Troubled Galaxy Destroyed Dreams- Chapter 534
Palash Biswas
http://indianholocaustmyfatherslifeandtime.blogspot.com/
I am pained to visit Rural India to see the systematic Ethnic Cleansing so live! Specially in the land of Scientific Marxist Manusmriti Rule, the perfect case of Exclusive Economy achieved with Surgical Precision in every sphere of life. Now ensured the Exit of the Marxists and Reincarnation of the Kolkata Kali in the Writers, it is High Time to investigate in the Reality of so much so Mythical Land reforms in Bengal. Today the Telegarph has published a story on this. Murshidabad is the only Muslim Dominated district in India which is successful to protect Aboriginal Indigenous Production system and Livelihood despite Victimised by the Free Market Democracy and Political Polarisation. But it has NO Histroy of Communal Turmoil.
| HOW THE LAND WAS WON AND LOST | |
| Sharecroppers in a Murshidabad village are being dispossessed of vested land even as the Left Front crows about land reform, writes Uddalak Mukherjee | |
The results of the last three electoral contests in West Bengal — the panchayat polls in 2008, the Lok Sabha elections of 2009 and the municipal elections this year — have indicated that the state is in the cusp of a political transition. At a time when the Left Front is ceding considerable ground to its principal opponent, it may be instructive to re-examine the present condition of some of its political programmes that had yielded electoral dividends in the past. One such initiative, undoubtedly, was Operation Barga — the fabled land reform programme, which aimed to redistribute land among sharecroppers (bargadars), legally protect them from forcible eviction by landlords and bestow upon them rights as cultivators. Such a re-examination, despite its localized nature, has the potential to answer two critical questions. First, has the land reform instituted by the Left Front since the late 1970s achieved its intended goal? Second, can the Left Front's continuing dismal performance at the hustings be explained, at least partially, by the persisting problems that have weakened its land reform policy? I travelled to Gangadhari village in Murshidabad recently in search of the answers. Admittedly, it would be unfair to draw conclusions about the pattern, efficacy and problems of land reform in Bengal on the basis of my experiences in a single village in one district. Nonetheless, Gangadhari raises a few uncomfortable questions that must be addressed to understand why the fruits of land reform have eluded the weakest, and hence the most deserving, sections of the peasantry. But why Gangadhari of all places? This village, which is only two kilometres from neighbouring Nadia, has a total land area of 1,424.42 acres, out of which 199.2 acres are vested land. This means that nearly 15 per cent of all land in Gangadhari is 'vested'— plots that were confiscated from landowners (in this case, from the erstwhile zamindar, Balaram Chandra Rudra) and then redistributed among the landless. I was told by the officials concerned that the amount of vested land in Gangadhari is much higher than the approximate state average of five per cent. With such a high incidence of patta distribution, Gangadhari, under the Nowda block, serves as an interesting crucible to test the various claims that are made by this government in the name of land reform. Imagine my surprise when one of the first persons I met in Gangadhari was a landless farmer by the name of Zamiruddin Sheikh. Zamiruddin's fate has been doubly cruel. His father, Chaitan Sheikh, a landless peasant, had received 18 kathas after Operation Barga. However, within a span of a few years, he was forced to 'lease' his land to Abdul Bari Mollah — a Revolutionary Socialist Party leader who, currently, is the chairman of the Nowda panchayat — for Rs 3,000 to meet a medical emergency. Today, Zamiruddin works as a day labourer and makes Rs 1,400 a month, instead of the Rs 2,500 that he requires, he said, to feed the mouths at home. Zamiruddin's plight offers significant insights into the problems that afflict Bengal's land reform programme at present. A sizeable number of farmers, who had received pattas after land redistribution, have now been reduced to landless peasants once again. In Gangadhari alone, I was told that there are over a hundred farmers who have not received pattas or have lost possession of their land. A survey conducted by the West Bengal State Institute of Panchayats and Rural Development some years ago had found that 14.37 per cent of registered sharecroppers have been dispossessed of vested land, over 26 per cent harboured fears of losing their land in the future and 13.23 per cent had lost access to their holdings in the state. But this issue of dispossession is tied to a larger, and more critical, failure. For peasants to prosper, merely transferring the ownership of land is not enough. What is also required, in tandem, is an augmentation of farm productivity and holistic development, something that the Bengal government's land reform policy failed to sustain since that early glimmer of promise. In fact, as early as 1986-88, a survey of the qualitative aspects of land reform in the three districts of Birbhum, Burdwan and Jalpaiguri had noted that even though sharecroppers had received their stipulated plots, farm productivity had been on the wane. According to an independent research report, published in the portal, Science Alert, this June, the contribution of agriculture to West Bengal's State Domestic Product at constant prices has declined from 41.16 per cent in 1970-71 to 27.1 per cent in 2000-01. Significantly, the production of every major crop has dwindled since the 1990s. To take just one example, the output growth rates of aman and boro rice have declined to just 1.04 per cent and 3.35 per cent per annum. There is no reason to believe that the government has been able to reverse the slide since. Gangadhari's shockingly high rates of migration among farming families can be attributed to the lack of employment and the diminishing returns from agriculture. In Gangadhari, reform in the spheres of education and health has been as sporadic. This was, once again, consistent with my earlier experiences of development being dangerously skewed in rural Bengal. During my meeting with the panchayat chairman, he furnished evidence of Gangadhari's 'development'. The village has two primary schools, a primary health centre, two shishu shiksha kendras, a junior high school and a rural library. Given my limited time, I managed to visit the PHC and the school. The health centre, which once provided indoor facilities, was run by a woman, a trained nurse, who usually worked from 10 in the morning. The only doctor, who travelled from Berhampore over 30 kms away, had not turned up on the morning of my visit. The nurse, tired and irritable, informed me that on an average 250 villagers turn up at the PHC to receive treatment for ailments such as fever and malnutrition every single day. Apart from doctors, basic medicines are in short supply. For instance, of the 2,500 paracetamol tablets that were requisitioned by the PHC recently, only 1,000 were sent by the authorities, that too after a month. Next, I visited the Gangadhari H.B. Junior High School. At first, I thought I had been taken to a correctional home by mistake. The school was surrounded by a high wall, and an ancient, enormous lock hung on its gate. The drop-out rate, I was told by a group of young teachers inside, was over 30 per cent and the children, whose parents worked in the nearby brick-kilns, skipped classes regularly. The teachers complained bitterly about the near-absent infrastructure, the inadequate book grant for students, and the government's decision to institute a commission to monitor corporal punishment in district schools. Such a step, they argued, would compromise the standards of discipline among their wards. But let us not forget Zamiruddin and his dead father just yet. Their predicament is a reminder that, in some instances, the philosophy behind Bengal's land reform has been turned on its head as a result of some severe institutional flaws. The law prohibits the selling or leasing of vested land, something that Zamiruddin's father had done to raise money. Biswanath Saha, the land and land reform officer of Nowda block, whom I met later, had initially dismissed the possibility of such malpractices. But, on hearing about Zamiruddin, his confidence seemed to wane. He grudgingly admitted that "only a few instances of irregularities" had come to light during his tenure. Despite