7. India

Foto:
Indranil Mukherjee/AFP
India
is faced with challenging problems of land concentration and
lack of land rights, tenure security and access for the poor.
While the contribution of agriculture to economy has fallen
over the years, some 58% of the population still depends on
the land to make a living. Of this total, 63% own plots of
less than one hectare, while just 2% own all of the farms
that are larger than 10 hectares. The landless and near landless
(those with less than 0.2 hectares) make up 43% of peasant
families. Most studies show that inequality is on the rise
in India. The number of landless workers has grown, and the
proportion of land monopolized today by the wealthiest 10%
of rural families is larger than it was in 1951.
Historical Overview
During
the two centuries of British colonization, the land issue
was like a lens that revealed the growing loss of India's
economic independence and the subversion of its social processes.
During colonialism, India's traditional land ownership and
land use patterns were changed to ease acquisition of land
at low prices by British entrepreneurs for mines, plantations,
and other purposes. The introduction of the institution of
private property delegitimized community ownership systems
of tribal societies. Moreover, the introduction of the land
tax under the Permanent Settlement Act 1793, assured the permanence
of semi-feudal society in rural areas through independence
in 1948.
At
the beginning of the period of independence, ownership and
control over land were highly concentrated in the hands of
a small number of landlords and their intermediaries, whose
principal goal was the extraction of the maximum amount of
rent possible, whether in the form of money or harvest shares.
This reality seemed not to worry the governments of the 1970s
and 80s. It wasn't until the 90s that the agrarian issue reared
its head again, though dressed up differently and hiding its
true intentions.
The
Agrarian Model of the World Bank
The
current agrarian reform proposal in India is based on the
"free-market" ideology, and is being pushed by various
international financial institutions, like the World Bank.
The emphasis reflects the macroeconomic objectives of these
institutions.
These
institutions say the reforms are needed to resolve the basic
problems faced by poor people in rural areas: access to land,
and security of tenure. They propose structural reforms to
property rights to facilitate functioning land markets as
a joint strategy to stimulate economic growth and alleviate
rural poverty.
The
package on offer includes comprehensive reforms of land tenure,
including titling, cadastral surveys and settlement operations,
land registries, improvements in land revenue systems, land
legislation, land administration, land sale-purchase transactions,
and removal of restrictions on land leasing.
In
1975, a Land Reform Policy Paper brought out by the World
Bank listed land registration and titling as the main instruments
for increasing tenure security, the main facilitating mechanisms
for the establishment of flourishing land markets, and the
best tools to enable the use of land as collateral for credit.
Today these ingredients constitute the mainstay of Bank-led
land reforms around the world.
The
foundation of the Bank measures is the "well-functioning
land market," in which land will gradually pass from
"less efficient" farmers to "more efficient"
producers. As a private transaction, the new owner swill supposedly
use the land better, or to use World Bank terminology, "generate
maximum profits."
But
even as the international financial institutions announce
greater access to land by the poor via credits to purchase
land, the same institutions push macroeconomic policies that
undercut the viability of family farming: trade liberalization,
cutbacks of subsidies to food producers, the privatization
of credit and banking, undue promotion of export cropping,
and financing for research into inappropriate technologies,
like genetic engineering.
All
of these policies affect small farmers, pushing many into
bankruptcy and mass distress sales of land, swelling the ranks
of the landless, further concentrating land ownership, and
driving environmental degradation and rural-urban migration.
For many observers, the clearest result of these policies
is the deteriorating access to land by the poor, as they are
forced to sell what they already have, or lose it to the bank
when they can't pay off their loans.
The
commercialization of agriculture took off in India in the
1960s with the Green Revolution, when the World Bank and the
U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) boosted
agricultural productivity through the import of fertilizers,
seeds, pesticides and farm machinery. World Bank credit subsidized
these imports, while the Bank also exerted pressure on the
government to create favorable conditions for foreign investment
in India's fertilizer industry, and pushed import liberalization
and the elimination of most domestic controls.
In
1969, the Terai Seed Corporation was started with a USD $13
million World Bank loan. This was followed by two National
Seeds Project loans totaling USD $41 million between 1974
and 1978. In 1988, the World Bank gave India's seed sector
a fourth loan of USD $150 million loan to privatize the seed
industry and open India to multinational seed corporations.
In any country, agriculture is the sector that receives the
greatest investment from the Bank. In India, since the 1950s,
130 Bank projects have received a total of USD $10.2 billion.
Markets
for Water and Forests
In
an agricultural country like India, where two-thirds of agricultural
production is dependant on irrigation and where irrigation
accounts for 83% of water consumption, irrigation schemes
that can enhance agricultural productivity assume special
importance. Thus the international financial institutions
have now begun financing and promoting the restructuring of
the hydrological sector. Highlighting the need for a "total
revolution in irrigated agriculture," the government
of India and the World Bank have identified the tasks at hand
as:
Modernization of irrigation agencies in order to make them
more autonomous and accountable.
Improvements
in irrigation systems by organizing farmers to take up operation
and management responsibilities, based on the formation of
water user associations at the local and regional levels.
Reforms
in irrigation financing in order to make state irrigation
departments financially self-sufficient, rationalizing water
charges and improving collection rates.
Institution
of a system of water rights.
The
overall goal is to facilitate the creation of markets for
water. The propaganda of modernization is being used by the
World Bank to institute user-fees for water and to privatize
water services.
The
Bank and other international agencies are also pushing forestry
projects. After the failure of social forestry projects and
faced by the ongoing deterioration in the country's forest
resources, in 1988 the Government of India introduced a new
forest policy: that forests be managed first as an ecological
necessity, second as a source of goods for local populations,
and only third as a source of wood for industries and other
non-local consumers. This policy was pioneering to the extent
that it recognized the people living in and around the forest
as an essential requirement in the governance of forests,
considered them partners of the Forestry Department, and appreciated
their demand as the first charge on the forest produce. Yet
today we find the Bank pushing large-scale monocultures of
species like Eucalyptus - a perennial World Bank favorite
- which cause land degradation and the lowering of water tables.
Traditional
Peoples and Women
The
concept of land as a commodity comes into conflict with traditional
concepts of common property and with societies, such as those
of the tribals (as indigenous peoples are known in India),
who generally do not have a documented system of land rights.
In an ironic twist of fate, tribals happen to live in resource
rich regions. Consequently, the government and the private
sector have a keen interest in gaining access and control
over their land and mineral resources. An estimated 2.13 million
people have been displaced by large projects since Indian
independence. The majority of these have been tribals, who
constitute 7% of India's population.
The
conditions under which women participate in farming have also
changed, and generally not for the better. Traditionally,
rural women have been responsible for half of the world's
food production. They remain the main producers of the world's
staple crops - rice, wheat, and maize - which provide up to
90% of the rural poor's food intake. Women's specialized knowledge
about genetic resources for food and agriculture makes them
essential custodians of agro-biodiversity.
Nevertheless,
the gender debate remains an issue of marginal concern. There
has been a neglect of women's land-related concerns by both
governmental and non-governmental institutions and this also
mirrors a gap in academic scholarship, where the relationship
between women and property has remained relatively unattended.
Today
it is crucially important in India to bring forward all of
the issues related to land, especially as land reform has
all but disappeared from the popular imagination. It must
be brought back and placed squarely at the center of the national
agenda, according to Indian social movements. For them, agrarian
reform is crucial to national sovereignty itself.
Text
based on PIMPLE, Minar - Land reform in India: issues and
challenges
8.
Mexico
9.
South Africa
10.
Thailand
11.
Zimbabwe
12.
Positions of Via Campesina
13.
Bibliography
14.
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