FEATURES NEWS THE RISING NEPAL (DAILY)

Land Reform Programme New Thinking Necessary

By Sanaullah Khan

"The distribution of rights in land relates to the distribution of power, income, social status, and incentives. A land reform that changes this distribution is by definition a change that shakes the roots and not the branches of a society."

– Philip M. Raup

THE recent land reform initiative announced by Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba is getting both popular support and strong opposition from various sectors of society. The announcement without the enactment of proper Act shows lack of adequate preparation by the government. It can be assumed that the government had high expectation of the cooperation from all sectors of society including all opposition parties and legal organizations. The expectation of the government is genuine at this stage of instability and lawlessness in the country. The Prime Minister did not talk about the mode of reform, may be intentionally. Looking at his sincerity it can be believed that he will be able to decide the best possible mode of land reform policy. However, there is no doubt that he has to take the members of the parliament opposing his policy in confidence and try to implement their genuine demands.

The action of opposition parties, advocates and other common people is also legitimate. They are opposing the policy for the betterment and not just for the sake of protest. Their demand and cry seem to have genuine reasons. Reducing the holding size of merely one per cent large landholders cannot provide enough land to redistribute among 70 per cent landless and small landholders. It is necessary to put certain limit on landholding and this is the demand of time too. At the same time, there should be justice to such landholders, whose land is supposed to be acquired for the good cause. The government can purchase such excess land investing from the state coffers. South Korea and Taiwan in their land reform processes gave enough time to the farmers to sell and buy land before implementing the strict rule. Obviously, Nepal may have some different situation and cannot follow suit as of Korea and Taiwan. There is the need of having an entirely different approach to the problem. The policy of providing employment to the landless and rural poor, extensive development of infrastructure, education, market, trade and rural industrialisation with active participation of rural poor only can help to reach the goal. In fact, in Nepal, people with small and medium landholdings are poorer than those, who have no land but employment opportunities.

Consolidation of land is more important than the redistribution of land. Even small farmers with consolidated landholdings can produce more than large farmers with scattered land parcels. Most of the countries in the world including Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, China, and India were successful in land consolidation to benefit from the land reform. The matter of scale of economy in agricultural production is getting importance at present world of global integration. To compete in the global market, there is the need of group approach in agriculture production. Government should provide atmosphere for group farming of demand based high value crops. As can be seen from the experience of many countries, development of proper infrastructure, market base and strong trade link are essential for agriculture transformation. Even the socialist economies prefer land consolidation. The population involved in agriculture automatically reduces with economic growth. More people engaged in agriculture shows high degree of poverty of that population. Hence, there is a need of reduction of agrarian population with generation of non-agriculture sector employment.

Present policy of the government is not yet clear about the mode of reform which has brought great confusion among the common people. Government must come out immediately with proper policy to vitalize its position and gain mass support. Limiting merely holding size of so-called landlords cannot bring any fruitful result, unless consolidation of land size, rural industrialisation and employment are assured. The present action of the government may provide momentary relief but cannot yield permanent solution. In the long-term, it might have negative effect on economic growth too. So, there is the need of many simultaneous reforms, namely: Land reform – with special programme of land consolidation and utilisation. Farmers who are skilled, devoted, and without any other alternate sources of income should be given priority in land distribution. Such farmers should be allowed to keep more land than those with alternate income source. Promotion of efficient cropping pattern – there is a need of special policy for the promotion of high value crops and cash crops that have high comparative advantages and niche market instead of low-value cereal products. The existing open grazing system of livestock in Nepal is really harmful to agricultural production. High productive stall-fed livestock must replace the low productive open grazing livestock. Rural industrialisation based on primary production – rural Nepal cannot transform unless industries are established in rural areas and people are given employment opportunity. The link between industry and agriculture will increase the quality and efficiency of both the sectors. The value added production could ensure better income along with high employment generation. Development of rural infrastructure, market base, and strong trade link – the rural transformation is possible only if infrastructure and strong market forces properly back it. Therefore suitable policies and programmes must be brought to develop such facilities in rural areas. These facilities will tremendously increase off-farm employment and promote high-income production system. Promotion of education among rural poor and reduction of educated youth’s migration from rural sector – rural Nepal is suffering from high illiteracy and poor quality of education. People who have some education do not live in village and migrate to towns and cities for job. Those who are left behind do not understand modern agriculture. Education must be provided compulsorily to all with special emphasis on agricultural education from primary level. Involvement of educated farmers in
agriculture can boost the income bringing agriculture transformation. Establishing and enabling farmers’ cooperatives and farmers’ associations – to increase awareness among the farmers about various factors of development and make their position strong, they should be linked with strong organisations such as cooperatives.

The government of Nepal has made many attempts in the past to distribute land to landless people. The forest of Terai is almost wiped out in this attempt, but the number of landless people is increasing over time. In most of the times, only those who have power, money and approach do benefit from such schemes. It must be decided before hand who is going to get land before imposing the limit on landholdings. Farmers with small and medium size of landholdings are suffering from high underemployment. People who have access to natural resources and employment opportunities should not be treated equally with those having no such accesses at all.

Nepal can benefit from the experience of land reforms of many countries and has an advantage not to repeat the mistakes that they committed during their reform processes. Nepal, of course, can reduce landholding size to certain extent but the major effort should be towards consolidation of land. The government must come out with new programmes and establish new criteria to employ poor and down trodden people. Investment on rural infrastructure and education of rural poor and women are essential to bring them in the mainstream of development.

At this stage, there is the need of cooperation among all opposition parties and government for the sake of common goal. Those who are in the government and those supporting the reform and opposing it, all are sincere and worrying for the future of the country and its people. As all of them are struggling for a common goal, differences in opinion may be resolved by mutual discussions among the lawmakers and intellectuals from each side. They can sit together and decide the best mode of reform that can bring the real transformation not only to the agricultural sector but also to the overall society.

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