his discomfort, Saha took time to explain the process of patta distribution, thereby exposing yet another glaring inconsistency. Under Section 49 (1) of the West Bengal Land Reform Act, said Saha, a joint survey is conducted by the members of the panchayat samiti and the block land and land reform office to identify vested land and their bona fide claimants. On the basis of the findings, a list is prepared and sent to the sub-divisional land and land reform office, which, after completing its own scrutiny, approves the claims. Patta forms are then prepared and pattas distributed in a function, which is often graced by political representatives of the government. Considering the complete politicization of every institution in Bengal, including the bureaucracy, the identification and distribution of pattas in Gangadhari, as in the rest of the state, are blatantly unfair. The RSP is in power in Gangadhari's panchayat. Some of the sharecroppers I met, who are yet to receive pattas even after two decades of land reform, alleged that they have been denied their share because they happen to support the Congress. Before I left the Nowda BLLRO office, Saha gifted me with another, equally startling, piece of information. In Nowda, there have also been instances of vested land — which, according to the law, cannot be purchased, leased or marketed — being sold and the deeds being registered at the district registry office. I could have reminded Saha of his earlier claim that patta distribution has been untouched by corruption. Instead, I thanked him for his time, and the tea, and left. Much of the Left Front's early political gains had been attributed to the success of its land reform programme. But with land reform being severely flawed, at least in its present form, what has been its impact on the coalition's recent political performance in Murshidabad? If the results of the last three assembly elections are looked at, it may seem that a faulty land reform programme has not hurt the Left politically. In the assembly elections of 1996, the Left Front won 10 of the 19 seats; in 2001, its tally rose to 11, and there were significant gains in 2006, given the divided state of the Opposition on that occasion. But democracy is a complicated and tiered political system. A panchayat election, rather than the one that elects a Vidhan Sabha, is a better indicator of the mood and aspirations of a rural people. It is, therefore, telling that at present, in Murshidabad, of the 254 panchayats, the Congress is in power in 157. It is thus difficult to discount the claim that the shortcomings in land redistribution have caused considerable damage to the Left Front in political terms. Gangadhari revealed many bitter truths — dispossessed sharecroppers, uneven social reform that has intensified their penury and hopelessness and institutionalized fallacies that have crippled a programme which, undoubtedly, had the potential to change the future of a people. Unfortunately, the reality in this village also made me realize something else. For all the talk of decentralization of power through panchayati raj — touted as yet another of the Left Front's pioneering initiatives — local leadership at the grassroots continues to be deeply divided on political lines. This saps it of the will to empathize and work for those whom it is meant to serve. I would like to end by recounting two recurring dreams of two different people who live in Gangadhari. The RSP leader and panchayat chairman, now no more young, still dreams of the day during the early stages of Operation Barga. In his dream, he is all of seven, and he sees himself running to plant the red flag on a field that had just been 'liberated' from the zamindar. Zamiruddin, whose father's vested land is now leased to the panchayat chairman, also shared his dream with me. It had nothing to do with his dead father, he said. In it, he only sees the land his family had lost one morning many years ago. | |
| WITH INPUTS FROM ALAMGIR HOSSAIN |
* Trains from Murshidabad is Jam Packed and you would Never be able to get an INCH Space to stand anywhere just because the Peasntry is NOT well and People have to go out for Survival. After Grand Success of Land Reforms, as Claimed , it is quite Contradictory.
HOW THE LAND WAS WON AND LOST HOW THE LAND WAS WON AND LOST in Brahamin Marxist Ruled Bengal!
Troubled Galaxy Destroyed Dreams- Chapter 534
Palash Biswas http://indianholocaustmyfatherslifeandtime.blogspot.com/
I am pained to visit Rural India to see the systematic Ethnic Cleansing so live! Specially in the land of Scientific Marxist Manusmriti Rule, the perfect case of Exclusive Economy achieved with Surgical Precision in every sphere of life. Now ensured the Exit of the Marxists and Reincarnation of the Kolkata Kali in the Writers, it is High Time to investigate in the Reality of so much so Mythical Land reforms in Bengal. Today the Telegarph has published a story on this. Murshidabad is the only Muslim Dominated district in India which is successful to protect Aboriginal Indigenous Production system and Livelihood despite Victimised by the Free Market Democracy and Political Polarisation. But it has NO Histroy of Communal Turmoil.
| HOW THE LAND WAS WON AND LOST | |
| Sharecroppers in a Murshidabad village are being dispossessed of vested land even as the Left Front crows about land reform, writes Uddalak Mukherjee | |
The results of the last three electoral contests in West Bengal — the panchayat polls in 2008, the Lok Sabha elections of 2009 and the municipal elections this year — have indicated that the state is in the cusp of a political transition. At a time when the Left Front is ceding considerable ground to its principal opponent, it may be instructive to re-examine the present condition of some of its political programmes that had yielded electoral dividends in the past. One such initiative, undoubtedly, was Operation Barga — the fabled land reform programme, which aimed to redistribute land among sharecroppers (bargadars), legally protect them from forcible eviction by landlords and bestow upon them rights as cultivators. Such a re-examination, despite its localized nature, has the potential to answer two critical questions. First, has the land reform instituted by the Left Front since the late 1970s achieved its intended goal? Second, can the Left Front's continuing dismal performance at the hustings be explained, at least partially, by the persisting problems that have weakened its land reform policy? I travelled to Gangadhari village in Murshidabad recently in search of the answers. Admittedly, it would be unfair to draw conclusions about the pattern, efficacy and problems of land reform in Bengal on the basis of my experiences in a single village in one district. Nonetheless, Gangadhari raises a few uncomfortable questions that must be addressed to understand why the fruits of land reform have eluded the weakest, and hence the most deserving, sections of the peasantry. But why Gangadhari of all places? This village, which is only two kilometres from neighbouring Nadia, has a total land area of 1,424.42 acres, out of which 199.2 acres are vested land. This means that nearly 15 per cent of all land in Gangadhari is 'vested'— plots that were confiscated from landowners (in this case, from the erstwhile zamindar, Balaram Chandra Rudra) and then redistributed among the landless. I was told by the officials concerned that the amount of vested land in Gangadhari is much higher than the approximate state average of five per cent. With such a high incidence of patta distribution, Gangadhari, under the Nowda block, serves as an interesting crucible to test the various claims that are made by this government in the name of land reform. Imagine my surprise when one of the first persons I met in Gangadhari was a landless farmer by the name of Zamiruddin Sheikh. Zamiruddin's fate has been doubly cruel. His father, Chaitan Sheikh, a landless peasant, had received 18 kathas after Operation Barga. However, within a span of a few years, he was forced to 'lease' his land to Abdul Bari Mollah — a Revolutionary Socialist Party leader who, currently, is the chairman of the Nowda panchayat — for Rs 3,000 to meet a medical emergency. Today, Zamiruddin works as a day labourer and makes Rs 1,400 a month, instead of the Rs 2,500 that he requires, he said, to feed the mouths at home. Zamiruddin's plight offers significant insights into the problems that afflict Bengal's land reform programme at present. A sizeable number of farmers, who had received pattas after land redistribution, have now been reduced to landless