Check unplanned farm conversion, says panel

Check unplanned farm conversion, says panel
Business Standard, November 26, 2009, Page 5

Sreelatha Menon / New Delhi

The rapid conversion of agricultural land for non-agricultural uses is not the best way to food security. That is what the government-appointed panel on land reforms and agrarian relations says in its report, currently under the consideration of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. It blames the conversion both on absence of land use policies, “opening up of economy’’ and also on the non-remunerative nature of farming.

The committee links the uncontrolled conversion to social unrest in Nandigram in Bengal and Kalinganagar in Orissa, where cultivated land was being sought for industrial purposes against the wishes of the local community.

It traces the fall in agricultural production to the beginning of economic reforms and cites a study to show growth in foodgrain production at three per cent annually in the decade ending in 1993 and at a mere 0.67 per cent annually in the decade ending 2005.

It says the remedy is to have a proper land use plan. It cites Karnataka as the ideal and cites its land use plans as worthy of emulation for the rest of the country, both at the national state and village levels. These plans should be based on present situation and future needs, it says.

“At the national level, securing food for 1.1 billion people is becoming a huge challenge for policy makers. Half of the world’s hungry population lives in India and feeding them requires at least 170 hectares of agriculture land. In a recent move to increase availability of foodgrain in the country, the government curbed food export,’’ it observes.

It further says the people most affected due to conversion are the tribals and other marginalised groups whose livelihoods are dependent on agriculture. Apart from large-scale conversion of their agriculture land, there are far more families that work as agricultural labourers whose livelihoods are threatened. Tribals and other groups already displaced still have not been provided any or adequate compensation.

An estimated 40 million people (of which nearly 40 percent are tribals and 25 per cent dalits) have lost their land since 1950 on account of displacement due to large development projects.They still await compensation and rehabilitation. This situation is aggravating due to addition of more number of people in this ‘inhumane’ category every year. These people are immensely dissatisfied with government’s apathy towards them, it says.

The report credits widespread social unrest to these factors and says inequitable distribution of benefits from the new land use, quantity of compensation not commensurate with market value, and social tradeoffs like rehabilitation not being done properly are leading to immense dissatisfaction among project-affected people.

“This is leading to gruesome social unrest, as witnessed in Nandigram and Singur in West Bengal and Kalinga Nagar, Orissa, where many people were killed. Such violence can escalate and spread in other parts of the country, too, if project-affected people are not properly consulted and compensated, it says. It also blames the decreasing incentive from agriculture as one of the major causes for the conversion. The total national income coming from the agriculture sector in 1951 was 55 per cent, whereas in 2003, it was merely 24 per cent.

It says more and more farmers every year are abandoning agriculture as their primary source of livelihood. Moreover, farmers are also become severely indebted to practice agriculture. More than 60 per cent of the surveyed households in Karnataka in the NSSO Situation Assessment Survey of Farmers, 2003, showed that they owed an average of Rs18, 000 each.

It says the foremost step to deal with the conversion issue is to make the agriculture sector more viable and profitable. So, addressing the concerns of the agriculture sector is imperative.