Committee On State Agrarian Relations and Unfinished Task of Land Reforms VOL. I DRAFT REPORT Ministry of Rural Development Government of India New Delhi Contents Page List of Committee Members a Terms of Reference b National Land Reforms Policy i - xvii Executive Summary I - XXXI Introduction Chapter – 1 : Land Ceiling and Distribution of Ceiling Surplus, Government and Bhoodan Land (Report of the Sub Group – I) Chapter – 2 : Tenancy, Sub-Tenancy and Homestead Rights (Report of the Sub Group – II) Chapter – 3 : Governance Issues and Policies Relating to Land (Report of the Sub Group – III) Chapter – 4 : Alienation of Tribal and Dalits Lands (Report of the Sub Group - IV) Chapter – 5 : Modernisation of Land Management (Report of the Sub Group – V) Chapter – 6 : Common Property Resources & Issues Related to Conversion of Agriculture Land to Non – Agricultural Use ( Report of the Sub Group – VI) Chapter – 7 : Land Management in North Eastern States (Report of the Sub Group – VII) : a : Committee on State Agrarian Relations and Unfinished Task of Land Reforms List of Members 1. Union Minister for Rural Development .. Chairman 2. Secretary, Department of Land Resources .. Member Ministry of Rural Development 3. Prof. A.K. Singh .. Member Director, Giri Institute of Development Studies Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh 4. Shri B.K.Sinha .. Member Director General NIRD, Hyderabad 5. Shri K.B. Saxena (IAS Rtd) .. Member Flat No.358, Ras Vihar Group Housing Society Plot No.99, Patparganj, Delhi 6. Prof. P.K.Jha .. Member School of Economic Sciences and Planning JNU, New Delhi 7. Shri R.C.Verma .. Member 321, Guru Jambeshwar Nagar Jaipur, Rajasthan 8. Shri Subhash Lomte .. Member National Campaign Committee for Rural Workers 125, Samrath Nagar, Aurnagabad Maharashtra 9. Dr.T.Haque .. Member Ex. Chairman, CACP) New Delhi 10. Shri Acharya Ram Murthy .. Member B-173, Police Colony, Anisabad Patna -02, Bihar 11. Shri Jagadananda .. Member State Information Commissioner Bhubaneswar-751013, Orissa 12 Ms. Neelima Khetan .. Member Seva Mandir, Old Fatehpura Udaipur 313004, Rajasthan 13. Shri Ram Dayal Munda .. Member Village Hatma (Behind Ranchi College) Morhabadi, Ranchi -834008, Jharkhand 14. Ms.Sashikala .. Member President, Dalit Bahujan Sramil Union, House No.01/4878/87/01 Bakaram Nagar, Gandhi Nagar Hyderabad 15 Shri V.K.Pipersenia .. Member Principal Secretary, Revenue Department Govt of Assam, Dispur 781 006 : b : Terms of Reference (i) To conduct in-depth review of the land ceiling programme in the country including status of distribution of land declared surplus, continued possession by the rural poor of the allotted land and expeditious disposal of land declared surplus but held up due to litigation and to suggest appropriate and effective strategies in this regard. (ii) To ensure access of the poor to common property resources, suggest ways for identification, management, development and distribution of Government/wasteland to the landless. (iii) To review the progress of distribution of Bhoodan land in the States and suggest measures for distribution of the remaining Bhoodan land to the landless. (iv) To examine the issue of tenancy and sub-tenancies and suggest measures for recording of all agricultural tenants and a framework to enable cultivators of land to lease in and lease out with suitable assurances for fair rent, security of tenure and right to resumption. (v) To examine the issues relating to alienation of tribal lands including traditional rights of the forest-dependant tribals and to suggest realistic measures including changes required in the relevant laws for restoration of such lands to them. (vi) To examine the issue of setting up of fast track courts/mechanism for speedy disposal of land related litigation cases. (vii) To look into the land use aspects, particularly the agricultural land, and recommend measures to prevent/minimize conversion of agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes consistent with development needs of the country. (viii) To examine the issues related to homestead rights and recommend measures for providing land for housing to the families without homestead land. (ix) To suggest measures for modernization of land management with special reference to updating of land records, proper recording of land rights and speedy resolution of conflicts and disputes relating to land. (x) Suggest institutional mechanisms for effective implementation of land reform programmes. (xi) To examine measures to provide women greater access to land and other productive assets. (xii) Any other issue of relevance. (xiii) Any other Term of Reference that may be decided by the Committee in its first meeting. An Agenda to Reform Agrarian relations for Equity and Efficiency in Contemporary India i NATIONAL LAND REFORMS POLICY I. THE CONTEXT 1.1 It is common knowledge that access to land is of critical significance in large parts of India and the entire economic, social and political networks revolve around it. Agriculture and primary sector activities based on land and other natural resources are the prime source of livelihood for the vast majority of the economically vulnerable rural population, including the poor in the country. Further, land provides not only economic sustenance but often plays a key role in enhancing the prospects of substantive citizenship in much of rural India. Thus the issue of land rights and access to natural resources is therefore one which must be envisioned not in narrow economic terms (e.g., a unit of production) but as basis for larger well-being. 1.2 The capacity of land to provide food, livelihood sustenance and surpluses for capital investment to our population remains despite the growing pressures. The National Centre for Agriculture Economics and Policy Research [NCAP] forecasts that a growth rate of 2.21 percent is required to meet the estimated demand for the years 2003-12 and 1.85 percent for the 20011-21. As against this the XIth Plan document targets a growth of 4 percent. This growth, however, cannot be achieved with a narrow institutional base and thorough land reforms are condition precedent to the realization of these production goals. Far from the Malthusian limits being exhausted we are yet to utilise our potentials even in major parts. 