peasants once again. In Gangadhari alone, I was told that there are over a hundred farmers who have not received pattas or have lost possession of their land. A survey conducted by the West Bengal State Institute of Panchayats and Rural Development some years ago had found that 14.37 per cent of registered sharecroppers have been dispossessed of vested land, over 26 per cent harboured fears of losing their land in the future and 13.23 per cent had lost access to their holdings in the state. But this issue of dispossession is tied to a larger, and more critical, failure. For peasants to prosper, merely transferring the ownership of land is not enough. What is also required, in tandem, is an augmentation of farm productivity and holistic development, something that the Bengal government's land reform policy failed to sustain since that early glimmer of promise. In fact, as early as 1986-88, a survey of the qualitative aspects of land reform in the three districts of Birbhum, Burdwan and Jalpaiguri had noted that even though sharecroppers had received their stipulated plots, farm productivity had been on the wane. According to an independent research report, published in the portal, Science Alert, this June, the contribution of agriculture to West Bengal's State Domestic Product at constant prices has declined from 41.16 per cent in 1970-71 to 27.1 per cent in 2000-01. Significantly, the production of every major crop has dwindled since the 1990s. To take just one example, the output growth rates of aman and boro rice have declined to just 1.04 per cent and 3.35 per cent per annum. There is no reason to believe that the government has been able to reverse the slide since. Gangadhari's shockingly high rates of migration among farming families can be attributed to the lack of employment and the diminishing returns from agriculture. In Gangadhari, reform in the spheres of education and health has been as sporadic. This was, once again, consistent with my earlier experiences of development being dangerously skewed in rural Bengal. During my meeting with the panchayat chairman, he furnished evidence of Gangadhari's 'development'. The village has two primary schools, a primary health centre, two shishu shiksha kendras, a junior high school and a rural library. Given my limited time, I managed to visit the PHC and the school. The health centre, which once provided indoor facilities, was run by a woman, a trained nurse, who usually worked from 10 in the morning. The only doctor, who travelled from Berhampore over 30 kms away, had not turned up on the morning of my visit. The nurse, tired and irritable, informed me that on an average 250 villagers turn up at the PHC to receive treatment for ailments such as fever and malnutrition every single day. Apart from doctors, basic medicines are in short supply. For instance, of the 2,500 paracetamol tablets that were requisitioned by the PHC recently, only 1,000 were sent by the authorities, that too after a month. Next, I visited the Gangadhari H.B. Junior High School. At first, I thought I had been taken to a correctional home by mistake. The school was surrounded by a high wall, and an ancient, enormous lock hung on its gate. The drop-out rate, I was told by a group of young teachers inside, was over 30 per cent and the children, whose parents worked in the nearby brick-kilns, skipped classes regularly. The teachers complained bitterly about the near-absent infrastructure, the inadequate book grant for students, and the government's decision to institute a commission to monitor corporal punishment in district schools. Such a step, they argued, would compromise the standards of discipline among their wards. But let us not forget Zamiruddin and his dead father just yet. Their predicament is a reminder that, in some instances, the philosophy behind Bengal's land reform has been turned on its head as a result of some severe institutional flaws. The law prohibits the selling or leasing of vested land, something that Zamiruddin's father had done to raise money. Biswanath Saha, the land and land reform officer of Nowda block, whom I met later, had initially dismissed the possibility of such malpractices. But, on hearing about Zamiruddin, his confidence seemed to wane. He grudgingly admitted that "only a few instances of irregularities" had come to light during his tenure. Despite his discomfort, Saha took time to explain the process of patta distribution, thereby exposing yet another glaring inconsistency. Under Section 49 (1) of the West Bengal Land Reform Act, said Saha, a joint survey is conducted by the members of the panchayat samiti and the block land and land reform office to identify vested land and their bona fide claimants. On the basis of the findings, a list is prepared and sent to the sub-divisional land and land reform office, which, after completing its own scrutiny, approves the claims. Patta forms are then prepared and pattas distributed in a function, which is often graced by political representatives of the government. Considering the complete politicization of every institution in Bengal, including the bureaucracy, the identification and distribution of pattas in Gangadhari, as in the rest of the state, are blatantly unfair. The RSP is in power in Gangadhari's panchayat. Some of the sharecroppers I met, who are yet to receive pattas even after two decades of land reform, alleged that they have been denied their share because they happen to support the Congress. Before I left the Nowda BLLRO office, Saha gifted me with another, equally startling, piece of information. In Nowda, there have also been instances of vested land — which, according to the law, cannot be purchased, leased or marketed — being sold and the deeds being registered at the district registry office. I could have reminded Saha of his earlier claim that patta distribution has been untouched by corruption. Instead, I thanked him for his time, and the tea, and left. Much of the Left Front's early political gains had been attributed to the success of its land reform programme. But with land reform being severely flawed, at least in its present form, what has been its impact on the coalition's recent political performance in Murshidabad? If the results of the last three assembly elections are looked at, it may seem that a faulty land reform programme has not hurt the Left politically. In the assembly elections of 1996, the Left Front won 10 of the 19 seats; in 2001, its tally rose to 11, and there were significant gains in 2006, given the divided state of the Opposition on that occasion. But democracy is a complicated and tiered political system. A panchayat election, rather than the one that elects a Vidhan Sabha, is a better indicator of the mood and aspirations of a rural people. It is, therefore, telling that at present, in Murshidabad, of the 254 panchayats, the Congress is in power in 157. It is thus difficult to discount the claim that the shortcomings in land redistribution have caused considerable damage to the Left Front in political terms. Gangadhari revealed many bitter truths — dispossessed sharecroppers, uneven social reform that has intensified their penury and hopelessness and institutionalized fallacies that have crippled a programme which, undoubtedly, had the potential to change the future of a people. Unfortunately, the reality in this village also made me realize something else. For all the talk of decentralization of power through panchayati raj — touted as yet another of the Left Front's pioneering initiatives — local leadership at the grassroots continues to be deeply divided on political lines. This saps it of the will to empathize and work for those whom it is meant to serve. I would like to end by recounting two recurring dreams of two different people who live in Gangadhari. The RSP leader and panchayat chairman, now no more young, still dreams of the day during the early stages of Operation Barga. In his dream, he is all of seven, and he sees himself running to plant the red flag on a field that had just been 'liberated' from the zamindar. Zamiruddin, whose father's vested land is now leased to the panchayat chairman, also shared his dream with me. It had nothing to do with his dead father, he said. In it, he only sees the land his family had lost one morning many years ago. | |
| WITH INPUTS FROM ALAMGIR HOSSAIN |
Trains from Murshidabad is Jam Packed and you would Never be able to get an INCH Space to stand anywhere just because the Peasntry is NOT well and People have to go out for Survival. After Grand Success of Land Reforms, as Claimed , it is quite Contradictory.
