One of 5.78 million beneficiaries of land redistribution nationwide, Radheshyam (he uses only one name) got his land within 45 days of being shortlisted by the gram sabha (village council) in his village of Bebar in the western Uttar Pradesh district of Mainpuri.
For the next five years, Radheshyam grew foodgrain on his half acre, which yielded about eight quintals of rice and six of wheat every year. After buying fertiliser, pesticides, manure and water, the land provided mainly enough for his family of eight.
In 1995, rainwater filled a nearby pond and flooded his land. Since then, Radheshyam moved to Agra, 113 km to the west, and worked whatever job he could find. In this time, his family grew and he borrowed money .
Steeped in debt, he now believes that the land he and others in his village, of about 310,000 statewide got after the Uttar Pradesh Zamindari Abolition and Land Reforms Act, 1950, was too little to change his life.
Radheshyam’s situation reflects the general failure of a 54-year-old Indian programme to take land from the rich and give it to the poor.
Why it is difficult to reverse more than half a century of land reform failures
Five facts, gleaned from the 2011-12 agricultural census and 2011 socio-economic caste census and this correspondent’s data, summarise the failure of India’s land reforms:
– No more than 4.9% of farmers control 32% of India’s farmland.
– A “large” farmer in India has 45 times more land than the “marginal” farmer.
– Four million people, or 56.4% of rural households, own no land.
– Only 12.9% of land marked – the size of Gujarat – for takeover from landlords was taken over by December 2015.
– Five million acres — half the size of Haryana — was given to 5.78 million poor farmers by December 2015.
What has largely failed nationwide — with the exception of West Bengal — over 54 years since a land redistribution law was passed, is not likely to improve, according to data in a response this correspondent received to a Right to Information (RTI) application filed with the department of land resources of the Indian government’s Ministry of Rural Development.
The average land given to the rural landless is small and falling, from 0.95 acres in 2002 to 0.88 acres in 2015 — a 7.4% drop over 13 years – and a slowdown is evident in the process of taking land away from rich landlords, the RTI data reveal.
As of December 2015, land declared “surplus” (meaning, it could be taken away from landlords) across India stood at 6.7 million acres; the government took over 6.1 million acres; and distributed 5.1 million acres — less than half the area of Haryana, or five-and-a-half times the area of Goa—to 5.78 million people.
Similarly, the land declared surplus has fallen over the years. Between 1973 and 2002, an average of 150,000 acres was declared surplus, and an average of 140,000 acres was distributed every year. In contrast, between 2002 and 2015, the land declared surplus every year was 4,000 acres, while land in government possession and distributed declined by 29,000 acres and 24,000 acres per year, respectively
This means that there is less land declared surplus every year over the past 13 years and what was once a growing trend of government possession and distribution has reversed.
@ Based on a First Post report.
