40 YEARS AGO

Rajasthan: Land Reform In Reverse

WHEN the food situation in the country is rather precarious and increased production for self-sufficiency in food demands first and foremost the implementation of genuine land reforms, the Congress government of Rajasthan is reported to have decided to further postpone the imposition of ceilings on landholdings which has already been delayed for over ten years.

Though the Congress had accepted land reforms and land to the tiller as slogans to mobilise the peasantry during the freedom struggle, ever since it came to power its governments in the states have been tardy in introducing land reforms in the interests of the bulk of the peasantry. Even where certain ceiling legislations were introduced they were so full of loopholes that landlords found no difficulty in evading them. The implementation of these legislations have been worse with the result that hardly any worthwhile amount of surplus land has been acquired to distribute to the agricultural workers and landless and poor peasants.

Rajasthan is perhaps one of the crassest examples but the situation is not much better in the other states. As in all the states, here also the introduction of the legislation was inordinately delayed to give time to the big landlords to partition, transfer and do a hundred other things with their land and get ready to beat the legislation when it when in came on the Statute Book.

Even after the legislation was enacted and during the long period it was awaiting implementation, the big landholders continued their nefarious activities. A high-power commission appointed by the state government to go into the question of revenue laws is reported to have concluded that “there has been a good deal of illegal transfers during the period the law relating to ceiling remained unimplemented.”

The result, as the same commission has pointed out, is that land to rehabilitate only about four thousand families may be available by application of this law. As days go by, the extent of even this land goes on diminishing and soon the position will be reached that despite the ceiling law, no surplus land is available in the state. Where all the land has disappeared – the landlords and the Congress government will not say, but the people will know that there is no mystery behind this disappearance.

In April last, the Sukhadia government gave further time to the landholders till September to file declarations about their holdings. Knowing full well that the state government would not lift a finger against them and that when September came the date would be further extended, the declarations were not filed. And as expected, the state government is reported to be extending the time limit.

It is time the Congress rulers realised that talk about self-sufficiency and appeasement of landlords cannot go together.

--- People’s Democracy, November 21, 1965