HOW THE LAND WAS WON AND LOST HOW THE LAND WAS WON AND LOST in Brahamin Marxist Ruled Bengal!
Troubled Galaxy Destroyed Dreams- Chapter 534
Palash Biswas http://indianholocaustmyfatherslifeandtime.blogspot.com/
I am pained to visit Rural India to see the systematic Ethnic Cleansing so live! Specially in the land of Scientific Marxist Manusmriti Rule, the perfect case of Exclusive Economy achieved with Surgical Precision in every sphere of life. Now ensured the Exit of the Marxists and Reincarnation of the Kolkata Kali in the Writers, it is High Time to investigate in the Reality of so much so Mythical Land reforms in Bengal. Today the Telegarph has published a story on this. Murshidabad is the only Muslim Dominated district in India which is successful to protect Aboriginal Indigenous Production system and Livelihood despite Victimised by the Free Market Democracy and Political Polarisation. But it has NO Histroy of Communal Turmoil.
The Indian Economy Blog » Shallowness of the West Bengal Land Reforms
Land Reforms in West Bengal
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Land Reforms in West Bengal. Geography and demography of the state. Situated in the Eastern Coast of India, bordering the states of Bihar and Orissa and the ...
info.worldbank.org/etools/docs/.../West%20Bengal%20PPT.ppt - Similar
Land Reforms in West Bengal. Geography and demography of the state. Situated in the Eastern Coast of India, bordering the states of Bihar and Orissa and the ...
info.worldbank.org/etools/docs/.../West%20Bengal%20PPT.ppt - Similar
THE DIRECTORATE OF LAND RECORDS
Land reform - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
DNA: India - West Bengal withdraws Land Reforms Amendment Bill
19 Mar 2010 ... The bill, which came in the backdrop of controversies over acquisition of agricultural land for Tata Motors, was referred to an all-party ...
www.dnaindia.com/.../report_west-bengal-withdraws-land-reforms-amendment-bill_1361056 - Cached
www.dnaindia.com/.../report_west-bengal-withdraws-land-reforms-
Land Reform And Farm Productivity In West Bengal
by P Bardhan - 2007 - Cited by 10 - Related articles
Downloadable! We revisit the classical question of productivity implications of sharecropping tenancy, in the context of tenancy reforms (Operation Barga) ...
ideas.repec.org/p/bos/iedwpr/dp-163.html - Cached - Similar
Downloadable! We revisit the classical question of productivity implications of sharecropping tenancy, in the context of tenancy reforms (Operation Barga) ...
ideas.repec.org/p/bos/iedwpr/dp-163.html - Cached - Similar
Land reforms - Kerala versus India | PRAGOTI
Land Reforms
The Telegraph - Calcutta (Kolkata) | Bengal | Maoist 'land reforms ...
26 May 2010 ... The Telegraph on the Web: Daily international, national international news, daily newspaper, national, politics, science, business, sports, ...
www.telegraphindia.com/1100526/jsp/bengal/story_12488503.jsp - Cached
www.telegraphindia.com/1100526/jsp/bengal/story_12488503.jsp - Cached
The Hindu : Opinion / News Analysis : Land reform continues in ...
22 Aug 2008 ... In West Bengal, too, land reform has been and remains a foundational feature of the power of the Left, and was perhaps the earliest item on ...
www.hindu.com/2008/08/22/stories/2008082255051100.htm - Cached
www.hindu.com/2008/08/22/stories/2008082255051100.htm - Cached
| HOW THE LAND WAS WON AND LOST | |
| Sharecroppers in a Murshidabad village are being dispossessed of vested land even as the Left Front crows about land reform, writes Uddalak Mukherjee | |
The results of the last three electoral contests in West Bengal — the panchayat polls in 2008, the Lok Sabha elections of 2009 and the municipal elections this year — have indicated that the state is in the cusp of a political transition. At a time when the Left Front is ceding considerable ground to its principal opponent, it may be instructive to re-examine the present condition of some of its political programmes that had yielded electoral dividends in the past. One such initiative, undoubtedly, was Operation Barga — the fabled land reform programme, which aimed to redistribute land among sharecroppers (bargadars), legally protect them from forcible eviction by landlords and bestow upon them rights as cultivators. Such a re-examination, despite its localized nature, has the potential to answer two critical questions. First, has the land reform instituted by the Left Front since the late 1970s achieved its intended goal? Second, can the Left Front's continuing dismal performance at the hustings be explained, at least partially, by the persisting problems that have weakened its land reform policy? I travelled to Gangadhari village in Murshidabad recently in search of the answers. Admittedly, it would be unfair to draw conclusions about the pattern, efficacy and problems of land reform in Bengal on the basis of my experiences in a single village in one district. Nonetheless, Gangadhari raises a few uncomfortable questions that must be addressed to understand why the fruits of land reform have eluded the weakest, and hence the most deserving, sections of the peasantry. But why Gangadhari of all places? This village, which is only two kilometres from neighbouring Nadia, has a total land area of 1,424.42 acres, out of which 199.2 acres are vested land. This means that nearly 15 per cent of all land in Gangadhari is 'vested'— plots that were confiscated from landowners (in this case, from the erstwhile zamindar, Balaram Chandra Rudra) and then redistributed among the landless. I was told by the officials concerned that the amount of vested land in Gangadhari is much higher than the approximate state average of five per cent. With such a high incidence of patta distribution, Gangadhari, under the Nowda block, serves as an interesting crucible to test the various claims that are made by this government in the name of land reform. Imagine my surprise when one of the first persons I met in Gangadhari was a landless farmer by the name of Zamiruddin Sheikh. Zamiruddin's fate has been doubly cruel. His father, Chaitan Sheikh, a landless peasant, had received 18 kathas after Operation Barga. However, within a span of a few years, he was forced to 'lease' his land to Abdul Bari Mollah — a Revolutionary Socialist Party leader who, currently, is the chairman of the Nowda panchayat — for Rs 3,000 to meet a medical emergency. Today, Zamiruddin works as a day labourer and makes Rs 1,400 a month, instead of the Rs 2,500 that he requires, he said, to feed the mouths at home. Zamiruddin's plight offers significant insights into the problems that afflict Bengal's land reform programme at present. A sizeable number of farmers, who had received pattas after land redistribution, have now been reduced to landless peasants once again. In Gangadhari alone, I was told that there are over a hundred farmers who have not received pattas or have lost possession of their land. A survey conducted by the West Bengal State Institute of Panchayats and Rural Development some years ago had found that 14.37 per cent of registered sharecroppers have been dispossessed of vested land, over 26 per cent harboured fears of losing their land in the future and 13.23 per cent had lost access to their holdings in the state. But this issue of dispossession is tied to a larger, and more critical, failure. For peasants to prosper, merely transferring the ownership of land is not enough. What is also required, in tandem, is an augmentation of farm productivity and holistic development, something that the Bengal government's land reform policy failed to sustain since that early glimmer of promise. In fact, as early as 1986-88, a survey of the qualitative aspects of land reform in the three districts of Birbhum, Burdwan and Jalpaiguri had noted that even though sharecroppers had received their stipulated plots, farm productivity had been on the wane. According to an independent research report, published in the portal, Science Alert, this June, the contribution of agriculture to West Bengal's State Domestic Product at constant prices has declined from 41.16 per cent in 1970-71 to 27.1 per cent in 