FEATURES NEWS THE RISING NEPAL (DAILY)

By Shobhana Malla

THE phenomenal industrial growth of Japan, Korea and Taiwan can trace its root to the successful land and agrarian reform programmes which these countries pursued after the second world war. Today these countries boast of agricultural gross value added ranging from Rs. 200,000 to 400,000 per hectare compared to about Rs. 20,000 to 30,000 in Nepal today. These countries have proven that the promotion of agricultural productivity by intensifying land usage through small owner cultivators can provide a good base for rapid industrialisation. Also, these countries decided, early in their development game, to address the issue of economic equity to avert social and political problems that would certainly erupt if large income disparities began to stalk the people.

Causes of Poverty

In Nepal the rather delayed response to equity and land productivity issues has hampered both agricultural and industrial growth. Overwhelming majority of the population remains poor, thus unable to purchase goods produced by the industrial sector and make ends meet like proper human beings. The huge increase in population has heightened the pressure on productive resources like land and forests. This has led to the deterioration of these resources through overexploitation and denudation. The dual effect of higher demand from more people and lower resource supply because of depletion has resulted in a worsening poverty scenario in Nepal, particularly in the rural/agricultural sector.

The recent move to reduce the size of the ownership of land in the country is a good gesture by the Government to show that it is planning to do something meaningful for the landless and the absolute poor. This sudden announcement to impose the limit to land size holding has created a lot of confusion since prior homework had not been carried out to forecast the impact of its implementation. However, the primary intention has been to alleviate poverty in the long run. The growing number of the poor and persistence of income inequality in Nepal can be attributed to three structural factors; unequal asset ownership, population growth and the lack of productivity.

To elaborate further several factors appear for the country’s poverty. First there is too much wealth in the hands of few people. Second, 90 per cent of the country’s farmlands have been devoted to crops with low value added, namely rice, wheat and corn. The nature of these three low-valued added crops has underutilised the country’s labor force. Third, Nepal had relied too much on national level mechanisms to push development. All major decisions on the planning and execution of development programmes are made in Kathmandu. Fourth, the Nepalese banking system, which is dominated by commercial banks mostly favors urban borrowers, industrialists and other non-agricultural sectors.

Steps needed for Land Distribution

The recently announced land reform programme can act as the rallying force that could galvanise government and non-government efforts towards poverty alleviation, productivity improvement and people upliftment. It must not be seen merely as a social equity or land distribution programme. It must be conceived as the foundation for building a strong country and must go beyond the mere economic emancipation of landless farmers. Similar land reform programme was implemented 37 years ago, but to what extent the programme was successful in achieving social and economic equity still needs to be assessed meticulously.

If land or agrarian reform is to be implemented effectively in Nepal, we have to learn a lot from East Asian experiences. In Japan, Taiwan and Korea a pattern evolved which is worth adapting to the local situation. Likewise, learning from these countries Nepal will also need to adopt the following for effective and successful execution of the programme. First and foremost, there has to be relative speed and wide coverage of land reform implementation. Within a span of five years of land reform programme in these countries 80 per cent of farm households owned their own land in these countries.

Second, land distribution has to be buttressed by agricultural support services like credit, market, facilities, technical extension and infrastructures. Otherwise desired impact cannot be achieved only by land distribution.

Third, the most important component of agrarian or land reform has to be area based cooperatives. which will be indispensable mechanism for the delivery of support services in bringing about productivity. Committees operating at the village level are to be formed to facilitate implementation.

Fourth, productivity through irrigation, research, technology dissemination and agricultural extension must be promoted.

Fifth, farmers will have to shift to higher value after attaining surplus status in staple products like rice and wheat.

The Number of Beneficiaries

In a developing country like ours the assumption today is that the larger the land holding the lesser the productivity. This may not be true in our case. Even today 70 per cent of the landholdings are less than 1 ha, but the productivity and the output still remains more or less the same for the large and small farm holdings. Now the question arises on how many landless or the absolute poor will benefit from the imposition of the recently announced land ceiling of 11 bigas in the Tarai, 30 ropanies in Kathmandu Valley and 75 ropanies in the hills and mountains. How the excess land will be acquired is still to be addressed. As things stand today, the total cultivated land in the country is 2.6 million hectares. 70 per cent of land holdings and 30 per cent of the cultivated area falls below 1 ha. Similarly out of 2.7 million land holdings less than one per cent comprise of land size more than 11 bigas. In other words the total cultivated area with land size more than 11 bigas in less than 15 per cent. So the land available for acquisition or distribution is some two hundred fifty thousand bigas. With the assumption that each beneficiary family gets half a biga to eke out a living, the total population benefited is around 1.5 million. With this scenario in background only a fraction of the landless section of the society is going to benefit. What will happen to the rest? Possibly more frustration and chaos among the landless who have great expectations of obtaining some land from the present announcement of the land ceiling.

Many feel that the decision to impose this land ceiling on private property was not a timely pursuit since adequate homework has not been exercised. There has been a lot of resentment among the landowners, particularly in the Tarai because of many technical problems like not possessing citizen certificates and others. The policy of this programme could have been to first experiment land distribution in selected areas, and demonstrate the ability to methodologically transfer land from landlords to landless, tenants and agricultural workers. As a matter of fact it needs success stories to capture the imagination of the farming communities. Besides that the success areas chosen for demonstration should firstly be areas where the land for distribution is prime farm land not marginal, idle or unproductive secondly the potential for farmer success is high due to the presence of economic and social support systems, thirdly the landless farmer discontent is high and a very large number of beneficiaries can be involved.

As many imagine, poverty alleviation cannot be solely achieved by land distribution to the landless and the poor. There are other areas where the policy makers and executors of the programmes must concentrate on. If this land reform or agrarian reform progarmme, whichever you prefer to call, is to be made meaningful, the primary pre-requisite is to integrate it with other income generation and social activities. Besides that one has to make sure that the genuine ones only get and is not misused like in the past with affluent ones even taking advantage. The responsibility of executing this programme must fall upon on an entity comprising of sincere, honest and innovative persons from the private and government sector so that it is executed on an unbiased and fair manner.

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