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. Table of Contents