2000-01. Significantly, the production of every major crop has dwindled since the 1990s. To take just one example, the output growth rates of aman and boro rice have declined to just 1.04 per cent and 3.35 per cent per annum. There is no reason to believe that the government has been able to reverse the slide since. Gangadhari's shockingly high rates of migration among farming families can be attributed to the lack of employment and the diminishing returns from agriculture. In Gangadhari, reform in the spheres of education and health has been as sporadic. This was, once again, consistent with my earlier experiences of development being dangerously skewed in rural Bengal. During my meeting with the panchayat chairman, he furnished evidence of Gangadhari's 'development'. The village has two primary schools, a primary health centre, two shishu shiksha kendras, a junior high school and a rural library. Given my limited time, I managed to visit the PHC and the school. The health centre, which once provided indoor facilities, was run by a woman, a trained nurse, who usually worked from 10 in the morning. The only doctor, who travelled from Berhampore over 30 kms away, had not turned up on the morning of my visit. The nurse, tired and irritable, informed me that on an average 250 villagers turn up at the PHC to receive treatment for ailments such as fever and malnutrition every single day. Apart from doctors, basic medicines are in short supply. For instance, of the 2,500 paracetamol tablets that were requisitioned by the PHC recently, only 1,000 were sent by the authorities, that too after a month. Next, I visited the Gangadhari H.B. Junior High School. At first, I thought I had been taken to a correctional home by mistake. The school was surrounded by a high wall, and an ancient, enormous lock hung on its gate. The drop-out rate, I was told by a group of young teachers inside, was over 30 per cent and the children, whose parents worked in the nearby brick-kilns, skipped classes regularly. The teachers complained bitterly about the near-absent infrastructure, the inadequate book grant for students, and the government's decision to institute a commission to monitor corporal punishment in district schools. Such a step, they argued, would compromise the standards of discipline among their wards. But let us not forget Zamiruddin and his dead father just yet. Their predicament is a reminder that, in some instances, the philosophy behind Bengal's land reform has been turned on its head as a result of some severe institutional flaws. The law prohibits the selling or leasing of vested land, something that Zamiruddin's father had done to raise money. Biswanath Saha, the land and land reform officer of Nowda block, whom I met later, had initially dismissed the possibility of such malpractices. But, on hearing about Zamiruddin, his confidence seemed to wane. He grudgingly admitted that "only a few instances of irregularities" had come to light during his tenure. Despite his discomfort, Saha took time to explain the process of patta distribution, thereby exposing yet another glaring inconsistency. Under Section 49 (1) of the West Bengal Land Reform Act, said Saha, a joint survey is conducted by the members of the panchayat samiti and the block land and land reform office to identify vested land and their bona fide claimants. On the basis of the findings, a list is prepared and sent to the sub-divisional land and land reform office, which, after completing its own scrutiny, approves the claims. Patta forms are then prepared and pattas distributed in a function, which is often graced by political representatives of the government. Considering the complete politicization of every institution in Bengal, including the bureaucracy, the identification and distribution of pattas in Gangadhari, as in the rest of the state, are blatantly unfair. The RSP is in power in Gangadhari's panchayat. Some of the sharecroppers I met, who are yet to receive pattas even after two decades of land reform, alleged that they have been denied their share because they happen to support the Congress. Before I left the Nowda BLLRO office, Saha gifted me with another, equally startling, piece of information. In Nowda, there have also been instances of vested land — which, according to the law, cannot be purchased, leased or marketed — being sold and the deeds being registered at the district registry office. I could have reminded Saha of his earlier claim that patta distribution has been untouched by corruption. Instead, I thanked him for his time, and the tea, and left. Much of the Left Front's early political gains had been attributed to the success of its land reform programme. But with land reform being severely flawed, at least in its present form, what has been its impact on the coalition's recent political performance in Murshidabad? If the results of the last three assembly elections are looked at, it may seem that a faulty land reform programme has not hurt the Left politically. In the assembly elections of 1996, the Left Front won 10 of the 19 seats; in 2001, its tally rose to 11, and there were significant gains in 2006, given the divided state of the Opposition on that occasion. But democracy is a complicated and tiered political system. A panchayat election, rather than the one that elects a Vidhan Sabha, is a better indicator of the mood and aspirations of a rural people. It is, therefore, telling that at present, in Murshidabad, of the 254 panchayats, the Congress is in power in 157. It is thus difficult to discount the claim that the shortcomings in land redistribution have caused considerable damage to the Left Front in political terms. Gangadhari revealed many bitter truths — dispossessed sharecroppers, uneven social reform that has intensified their penury and hopelessness and institutionalized fallacies that have crippled a programme which, undoubtedly, had the potential to change the future of a people. Unfortunately, the reality in this village also made me realize something else. For all the talk of decentralization of power through panchayati raj — touted as yet another of the Left Front's pioneering initiatives — local leadership at the grassroots continues to be deeply divided on political lines. This saps it of the will to empathize and work for those whom it is meant to serve. I would like to end by recounting two recurring dreams of two different people who live in Gangadhari. The RSP leader and panchayat chairman, now no more young, still dreams of the day during the early stages of Operation Barga. In his dream, he is all of seven, and he sees himself running to plant the red flag on a field that had just been 'liberated' from the zamindar. Zamiruddin, whose father's vested land is now leased to the panchayat chairman, also shared his dream with me. It had nothing to do with his dead father, he said. In it, he only sees the land his family had lost one morning many years ago. | |
| WITH INPUTS FROM ALAMGIR HOSSAIN |
Trains from Murshidabad is Jam Packed and you would Never be able to get an INCH Space to stand anywhere just because the Peasntry is NOT well and People have to go out for Survival. After Grand Success of Land Reforms, as Claimed , it is quite Contradictory.
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Farmers protesting for Land Reform in Indonesia Land reforms (also agrarian reform, though that can have a broader meaning) is an often-controversial alteration in the societal arrangements whereby a government administers the ownership and use of land. Land reform may consist of a government-initiated or government-backed property redistribution, generally of agricultural land, or be part of an even more revolutionary program that may include forcible removal of an existing government that is seen to oppose such reforms.
Throughout history, popular discontent with land-related institutions has been one of the most common factors in provoking revolutionary movements and other social upheavals. To those who work on the land, the landowner's privilege of taking a substantial portion —in some cases half or even more— of production may seem unfair.
