USE REVENUE-SHARING MODEL FOR DEVELOPMENT,LAND ACQUISITION

LAND,WHETHER owned or operated, is an important asset in rural India. Apart from ensuring food security and social status of a household, its value improves the family’s access to several other resources like credit markets. Therefore, land has always been a source of political, social and economic power. In Punjab, the battle by Dalit (Scheduled Castes) households, most of whom are landless, for access to village common land or panchayati land has been going on for quite some years now.

The Punjab Village Common Lands (Regulation) Act, 1961 states that of the cultivated land proposed to be leased out, 30 per cent, 10 per cent and 10 per cent respectively shall be reserved for the Scheduled Caste, the Backward Class and dependents of those killed in any war. A cultivable land of 80 hectares or more can be also leased out up to five years without auction to the collective farming cooperative society of the village under the Punjab Co-operative Societies Act, 1961 with the approval of Zila Parishad. Due to land rights movement, 44 village panchayats have allotted panchayat land to Dalits since 2014. In 2017-18 alone, 55,200 ha of panchayat land was leased out, accounting for 81 per cent of the total common land in the state. Access to this common land led to a significant improvement in the livelihoods of landless households, especially women who worked as daily agricultural labourers earlier; most now grow their

Model Town Raipura, for instance, the entire cultivable land is owned by just 10 upper caste families. The remaining 43 households belong to Scheduled Caste communities, often referred to as Dalits, and are landless. The disparity in land ownership is palpable across the state, which has the highest proportion—32 own food, rear livestock and sell milk.

But some recent state policies aim to grab this land from panchayats. The draft agricultural policy of Punjab (2018) states:“The Government shall make efforts…to promote climate resilient agriculture by ensuring that village common lands are used to provide required biodiversity to protect agriculture. …Additionally, a biodiversity reserve of about one hectare will be planned in each village.” In 2017, the government asked village panchayats to use one-third of the village common land for planting trees to increase green cover in the state which is only 4.85 per cent, besides generating employment under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.

While these policies were well intentioned, the Industrial and Business Development Policy-2017 proposed to take away panchayat lands for industry which is at cross purpose. It says the government will help identify and transfer common lands and unutilised per cent—of Scheduled Caste people in the country. In rural parts of Punjab, Scheduled Caste communities constitute more than 37 per cent of the population. Yet, only about 3 per cent of them have land to till, says a study by the Dr B R Ambedkar Centre of the Panjab University in Chandigarh. government lands to the infrastructure development authority for setting up industrial parks.The recent nod to amend the Village Common Lands Act proposes acquiring the common land for setting up a land bank for industrial projects.

This amendment would affect the income of panchayats that support local development work— land-generated income of panchayats across Punjab in 2016-17 was `292.7 crore—and make them dependent on the Union and state governments, defying all the provisions about decentralisation. It would also take away from the landless Dalit households their hard-earned access to common lands and the hope of getting it in many more villages across the state. Even the Vidhan Sabha Committee report on farmer suicides did not pay attention to the issue of leasing of common land to the Dalit farm labour households.

Punjab is not alone in such anti-poor shift in policy.Earlier,Gujarat had handed over the ceiling surplus land, meant for the poor and marginal farmers, to the industry citing the need for land for industrialisation.The question that should be asked is: why can’t a revenue sharing model be used for privately owned land for its use for industrial development, as has been done in Haryana and Andhra Pradesh instead of taking away the livelihoods sources of the most marginalised?

Sukhpal Singh is professor and chairperson, Centre for Management of Agriculture, Indian Institute of

Management,Ahmedabad

TO REDUCE LANDLESSNESS among Scheduled Caste communities, the Punjab Village Common Lands (Regulation) Act, 1961 reserves about one-third of the village common land or shamlat land for them to be given on an annual lease. “Punjab has about 70,000 ha of such commons land,”

the next kharif season,” says Singh. “But we may not succeed this time as the government appears to have made up its mind to side with the upper caste and the rich.”

Singh is referring to the recent decision by the state government to amend the Punjab Village Common Lands (Regulation) Act. On December 2, 2019, the state Cabinet gave its nod to the amendment whose objective, as per the Cabinet note, is to promote development of villages by “unlocking the value of shamlat land” after transferring it for industrial projects. This will allow the creation of “land banks in rural areas to boost industrial development in the state”, says the government in a statement.

The government has already already live in poor conditions. Such regressive policies will further marginalise them,” says Lachhman Singh Sewewal, general secretary of Punjab Khet Mazdoor Union (PMKU). Soon after the government decision to amend the Act, JPSS, PKMU and trade union Krantikari Pendu Mazdoor Union congregated in Moga district on December 24, and have resolved to intensify the movement. “On January 24, we will stage protests against the amendment in front of residences of the Members of Legislative Assembly of the ruling Congress Party,” says Mukesh Maloud, president of JPSS.

A VILLAGE COMMON land can be anything from a wasteland to grazing land and agricultural