed "right to a homestead", promising every landless rural family at least 10 cents (around 484 square yards), is utopian as well. The state's duty to aid the acquisition of shelter is beyond dispute; but arranging such large chunks of land for millions is beyond its capacity. Most states are already land-scarce; even the acquisition of land at commercial rates for this purpose would be unfeasible. A large number of industrial and infrastructural projects are already held up, unable to acquire land even on good terms. It is, therefore, worrying to have two such reports with muddled backward-looking thinking emerge from the ministry in charge of rural development.

A more practical route would be to offer smaller plots of land for housing on the lines of the Indira Awaas Yojana. The introduction of multi-storey housing in rural areas may also be worth considering. In the case of land reforms, the need today is not to meddle with the ceiling, but to consolidate landholdings to merge fragmented tiny pieces into viable farm units. Remember, but for the successful land consolidation exercise in Punjab in the 1960s, the green revolution could not have taken root there, pushing up productivity and incomes for all. Farmers would not have invested in tube wells for irrigating the critically water-dependent high-yielding crop varieties on fragmented pieces of land. The other much-needed reform concerns legalisation of the land-lease system so that the land owned by non-resident villagers can be put to gainful use by renting it out to other farmers rather than keeping it untilled, as is mostly the case today - this will also help more people get a start in towns, as they would prefer. The ministry should consult with the states and come out with some meaningful and feasible suggestions, and scrap the current drafts of both the Policy and the Bill.