Consequently, land reform most often refers to transfer of ownership from the more powerful to the less powerful: from a relatively small number of wealthy (or noble) owners with extensive land holdings (e.g. plantations, large ranches, or agribusiness plots) to individual ownership by those who work the land. Such transfer of ownership may be with or without compensation; compensation may vary from token amounts to the full value of the land. The land value tax advocated by Georgists is a moderate, market-based version of land reform.
This definition is somewhat complicated by the issue of state-owned collective farms. In various times and places, land reform has encompassed the transfer of land from ownership — even peasant ownership in smallholdings — to government-owned collective farms; it has also, in other times and places, referred to the exact opposite: division of government-owned collective farms into smallholdings. The common characteristic of all land reforms is modification or replacement of existing institutional arrangements governing possession and use of land.
Additionally there are, and have been, well-defined systems where neither land nor the houses people live in are their personal property (Statare, as defined in Scandinavia).
The peasants or rural agricultural workers who are usually the intended primary beneficiaries of a land reform may be, prior to the reform, members of failing collectives, owners of inadequate small plots of land, paid laborers, sharecroppers, serfs, even slaves or effectively enslaved by debt bondage.
These questions include:[original research?]
The opposition for a land reform may also be based on other ideologies than modern-day liberalism. In countries where there has traditionally been no private land ownership (e.g. Russia in 19th century) the opposition for reforms enabling the creation of private farms may use nationalistic arguments, proposing that the private farms are inconsistent with the national culture. In countries where the established church was an important land owner, theological arguments have been used in the debate on privatization or nationalization of that land (e.g. 16th century Sweden). The right to ownership of the land, and sometimes, the persons residing on that land, has also been argued on the theory of right of conquest, implying that the original ownership was transferred to the land-owning class's ancestors in a just war. The ownership can also be argued on the ground of god-given right, implying that a supernatural power has given the land to its owners.
For the proponents of the reform, the rights of the individuals for whose good the reform is supposed to work trump the property rights of the land owners. Usually their philosophical background differs significantly from the viewpoints outlined above, spanning from Marxism to religious ideologies. What is common for them, is that they see the rights or duties advocated as more important than a right to own real estate.
A historically important source of pressure for land reform has been the accumulation of significant properties by tax-exempt individuals or entities. In ancient Egypt, the tax exemption for temple lands eventually drove almost all the good land into the hands of the priestly class, making them immensely rich (and leaving the world a stunning legacy of monumental temple architecture that still impresses several millennia later), but starving the government of revenue. In Rome, the land tax exemption for the noble senatorial families had a similar effect, leading to Pliny's famous observation that the latifundia (vast landed estates) had ruined Rome, and would likewise ruin the provinces. In the Christian world, this has frequently been true of churches and monasteries, a major reason that many of the French revolutionaries saw the Catholic Church as an accomplice of the landed aristos. In the Moslem world, land reforms such as that organized in Spain by al-Hurr in 718 have transferred property from Muslims to Christians, who were taxable by much higher rates.
In the modern world and in the aftermath of colonialism and the Industrial Revolution, land reform has occurred around the world, from the Mexican Revolution (1917; the revolution began in 1910) to Communist China to Bolivia (1952, 2006) to Zimbabwe and Namibia. Land reform has been especially popular as part of decolonization struggles in Africa and the Arab world, where it was part of the program for African socialism and Arab socialism. Cuba has seen one of the most complete agrarian reforms in Latin America. Land reform was an important step in achieving economic development in many Third World countries since the post-World War II period, especially in the East Asian Tigers and "Tiger Cubs" nations such as Taiwan, South Korea, and Malaysia.
Since mainland China's economic reforms led by Deng Xiaoping land reforms have also played a key role in the development of the People's Republic of China, with the re-emergence of rich property developers in urban areas (though as in Hong Kong, land in China is not privately owned but leased from the state, typically on very long terms that allow substantial opportunity for private speculative gain).
Children singing the International Communist Hymn, at the 20th Anniversary of Brazil's Landless Workers Movement 
photo of the Shah distributing land deeds during Iran's White Revolution 
Land reform
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Throughout history, popular discontent with land-related institutions has been one of the most common factors in provoking revolutionary movements and other social upheavals. To those who work on the land, the landowner's privilege of taking a substantial portion —in some cases half or even more— of production may seem unfair.
Consequently, land reform most often refers to transfer of ownership from the more powerful to the less powerful: from a relatively small number of wealthy (or noble) owners with extensive land holdings (e.g. plantations, large ranches, or agribusiness plots) to individual ownership by those who work the land. Such transfer of ownership may be with or without compensation; compensation may vary from token amounts to the full value of the land. The land value tax advocated by Georgists is a moderate, market-based version of land reform.
This definition is somewhat complicated by the issue of state-owned collective farms. In various times and places, land reform has encompassed the transfer of land from ownership — even peasant ownership in smallholdings — to government-owned collective farms; it has also, in other times and places, referred to the exact opposite: division of government-owned collective farms into smallholdings. The common characteristic of all land reforms is modification or replacement of existing institutional arrangements governing possession and use of land.
Contents[hide] |
[edit] Land ownership and tenure
Main article: Land ownership and tenure
The variety of land reform derives from the variety of land ownership and tenure. Among the possibilities are:- Traditional land tenure, as in the indigenous nations or tribes of North America in the Pre-Columbian era.
- Feudal land ownership, through fiefdoms
- Life estate, interest in real property that ends at death.
- Fee tail, hereditary, non-transferable ownership of real property.
- Fee simple. Under common law, this is the most complete ownership interest one can have in real property.
- Leasehold or rental
- Rights to use a commons
- Sharecropping
- Easements
Additionally there are, and have been, well-defined systems where neither land nor the houses people live in are their personal property (Statare, as defined in Scandinavia).
The peasants or rural agricultural workers who are usually the intended primary beneficiaries of a land reform may be, prior to the reform, members of failing collectives, owners of inadequate small plots of land, paid laborers, sharecroppers, serfs, even slaves or effectively enslaved by debt bondage.
[edit] Arguments for and against land reform
See also: Property redistribution
Land reform policies are generally advocated as an effort to eradicate food insecurity and rural poverty,[1] often with utilitarian (i.e., "the greatest good for the greatest number"), philosophical or religious (see Biblical Jubilee) arguments, a right to dignity, or a simple belief that justice requires a policy of "land to the tiller". However, many of these arguments conflict with prevailing notions of property rights in most societies and states. Implementations of land reform generally raise questions about how the members of the society view the individual's rights and the role of government.These questions include:[original research?]
- Is private property of any sort legitimate?
- If so, is land ownership legitimate?
- If so, are historic property rights in this particular state and society legitimate?
- Even if property rights are legitimate, do they protect absolutely against expropriation, or do they merely entitle the property owner to partial or complete compensation?
- How should property rights be weighed against rights to life and liberty?
- Who should adjudicate land ownership disputes?
- At what level of government is common land owned?
- What constitutes fair land reform?
- What are the internal and external political effects of the land reform?
