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Kathmandu Friday February 16, 2001 Falgun 05, 2057.
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Stop
land tampering
Land is a highly sensitive matter in a
country where it is often the only asset that people have, and accounts for the bulk of
the employment if not of the GDP. Against this background, any misdeed relating to land
breeds serious misgiving in the public mind. Reports recently of cases of land tampering
on a serious scale in Nawalparasi district have been no different. According to these
reports some locals led by a former DDC member have been attempting to grab about over l00
bigha of land in two separate plots in Dumkibas VDC. Another group in Benimanipur VDC
including VDC officials have sold about 10 bigha in the name of aiding a high school while
some other individuals in Chisapani VDC have started encroaching on a 19 bigha plot
alongside the east-west highway. Reports of similar land grab attempts have surfaced
recently within the capital city also. The underlying fault is two-fold.
First there is corruption and collusion at
the local level. There is easy money to be made when land is at stake, and everyone is in
on it, local officials, the amin, the middlemen, the land revenue clerk. It’s part of
the pervasive culture of corruption and impunity that has gripped our society in these
democratic times. To some extent it has helped spawn that culture through example. The
other side of the problem is a lacuna in the law itself. The law is usually clear enough
when it comes to private ownership of land, and it is fairly impartial in land related
disputes between individuals except in so far as this impartiality is subverted by the
minions of the law and pettifoggers who want to profit from such disputes. But there is
less clarity in the law as between the state and the land. And this is something that the
government itself has helped perpetuate wittingly or unwittingly.
Under the law it was originally the state which
was the ultimate owner of all land in the country. But this notion has been superseded by
usage and custom, the shifting needs of society and the shift in the political centre of
gravity. It is usage that gives individuals ownership claim to land and this has been
sanctioned by the law and reinforced by constitutional provisions on the right to
property. But unclaimed land, fallow land, vacant lots that remain unregistered and land
that comes into being when a river changes course are still in a twilight zone. Who owns
such land? The central government or the local bodies like municipalities and VDCs? And
who is going to take action when such is land is encroached upon, settled by squatters or
misappropriated? The scale of the problem indicates that there definitely is a lack of
clarity here. The government has not helped matters by parcelling out prime real estate to
public corporations and for other purposes without stopping to think whether the local
authorities and the locals too for that matter should not have a say. When the public
corporations are privatized, as the government vows they will be, the land thus parcelled
out will end up in private hands also.
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