LDF to uproot' 60s' land reform

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Land Reforms legislations of the sixties have struck at the roots of feudal agrarian relations, and tenants were transformed into landowners overnight. Now, finding that agriculture growth has been stunted in the post-‘land reforms’ period, the LDF government wants the revolutionary reforms partially reversed. The government will introduce an amendment to the Land Reforms Act, 1963, to remove the ban imposed on leasing out agriculture land.  The amendment will allow landowners to lease out land in their possession to farmers for cultivation.

In short, the amendment would create a new set of tenants, the exploitation of whom by erstwhile landlords necessitated the fight for land reforms in the first place. Ironically, land reforms is now sought to be reversed to protect tenants. Truth is, the tenancy system is not extinct in the state, it continues in certain pockets of the state with official support, but without legal backing.

For instance, since 2004 about 59,206 hectares of unused land (in Ernakulam, Thiruvananthapuram and Alappuzha districts) have been taken on lease and cultivated by 38,054 Kudumbashree groups of four to 10 women members. However, in many areas it was found that landowners have become exploitative, charging high lease rates and denying fixity of tenures. Further, informal tenants do not have access to institutional credit, insurance and other support services. The amendment to the Land Reforms Act, therefore, is an attempt to insulate tenants from the avarice of landowners.

Land reforms, though it had abolished the tyrannies of caste and landlordism, has spawned a new set of problems. Instead of to the actual tillers, the reforms had handed over land to intermediaries or to people who had leased lands from landlords and employed labour to cultivate the land. “As a result, most of the lands came into the possession of people who were not really interesting in farming, a group we call absentee landlords,” said Dr K.N. Harilal, Planning Board member. Absentee landlords viewed land more as an asset than a productive entity. According to Dr Harilal, the ‘means of production’ function of land is losing its importance to its asset function.

“Lifting the ban on leasing could resolve the contradiction between both these functions,” he said. The landowner who leaves his land fallow will get money and marginal and landless farmers, eager to cultivate, will get land. Incidentally, the Kudumbashree experiment where groups of women cultivated fallow land has been hailed as a national model by NITI Aayog. The amendment, sources said, will call for the collection of land left fallow and also the land in the possession of individuals not interested in farming under a ‘land bank’ from which parcels of land can be distributed to marginal and landless farmers for agriculture.