States:
Telang elangana ana- Land Alienation on the Agenda
The state government of Telangana announced a scheme named Rythu Bandhu, which envisages disbursement of Rs. 8000 per acre per year as capital assistance to every owner of farm land in the state. The Chief Minister, K. Chandrasekhar Rao, inaugurated this scheme in May 2018. First tranche of Rs. 4000 for kharif season had been disbursed along with Pattas( title books of ownership of land), while the second tranche would be distributed in November this year. As total land under cultivation in the state is around 14 million acres, it might cost the exchequer around Rs. 55 billion.
A programme to update the existing land records was taken up in the un-bifurcated AP with the aid from the World Bank.( The Digital India Land Records Modernisation Programme- DILRMP- was launched over a decade ago. The project aims to bring India’ s land records like information about land, ownership and usage, to be kept in easy-to-access central repositories, with real-time updates) But it could not progress much. The Chief Minister claimed that surveying and issuing of titles to farm lands is his brainchild and it was completed in a record time, which made possible the implementation of Rythu Bandhu successfully. But the scheme is riddled with problems.
The official data shows that out of 5.8 million title books only 4.4 million are prepared by May 20 and they were distributed along with the cheques for Rs. 4000 per acre. Out these title books one million are found to be defective due to wrong entry of names, survey numbers etc. Similarly, out of the 4.4 million bank cheques, only 1.7 have 20 reached to the banks for encashment. Most of them are withhold by the land-owners due to various reasons such as wrong entry of names, Aadhar number, bank account etc. Now the farmers are running from pillar to post to get corrected these wrong entries.
Leaving aside these practical hiccups, there are larger issues at stake. Most of the adivasi lands were alienated. They are in the hands of non-tribals. According to official survey, 60 per cent of land in Adilabad, 71 per cent in Warangal and 52 per cent in Khammam districts, where most of the adivasis in Telangana reside( districts were reorganized after bifurcation. Here we mentioned old ones) were alienated from adivasis before the bifurcation of AP. The Rythu Bandhu scheme has legalized this alienation of adivasi lands and issued titles to illegal occupation by non-tribals.
There are thousands and thousands of acres of land categorized as government banjar, eenam, community lands etc. These are supposed to be given to the rural poor by law. But most of these lands are in possession of influential persons in the villages. These are transferred to others in benami transactions( with agreements written on while paper). The TRS government has legalized these holdings by issuing title books throwing the law on statute book to the wind.
Another major problem is that Rythu Bandhu has not included tenant farmers, the actual tillers of land, under the scheme. There are 6 lakh tenant farmers in the state who are either landless agricultural labourers or poor peasants having a small patch of land. When this was pointed out to the Chief
Minister, he bluntly told that their inclusion would create problems to the landowners and hence they could not be provided with capital assistance as they have not registered their tenancy. Even the peasants who are cultivating temple lands according to the due process of law are being denied capital assistance under Rythu Bandhu on the specious plea that they are tenant farmers, despite the fact that they have taken the land on rent from the Endowments Department of state government.
After a number of prolonged struggles by the peasants, the protection of tenancy act was made in 1950, which stipulated the registration of tenancy. But it was never implemented in earnest during all these seven decades and tenancy agreements between owners and tenant peasant continued as oral agreements. The Section 10( 4) of 1950 act says that institutional credit can be provided to tenants. The previous Congress government in undivided AP had issued Loan Eligibility Certificates( LEC) to tenant peasants. This scheme was bereft with many problems could only reach to a tiny fraction of tenants and largely remained on paper. Now the TRS government decided to put a stop to the issuing of LECs and directed the officials to take steps, probably by an ordinance, to abrogate the tenancy protection Act of 1950 on the same specious plea that it is creating problems to the owners of the land.
It is definitely a land reform in reverse in state where peasants continuously waged many struggles to realize their demand“ Land to the Tiller”.
This is not the end. There is much more in the offing. The outgoing Economic Advisor to the
Class Struggle