1.3 Even if we choose to confine the perspective on land to the limited economistic understanding it is well-known that land reforms play an extremely important role in accelerating growth and in poverty reduction. The historical experience bears ample testimony to it. In India, lack of access to land has condemned millions into endemic and chronic poverty, seriously limiting possibilities of upward mobility for future generations belonging to such poor households. Furthermore, it may not be off the mark to suggest that the recent acceleration in the country’s growth rates has largely eluded the economic and social well-being and empowerment of its most vulnerable citizens. 1.4 In what continues to be primarily an agriculture based economy, rural poverty and well-being remain closely tied to questions of land ownership and control. The country will never be able to achieve a structural end to rural poverty without land reforms, including redistributive measures and security of tenure and ownership, prevention of usurious alienation from vulnerable segments of people and ownership of house sites. 1.5 The imperative for land reforms derives firstly from the Constitutional mandate for equality before law and the primary duty of the state to ensure redistributive justice. It is reiterated nearly sixty years after Independence in the Common Minimum Programme of the UPA government, declared on 24 May 2004, that ‘landless families will be endowed with land through implementation of land ceiling and land redistribution legislation. No reversal of ceiling will be permitted’. 1.6 It may also be emphasized that the changes in 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 ii has been recognized by the Expert Group of the Planning Commission1. In other words, not only the progress in land reforms may have been halted in the recent years, but there is real danger of the reversal of the land reform agenda. 1.7 After independence, as is well-known, the State recognized the vital link between land and livelihood of the masses in rural areas and launched land reform measures, but such measures in most parts of the country have fallen dramatically short of their objectives, including that of required minimum in terms of homestead land for every family. Grossly inadequate achievements are clearly evident from the distorted land holding pattern. According to the NSSO Report on landholding (2003), 95.65 per cent of the farmers are within the small and the marginal categories owning approximately 62 per cent of the operated land areas while the medium and the large farmers who constitute 3.5 per cent own 37.72 per cent of the total area. A clear increase is perceptible in the number of landless labour in rural areas accompanied by a decline in the wage rate in the agricultural sector. There is also an accompanying decline in the profitability of agriculture. An average farmer spends about Rs.503 per month as his household expenditure (NSSO 59th Round). This has brought about a concentration of poverty amongst the rural landless labour, marginal and small farmers and the minorities. 1.8 The agricultural scenario is characterised by declining agricultural productivity due to decline in availability of the key inputs like fertilizers and lack of basic infrastructure and institutional support, which has triggered off the great distress in the rural areas. This has given rise to vast turbulence in the rural areas. A good 40 per cent of the farmers are feeling constrained to quit agriculture. This turbulence has also contributed to a pronounced trend in rural-urban migration, and a massive stress upon the urban civic infrastructure which has clearly not been designed to handle this kind of population pressure. 1.9 Along with the very limited success of the land reform policies undertaken in India in different plans, the overall trajectory development including the State owned mega projects relating to infrastructure and industrialization, and recent changes in legal statuettes regarding ownership and acquisition of land by private enterprises have further increased the share of landless and marginal farmers. The anxiety of rapid industrialization has acquired a new thrust in the period of economic reforms and has necessitated acquiring land on an even larger scale, by taking recourse to highly questionable policies such as SEZs. The resultant displacement of population has further accentuated the problem of already existing socio-economic disparity and social unrest with each passing year2. 1.10 Nowhere is the distress more evident than in the tribal areas, particularly those falling within the Schedule V. The tribals have been the biggest victims of displacement due to development projects. Though constituting only 9% of the country’s population the tribal communities have contributed more than 40% to the total land acquired till so far. The Parliament has legislated the most radical of its Acts in the form of Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996, applicable to 9 of the States. All these States under Schedule V have stringent laws protecting the corpus of tribal lands which, however, 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. 1.11 There have been disturbing trends notice in the recent times. PESA area constitute the main target of mining/industrial zone/protected forest reserve after denial of rights/access of local 1 The Planning Commission set up an Expert Group on “Development Issues to deal with the causes of Discontent, Unrest and Extremism” in May, 2006. 2As has been mentioned in a report of An Expert Group to Planning Commission (2008), named “Development Challenges in Extremist Affected Area” that according to an unofficial study by Dr. Walter Fernandes, the figure of persons displaced/affected by projects were at around 60 million for the period from 1947 to 2004, involving 25 million ha. iii community recently. Thousands of acres of protected & scheduled areas are forcefully transferred in the name of mining and industrialization. Masses in several North Eastern States have also suffered drastically on this count. In Assam alone, about 3, 91,772 acres of land has been transferred for development projects without considering either the ecological consequences or other adverse effects on life and livelihood of the marginalized communities. 