A minister's ground reality

Land-related issues are political hot potatoes and nobody understands this better than Food Minister K V Thomas, whose home state is tiny Kerala, which has one of the highest population densities in India. At a recent press meet, he candidly admitted that the emotional attachment to land is so strong in Kerala that if he favoured ending land ceiling in the state, he would have no chance of being re-elected. If, on the other hand, he opposed an end to land ceiling, it would have no impact on his electoral prospects. The minister's frank observations could apply to any state and is a pointer to why industry struggles to acquire the large landholdings it needs to compete globally.