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| Govt-appointed panel calls for comprehensive land reforms |
| Sreelatha Menon / New Delhi Nov 25, 2009, 01:24 IST |
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Says industry can’t keep growing at expense of farms, poor.
The UPA government, which is grappling with the issue of Naxal terror and how to coordinate action against it, has some advice from a committee it set up during its previous term.
The Committee on State Agrarian Relations and Unfinished Task of Land Reforms, chaired by the rural development minister and with members from the bureaucracy, academics and civil society says industry should grow, but not at the cost of agriculture. It says if industry and mining prosper at the cost of alienating tribals, then extremist violence would be the consequence.
It goes on to attribute much of the present problems, including extremist violence, to acquisition of land in tribal areas in violation of rights guaranteed under the Pesa (Panchayats Extension to Schedule Areas) Act in these places.
It says tribals have been marginalised in the Indian polity and their lands are being taken away by industry in partnership with the state.. While tribals are just nine per cent of the population, nearly 40 per cent of land acquired for various needs have come from tribal areas, it points out
The committee was set up by the previous UPA government in response to a rally of landless labourers from different states. It has given its 300-page report to the Prime Minister.
Sources say an earlier version of the report was even more critical of government policies and was then diluted.
While the government has made one of its most radical Acts in the form of the Pesa (legislated in 1996) applicable to nine states, and all of them under Schedule V of the Constitution already have stringent laws protecting the corpus of tribal lands, the tribal areas “continue to be subject to steady erosion due to connivance of the Government machinery, weak implementation, a political economy growing around the tribal lands and marginalisation of tribals in the national polity,’’ says the report.
“The Pesa areas constitute the main target of mining/industrial zone/protected forest reserve after denial of rights/access of local community recently. Thousands of acres of protected & scheduled areas are forcefully transferred in the name of mining and industrialisation. Masses in several North Eastern States have also suffered drastically on this count,’’ it says.
In Assam alone, about 3 91,772 acres of land have been transferred for development projects without considering either the ecological consequences or other adverse effects on life and livelihood of the marginalised communities.
Massive transfers of agricultural and forest land for industrial, mining and development project or infrastructure projects have created rural unrest and distress migration in those areas. The findings indicate about 7,50,000 acres of land have been transferred for mining and another 250,000 acres for industrial purposes in the past two decades, the report says.
The report looks askance at Special Economic Zones and mining projects, while it blames government policies squarely for the violent episodes at Kalinga Nagar, Nandigram and Singur, when there was a crackdown, with loss of lives, on those protesting against acquisition of their land.
The main prescription it offers is land reforms. It has called for a Standing Land Commission in every state and a Land Reforms Council at the Centre to create and implement strict land use policies and to ensure agriculture, life and livelihood are not sacrificed for industrialisation.
It says: “Industrialisation is important for the development of the country but it cannot be supported at the expense of agriculture and the basic rights for land and livelihood of the population.’’
It says: “It may also be emphasised that the changes in the overall macroeconomic policy regime since the early 1990s may have significantly contributed to acceleration in loss of land and other critical natural resources from the vulnerable segments of the country’s population. This may be at the root of the significant spurt in increasing rural unrest and ‘extremist’ violence in 220 districts of the country, as has been recognised by the Expert Group of the Planning Commission.’’
To move towards the objective of inclusive development, the motto of the Eleventh Five Year Plan, it says one of the crucial inputs ought to be carefully designed land use policies. Land has multiple purposes to serve. Along with primary activities like agriculture, mining, forestry, etc, it is also the basic requirement for industrialisation.
It says “the process of rapid industrialisation has resulted in acquisition of land on a large scale and displacement of population. Industrialisation is important for the country’s development but it cannot be supported at the expense of agriculture and the basic rights for land and livelihood of the population. Thus, it is very important that every state clearly demarcates land to be used for different purposes. So, revitalisation of the Land Reforms Council at the Centre and Land Reform Boards for every State is an urgent need to clearly specify the land use policy. In fact,it would be really worthwhile to have a Standing Land Commission for every State in the country.’’
The committee was chaired by the rural development minister and its members included A K Singh, director of the Giri Institute of Development Studies, Lucknow, and B K Sinha, director-general National Institute of Rural Development.
It was asked to review of the land ceiling programme, to suggest ways for identification and distribution of government/waste land to the landless, to review the progress of distribution of Bhoodan land in the states, to examine the issues relating to alienation of tribal lands, setting up of fast-track courts/mechanism for speedy disposal of land-related litigation and to look at land use and recommend measures to prevent/minimise conversion of agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes consistent with development needs of the country.
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