For bargadars, land is now labour lost

A systematic attempt is being made in several West Bengal districts to evict sharecroppers from land, despite the legal protection

In West Bengal, land reform and a democratic system of panchayats triggered the highest agricultural growth in India in the 1980s. — File photo: Ashoke Chakrabarty

At Jamirarah village, Srikanta Hansda points to two double-storey houses in the shadow of which his home — a rough mud dwelling with an asbestos clerestory roof — squats: “Those are the homes of the Ghosh family. They own Annapurna Bhandar, a well-known grocery store in Medinipur city — and they own a lot of land in these parts. They are very rich.”

After a pause, he continues, “At Kumarpura, on the other side of the road, they are trying to ‘reclaim’ land that was given to poor peasants during the CPI(M) era.”

Mr. Hansda, himself a beneficiary of land reforms during the Left rule, says, “Some people don’t have

pattas (title deeds) and the Trinamool Congress, ever since it came to power, has been grabbing such land back for its supporters.” The Ghoshs, he says, have gone to court as the original owners of the land.

This is election time, the ruling Trinamool Congress’s squads are on a campaign, and, at Kumarpura, no one wants to speak openly about it, though they acknowledge that attempts are on to evict some of them from land they have been tilling for decades as sharecroppers.

Operation Barga, the land reform movement introduced by the erstwhile Left Front government in 1978, had recorded the names of sharecroppers ( bargadars ), giving them legal protection against eviction by the landlords and entitling them to a share of the produce. It was also made an inheritable right. Simultaneously, surplus land was redistributed. In the process, agricultural production grew, and the lives of those living on the margins improved substantially.

The Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes and Muslims benefited the most and consequently, became supporters of the CPI(M), something that the Trinamool wishes to change.

At Bogchori, in the Keshpur Assembly constituency, the scene of many bloody battles between the Left and the Trinamool, it is evening. The unbearable heat of the day has receded. Here, I find a group of Trinamool activists.

When I tentatively raise the issue of the “reversal” of land reforms, they are unabashedly frank. Samit Bhattacharjee, upapradhan of Amraguchi village, says, “The CPI(M) gave land to its supporters. Now those people are returning land on their own.” His friend Sadhan Chandra Maity is even less politically correct. “The CPI(M) took away my land, using the administration at that time. As soon as the government changed, I asked the squatters to give it back — when they refused, I forcibly got it back. Now those people have left the village.” But aren’t these people the poorest of the poor? Mr. Maity shrugs and says: “But it is my land.”

These are not isolated cases.

Soon after the Mamata Banerjee government came to power in 2011, the CPI(M) State committee noted in a statement: “[T]here have been systematic attacks on the bargadars and marginal farmers … The land the tillers earned through decades of struggle has been recaptured in many places by the erstwhile landowners and their agent, the Trinamool. By a conservative estimate of the Kishan Sabha, over the past two-and-a-half months, land of 527 farmers, measuring 1,000 acres, has been snatched away … 4,700 patta-owners have been evicted from 2,700 acres of land and 3,710 bargadars have been evicted from 1,587 acres, while 14,025 persons have been evicted from legally acquired land … The police and the administration are openly siding with the evictors.”

Today, that number is possibly larger, with this correspondent hearing of similar cases in at least four other districts — South 24 Parganas, North 24 Parganas, Birbhum and Bardhaman.