1.12 Massive transfers of agricultural and forest land for industrial, mining and development project or infrastructural projects has created rural unrest and distress migration in those areas. Findings indicate that about 7,50,000 acres of land has been transferred for mining and another 250,000 acres for industrial purposes during last 2 decades[Center for Science and Environment]. SEZs have mostly focused on prime agriculture land resulting in untold misery for poor peasants. Large chunks of land have been rendered degraded because of industrial waste and effluents. These industrial units also have also affected the quality of river waters which have traditionally been the lifeline for the rural masses in a number of ways. Unplanned urbanization has frequently resulted in illegal grabbing of significant chunks of agricultural and commons land. 1.13 Widespread conversion of agriculture land for non-agricultural purposes is being observed throughout the country. The major drivers of such rampant conversion are decreasing incentives from agriculture, industrialization and urbanization, and changing aspirations of the people. The conversion of prime agriculture land is also a factor of decline of availability of foodgrains. This has become a huge challenge as India needs to secure food grain for its more than 1.1 billion people. 1.14 The corpus of tribal lands is subject to continued erosion not only through the process of Government led process of acquisition but also through the institution of moneylenders, collusive title suits, illegal permissive or forcible possession, unredeemed usufructuary mortgages, fraudulent and illegal transfers, abandonment and making incorrect entries in the records-of-rights. The Government stands committed to protection of the tribal corpus of land and in all the Schedule V States there is a protective legislative framework. These have failed to arrest the erosion mainly on account of faulty understanding of laws, bureaucratic apathy and insensitiveness, multiple channels of appeal, misplaced emphasis on evidence, lack of familiarity of the tribals with the court procedures, poor staying capacity on part of the tribal, lengthy procedures, rent seeking behaviour, rising demand for tribal land on account of the operation of the market forces and creation of a high value illegal tribal land market. These implementational lapses arise because the management of tribal lands is externally-bureaucratically controlled and the command over the land resources does not rest with the community. Under the traditional systems the it is the community which has always had the command over the natural resources including the land resources. This shortcoming was cured by enactment of the Panchayat(Extensions to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 better known by its acronym PESA. 1.15 PESA inter alia restores the community’s command over the natural resources and empowers the Gram Sabha to identify and restore the alienated tribal lands and to protect the tribal way of life. PESA calls for four pronged strategy for successful implementation – a) amendment of laws in contradiction to it; b) putting in place a set of procedural laws in conformity with the true intent of PESA; c) creating effective support institutions; and d) capacity building. In none of the States it has been implemented. It is a confirmed belief that a faithful implementation of PESA will go a long way in quietening the turbulence in the tribal areas. 1.16 It hardly needs emphasis that all these key concerns need to be acted upon on an urgent basis for reasons of efficiency as well as equity. Ignoring just aspirations of the masses in rural India for inclusive development will only entail huge economic and political costs. To move towards the objective of inclusive development, which is the motto of the Eleventh Five Year Plan, one of the urgent 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 iv industrialization. As mentioned in the foregoing the process of rapid industrialization has resulted in acquisition of land on a large scale and displacement of population. Industrialization is important for the development of the country but it can not 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 revitalization of 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 worth while to have a Standing Land Commission for every State in the country. Land Reforms in North East 2.1 Geographically, sociologically, anthropologically, culturally, historically and nstitutionally the North Eastern Region (NER) represents a world in itself. The life in this region is rooted to its Land Tenures which exhibit strong inter-State and intra-regional variations. The tribal communities inhabiting this region each have their own distinctive systems of Land Management with dominant community life. Regardless of the inter-State and intra- regional variations the base of the system is founded on common platform – a vigorous community life, management of land by a council of elders elected or nominated, apportionment of land as per use and requirement, lack of concept of individual property rights and the families serving as the unit for allotment and use. The systems generally work on the basis of community ownership and management, are generally democratically driven and prevent accumulation of land resources while providing egalitarian sustenance to the society. There are also instances of Chieftainship, though limited where the ownership of the land resources reside in the person of the Chief. 