- Lack of consistent track record to support land reform outcome, especially when carried out under corrupt auspices or resulting in collective or socialized ownership (rather than smallholder title); for example, in Zimbabwe, an "aggressive" "land reform" plan[2] has led to a collapse of the economy and 45 percent malnutrition. This is in contrast to land reform in Taiwan and South Korea, for example, that took place after WW II and preceded a multi-decade economic boom that turned relatively poor third-world economies into advanced industrialized first-world economies.
- Question of experience and competence of those receiving land to use it productively
- Equity issues of displacing persons who have sometimes worked hard in previous farming of the land
- Question of competence of governmental entities to make decisions regarding agricultural productivity
- Question of miring a country in vast legal disputes from arbitrary property distribution
- Demotivation of any property owners to invest in land that ultimately can be seized
The opposition for a land reform may also be based on other ideologies than modern-day liberalism. In countries where there has traditionally been no private land ownership (e.g. Russia in 19th century) the opposition for reforms enabling the creation of private farms may use nationalistic arguments, proposing that the private farms are inconsistent with the national culture. In countries where the established church was an important land owner, theological arguments have been used in the debate on privatization or nationalization of that land (e.g. 16th century Sweden). The right to ownership of the land, and sometimes, the persons residing on that land, has also been argued on the theory of right of conquest, implying that the original ownership was transferred to the land-owning class's ancestors in a just war. The ownership can also be argued on the ground of god-given right, implying that a supernatural power has given the land to its owners.
For the proponents of the reform, the rights of the individuals for whose good the reform is supposed to work trump the property rights of the land owners. Usually their philosophical background differs significantly from the viewpoints outlined above, spanning from Marxism to religious ideologies. What is common for them, is that they see the rights or duties advocated as more important than a right to own real estate.
[edit] Land reform efforts
Agrarian land reform has been a recurring theme of enormous consequence in world history — see, for example, the history of the Semproninan Law or Lex Sempronia agraria proposed by Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus and passed by the Roman Senate (133 BC), which led to the social and political wars that ended the Roman Republic.A historically important source of pressure for land reform has been the accumulation of significant properties by tax-exempt individuals or entities. In ancient Egypt, the tax exemption for temple lands eventually drove almost all the good land into the hands of the priestly class, making them immensely rich (and leaving the world a stunning legacy of monumental temple architecture that still impresses several millennia later), but starving the government of revenue. In Rome, the land tax exemption for the noble senatorial families had a similar effect, leading to Pliny's famous observation that the latifundia (vast landed estates) had ruined Rome, and would likewise ruin the provinces. In the Christian world, this has frequently been true of churches and monasteries, a major reason that many of the French revolutionaries saw the Catholic Church as an accomplice of the landed aristos. In the Moslem world, land reforms such as that organized in Spain by al-Hurr in 718 have transferred property from Muslims to Christians, who were taxable by much higher rates.
In the modern world and in the aftermath of colonialism and the Industrial Revolution, land reform has occurred around the world, from the Mexican Revolution (1917; the revolution began in 1910) to Communist China to Bolivia (1952, 2006) to Zimbabwe and Namibia. Land reform has been especially popular as part of decolonization struggles in Africa and the Arab world, where it was part of the program for African socialism and Arab socialism. Cuba has seen one of the most complete agrarian reforms in Latin America. Land reform was an important step in achieving economic development in many Third World countries since the post-World War II period, especially in the East Asian Tigers and "Tiger Cubs" nations such as Taiwan, South Korea, and Malaysia.
Since mainland China's economic reforms led by Deng Xiaoping land reforms have also played a key role in the development of the People's Republic of China, with the re-emergence of rich property developers in urban areas (though as in Hong Kong, land in China is not privately owned but leased from the state, typically on very long terms that allow substantial opportunity for private speculative gain).
[edit] Latin America
"The first liberating revolutions never destroyed the large landholding powers that always constituted a reactionary force and upheld the principle of servitude on the land. In most countries the large landholders realized they couldn't survive alone and promptly entered into alliances with the monopolies — the strongest and most ruthless oppressors of the Latin American peoples. U.S. capital arrived on the scene to exploit the virgin lands and later carried off, unnoticed, all the funds so 'generously' given, plus several times the amount originally invested in the 'beneficiary' country."
- Brazil: In the 1930s, Getúlio Vargas reneged on a promised land reform. A first attempt to make a national scale reform was set up in the government of José Sarney, as a result of the strong popular movement that had contributed to the fall of the military government. However, the so-called First Land Reform National Plan never was put into force. Strong campaign including direct action by the Landless Workers' Movement throughout the 1990s has managed to get some advances for the past 10 years, during the Fernando Cardoso and Lula da Silva administrations.
- Bolivia: The revolution of 1952 was followed by a land reform law, but in 1970 only 45% of peasant families had received title to land, although more land reform projects continued in the 1970s and 1980s. Bolivian president Evo Morales restarted land reform when he took office in 2006.[5] On 29 November 2006, the Bolivian Senate passed a bill authorizing the government redistribution of land among the nation's mostly indigenous poor. The bill was signed into law hours later, though significant opposition is expected[6]
- Chile: Attempts at land reform began under the government of Jorge Alessandri in 1960, were accelerated during the government of Eduardo Frei Montalva (1964–1970), and reached its climax during the 1970-1973 presidency of Salvador Allende. Farms of more than 198 acres (80 hectares) were expropriated. After the 1973 coup the process was halted, and up to a point reversed by the market forces.
- Colombia: Alfonso López Pumarejo (1934–1938) passed the Law 200 of 1936, which allowed for the expropriation of private properties, in order to promote "social interest". Later attempts declined, until the National Front presidencies of Alberto Lleras Camargo (1958–1962) and Carlos Lleras Restrepo (1966–1970), which respectively created the Colombian Institute for Agrarian Reform (INCORA) and further developed land entitlement. In 1968 and 1969 alone, the INCORA issued more than 60,000 land titles to farmers and workers. Despite this, the process was then halted and the situation began to reverse itself, as the subsequent violent actions of drug lords, paramilitaries, guerrillas and opportunistic large landowners severely contributed to a renewed concentration of land and to the displacement of small landowners. In the early 21st century, tentative government plans to use the land legally expropriated from drug lords and/or the properties given back by demobilized paramilitary groups have not caused much practical improvement yet.
- Cuba: (See also main article Agrarian Reform Laws of Cuba) Land reform was among the chief planks of the revolutionary platform of 1959. Almost all large holdings were seized by the National Institute for Agrarian Reform (INRA), which dealt with all areas of agricultural policy. A ceiling of 166 acres (67 hectares) was established, and tenants were given ownership rights, though these rights are constrained by government production quotas and a prohibition of real estate transactions.
- El Salvador: One among several land reform efforts was made during the revolution/civil-war during the 1980s. Salvadoran President Jose Napoleon Duarte promoted land-reform as counter-strategy in the war, while the FMLN carried out their own land-reform in the territory under their control.
