The Hindu : Farmers opposed to Land Use Commission

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Dec 16, 2002

Southern States

Southern States - Kerala

Farmers opposed to Land Use Commission

By Our Staff Reporter

PALAKKAD DEC. 15. Farmers have come out against the proposed Land Use Commission saying it "would reverse the gains of the historic Kerala Land Reforms Act and the Land Utilisation Act.''

The National Farmers Protection Committee (NFPC) in a statement here yesterday said that the new commission "will destroy farm sector in Kerala''.

It said that the proposed Bill to form Land Use Commission discarding the present Land Use Board is a clever poly to implement the hidden agenda of a few experts to destroy the State's agriculture sector.

The commission is to be headed by the Agriculture Production Commissioner as the ex-officio chairman.

But the real powers will stay with the `expert on agriculture and land use' to be appointed by the Government as the de facto chairman.

The Commission will consist of 10 members — five of them experts each in the areas of remote sensing, earth science, land use, soil conservation, agriculture and water resources.

In addition to these, two members will represent the Panchayat Raj institutions and three members will represent NGOs in the agriculture sector.

The Bill envisaged to implement the land use reforms through Panchayat Raj institutions.

The NFPC said that "a group of `experts' deciding the land use pattern of the State was undemocratic and went against the principles of decentralised planning process."

Utilising these institutions to implement the dictatorial decisions of the commission was a subversion of democracy," he said.

It said that the commission was to be vested with draconian powers to redefine land use pattern according to the six recommendations that have been put forth in the Bill.

The proposal claims to usher in a new era of freedom to farmers to cultivate any crop of his choice.

This automatically nullified the Land Ceiling Act and the Kerala Land Utilisation Act, which prevents conversion of paddy land to any other use for reasons of keeping ecological balance.

It was another group of experts who had brought in the Kerala Land Utilisation Act that prevented conversion of paddy land on ecological grounds.

If KLU was nullified now, it implied that the previous experts' grounds for cultivating paddy were wrong.

In that case, what was the guarantee that the conclusions of the new commission would be right, it asked.

In fact if the so-called experts' perceptions about the problems in agriculture sector were right, our agriculture sector would not have been in a mess like this, said the NFPC chairman, K. Ravikumar.

He said that the fundamental question was why do we need a commission to give freedom to the farmers.

They only need to be told about their freedom and they were competent to choose the right crop.

The issue was, if the farmer cultivated according to the diktat of the commission, would it take the responsibility to ensure adequate returns to the farmers.

Otherwise it is a case of the commission wielding too much power with no corresponding responsibility or accountability, he said.

In fact it was this concentration of power in the hands of a few self-proclaimed experts without any accountability in the past that made a mess of our agriculture sector.

What is the justification in forcing the farmers to a particular land use pattern when they were left to themselves to take on the uncertainties of the market, he asked.

Mr. Ravikumar said that the need of the hour was the institutional mechanism to match the market demand with production, which in turn would define the land use pattern.

This institution should be equipped to tell us how much of what should be cultivated depending on a scientific assessment of the market demand.

It should be vested with the powers to broadly ensure adherence to the land use pattern for specific crops and the responsibility to ensure market for the produce.

This should be achieved through appropriate policies and strategic initiatives based on incentives and disincentives and not on draconian powers to force decision on the hapless farmers.

In Western countries, the cropping areas of each crop is increased or decreased on an year-to-year basis depending on the projected demand of that commodity in the domestic and international markets.

While providing enough incentive as subsidy to produce on one side, the Government also pays the farmers to keep their land idle to prevent overproduction to suppress the price.

But what we are trying here was not in tune with the modern trends.

One wonders what can the experts on land use, agriculture, remote sensing, water sources and soil conservation achieve in terms of assessing the domestic and international market demand for specific commodities and convert it into a land use pattern with appropriate incentives, policy and strategy measures, the NFPC chairman asked.

But in a State like Kerala which had mostly plantation crops, the leeway in planning on an year-to- year basis was very limited.

Hence the new commission will turn out to be detrimental to farmers' freedom, the NFPC said.

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