2.2 The land tenures system in the NER can be classified into community forest land, State Forest, protected forests, unclassified forests or zoom lands, land under habitation, family land and individual lands which are mostly close to urban agglomerations. The community forests are protected and managed by the community and sustain the community needs in terms of their basic requirements. Different communities have evolved their own methodologies for protection and management of the community forests. The villages in Nagaland, except in the areas inhabited by the Sema Nagas, are like little republics governed by their democratically elected Village Councils. The community forests in such areas are under the management of the Village Council which also determines the need for housing and sustenance, allots the land accordingly and lays down rules for the management of the community forests. The rights of the Village Council are absolute and their decisions are seldom questioned by the members of the community. Even in Nagaland the mode of management of the community forests may vary from village to village with each Village Council evolving its own pattern of management. In village Toirupha inhabited by the Jamatia tribes in the district of South Tripura the community forests are protected and managed by the women folks. Harvesting can only take place between November and January and each family is not allowed to take more than 200 poles. There is an enormous range of models of management in the North East, each having its own core competence. 2.3 There are models where the State forests in some instances while the Protected Forests invariably are managed by the village community and their proceeds are shared. Reports are available to indicate that the preservation of such forests is acknowledgedly superior. Private property rights are a relatively scarce phenomenon in such tribal areas and extend mainly to housing and movable properties. The concepts of private properties are also closer to the urban agglomeration and are of recent origins. The family constitutes the basic unit of land use. Within the family structure the authority of the Head of the family prevails. It is the family which makes arrangement for contribution of labour for community and other works. It is a tribute to the institutional robustness of the land management system of the community that it has registered the incursions by alien institutions like private ownership and commodification - marketisation of land resources. v 2.4 It is not that the village institutions are static and immune to change. Introduction of certain new factors and dimensions have made the situation more complex. Social system evolves under certain conditions of living. Changes caused by new forces do affect the social system and lead to changes in the land ownership structure. The new forces include spread of education, urbanisation, industrialisation, outmigration, occupational shift, growth of competing institutions, imposition of State authority, introduction of market forces, globalisation, automisation of individual and disintegration, insurgency, illegal immigration from Bangladesh and other factors. A larger participation in the union labour market by the youth of the North East is also in evidence. These serve to create increasing pressure on the village institutions for atomisation of the village society and for commercialisation of the land relations. 2.5 Jhoom cultivation is still the mainstay of agriculture. The cycles, though, are getting reduced and under such a situation capital investment is non-existent or very low. Sometimes these lands are being converted into individual land. Given this context, introduction of modern management practices have become very difficult. There are also the problems of encroachment of village land by the outsiders. Rapid urban growth and influence of globalisation and marketisation of land are responsible for the growing trend of conversion of village community lands into individual ownership. As a result of this, indigenous village institutions are gradually getting weakened. 2.6 The community land management systems have their respective inbuilt mechanism of dispute resolution based upon democratic form of governance, general will of the village community, transparency and dialogue. Despite the growing complexities and external pressures there is no significant rise in disputes in evidence. On the other hand the introduction of formal Courts has led to an encroachment upon the turf of the traditional dispute resolving institutions. There is evidence to be had that these are imposing litigation burden upon the village society and the judgements often undermine the land management system. This portends ill for the community institutions including that of land management. 2.7 Admittedly, there are critical gaps in the body of knowledge and understanding the complexities of the social institutions in the NER. The different areas have their own system of governance including the District Councils, the Hill District Councils, the Autonomous District Councils and Autonomous Regional Councils which are endowed with rule making powers and implementation of the same. These systems have however strengthened the District level institutions at the expense of the Village Councils which may be dissolved by the former. The people inhabiting the tribal areas are characterised by fierce pride in their community and jealous possessiveness of their traditional institutions. Interventions from the Central or the State Governments without understanding the local institutions, social fabric and the will of the people create disenchantment, anger and rebellion. This accounts for the need to seal such critical gaps through sustained research and interventions reflecting the felt need and differentiated solutions emerging from the village society itself. 2.8 In the plain areas of Assam the Revenue Department is severely constrained by the fact that the subject has been traditionally included in the Non-Plan Head. There is dearth of resources for both modernisation and adequate skilled manpower. The record systems have fallen into arrears and do not reflect the ground realities. This dichotomy has facilitated large scale incursion of illegal immigrants, encroachment upon the community as well as the State lands and the acquisition of title by such illegal migrants. This problem is now being felt even in the interior tribal areas and has created ferment therein.