People's Democracy

        Bargadars To Be Given Land Rights In Three Districts

BARGADARS or sharecroppers will be given land rights in ten blocks in three districts, as a start. Bargadars belong to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes will stand to benefit in the first phase. The Left Front government’s land and land reforms minister, Abdur Rezzak Molla, said so on the floor of the Vidhan Sabha on July 2. 

Molla said two blocks each in South 24 Parganas (Sunderbans area), Jalpaiguri, and six in West Midnapore have been selected. The landowners and the bargadars would decide upon the matter of buying and selling mutually. The state will give preference, as beneficiaries, to members of the SC and ST communities and to those who have less than one acre of land. 

The price has been fixed as Rs 40,000 per bigha. The landowner will receive 50 per cent of the price from the bargadar and this will be fixed as the sale price. A bargadar will not be entitled to resell the land once he has become its owner.

There are 15,04,000 bargadars in Bengal at the moment. The cumulative amount of land they hold amounts to 11,10,000 acres. In the initial phase, the Left Front government aims to enable 10,000 bargadars to become landowners. Poor bargadars will be given loans through panchayats. If a bargadar becomes employed, his barga land will be handed over to another bargadar. On the bargadar’s demise, his son will inherit the barga land.

The World Bank has agreed to fund the amount of over Rs 9 crore needed for this process of enabling the bargadars to become landowners. Yet, the Bengal Left Front government has refused to accept the conditionalities the World Bank sought to impose, including monitoring by outside agencies. The government will like the monitoring to be done by a non-government organisation of the country. Talks are going on.

It is relevant to note here that a total of 10,88,000 acres of land has been distributed among 27,60,000 kisans as barga land. Some 1,87,000 acres of redistributable land is under litigation in courts of law.