- Guatemala: land reform occurred during the "Ten Years of Spring", 1944–1954 under the governments of Juan José Arévalo and Jacobo Arbenz. It has been remarked that it was one of the most successful land reforms in history, given that it was relatively thorough and had minimal detrimental effects on the economy and on the incomes of wealthy classes (who were mostly spared because only uncultivated land was expropriated). The reforms were reversed entirely after a US-backed coup deposed the Arbenz government.[7]
- Mexico: The first land reform was driven by Ley Lerdo (the Lerdo Law of 1856), enacted by the liberals during the Reform War of the 1850s. One of the aims of the reform government was to develop the economy by returning to productive cultivation the underutilized lands of the Church and the municipal communities (Indian commons), which required the distribution of these lands to small owners. This was to be accomplished through the provisions of Ley Lerdo that prohibited ownership of land by the Church and the municipalities.[8] The reform government also financed its war effort by seizing and selling church property and other large estates. After the war the principles of the Ley Lerdo were perverted by Pres. Porfirio Diaz, which contributed to causing the Mexican Revolution in 1910. A certain degree of land reform was introduced, albeit unevenly, as part of the Mexican Revolution. Francisco Madero and Emiliano Zapata were strongly identified with land reform, as are the present-day (as of 2006) Zapatista Army of National Liberation. See Mexican Agrarian Land Reform.
- Nicaragua: Land reform was one of the programs of the Sandinista government. The last months of Sandinista rule were criticized for the Piñata Plan which distributed large tracts of land to prominent Sandinistas.
- Peru: land reform in the 1950s largely eliminated a centuries-old system of debt peonage. Further land reform occurred after the 1968 coup by left-wing colonel Juan Velasco Alvarado, and again as part of a counterterrorism effort against the Shining Path during the Internal conflict in Peru roughly 1988–1995, led by Hernando de Soto and the Institute for Liberty and Democracy during the early years of the government of Alberto Fujimori, before the latter's auto-coup.
- Venezuela: Hugo Chávez's government enacted Plan Zamora to redistribute government and unused private land to campesinos in need.
[edit] Middle East and North Africa
- Land reform is discussed in the article on Arab Socialism
- Egypt: Initially, Egyptian land reform essentially abolished the political influence of major land owners. However, land reform only resulted in the redistribution of about 15% of Egypt's land under cultivation, and by the early 1980s, the effects of land reform in Egypt drew to a halt as the population of Egypt moved away from agriculture. The Egyptian land reform laws were greatly curtailed under Anwar Sadat and eventually abolished.
- Syria: Land reforms were first implemented in Syria during 1958. The Agricultural Relations Law laid down a redistribution of rights in landownership, tenancy and management . A culmination of factors led to the halt of the reforms in 1961, these included opposition from large landowners and sever crop failure during a drought between 1958 and 1961, whilst Syria was a member of the doomed United Arab Republic (UAR). After the Ba'th Party gained power in 1963 the reforms were resumed.
- The reforms were portrayed by the governing Ba'th Party as politically motivated to benefit the rural property-less communities. According to Arsuzi, a co-founder of the Ba'th Party, the reforms would, "liberate 75 percent of the Syrian population and prepare them to be citizens qualified to participate in the building of the state".[9]
- It has been argued that the land reform represented work by the 'socialist government' however, by 1984 the private sector controlled 74 percent of Syria's arable land.[10] This questions both Ba'th claims of commitment to the redistribution of land to the majority of peasants as well as the state government being socialist - if it allowed the majority of land to be owned in the private sector how could it truly be socialist. Hinnebusch argued that the reforms were a way of galvanising support from the large rural population, "they[Ba'th Party members] used the implementation of agrarian reform to win over and organise peasants and curb traditional power in the countryside".[11] To this extent the reforms succeeded with increase in Ba'th party membership, they also prevented political threat emerging from rural areas by bringing the rural population into the system as supporters.
- Iran: Significant land reform in Iran took place under the Shah as part of the socio-economic reforms of the White Revolution, begun in 1962, and agreed upon through a public referendum. At this time the Iranian economy was not performing well and there was political unrest. Essentially, the land reforms amounted to a huge redistribution of land to rural peasants who previously had no possibility of owning land as they were poorly paid labourers.
- The land reforms continued from 1962 until 1971 with three distinct phases of land distribution: private, government-owned and endowed land. These reforms resulted in the newly-created peasant landowners owning six to seven million hectares, around 52-63% of Iran's agricultural land. According to Country-Data, even though there had been a considerable redistribution of land, the amount received by individual peasants was not enough to meet most families' basic needs, "About 75 percent of the peasant owners [however] had less than 7 hectares, an amount generally insufficient for anything but subsistence agriculture.".[12]
- By 1979 a quarter of prime land was in disputed ownership and half of the productive land was in the hands of 200,000 absentee landlords [12] The large land owners were able to retain the best land with the best access to fresh water and irrigation facilities. In contrast, not only were the new peasant land holdings too small to produce an income but the peasants also lacked both quality irrigation system and sustained government support to enable them to develop their land to make a reasonable living. Set against the economic boom from oil revenue it became apparent that the Land Reforms did not make life better for the rural population: according to Amid, "..only a small group of rural people experienced increasing improvements in their welfare and poverty remained the lot of the majority".[13]
- Moghadam argues[citation needed] that the structural changes to Iran, including the land reforms, initiated by the White Revolution, contributed to the revolution in 1979 which overthrew the Shah and turned Iran into an Islamic republic.
- Iraq (1970) mentioned in Arab Socialism
[edit] Europe
- Albania has gone through three waves of land reform since the end of World War II: in 1946 the land in estates and large farms was expropriated by the communist government and redistributed among small peasants; in the 1950s the land was reorganized into large-scale collective farms; and after 1991 the land was again redistributed among private smallholders. At the end of World War II, the farm structure in Albania was characterized by high concentration of land in large farms. In 1945, farms larger than 10 hectares, representing numerically a mere 3% of all farms in the country, managed 27% of agricultural land and just seven large estates (out of 155,000 farms) controlled 4% of agricultural land, averaging more than 2,000 hectares each (compared to the average farm size of 2.5 hectares at that time).[14] The first post-war constitution of independent Albania (March 1946) declared that land belonged to the tiller and that large estates under no circumstances could be owned by private individuals (article 10). The post-war land reform of 1946 redistributed 155,000 hectares (40% of the land stock) from 19,355 relatively large farms (typically larger than 5 hectares) to 70,211 small farms and landless households.[14] As a result, the share of large farms with more than 10 hectares declined from 27% of agricultural land in 1945 to 3% in 1954. By 1954, more than 90% of land was held in small and mid-sized farms of between 1 hectare and 10 hectares. The distributive effects of the post-war land reform were eliminated by the collectivization drive of the late 1950s-early 1960s, and by 1962 less than 18% of agricultural land had remained in family farms and household plots (the rest had shifted to Soviet-style collective and state farms).[14] By 1971 independent family farms had virtually disappeared and individual farming survived only in household plots cultivated part time by cooperative members (approximately 6% of agricultural land). The post-communist land reform begun in 1991 as part of the transition to the market was in effect a replay of the 1946 land reform, and the arable land held in cooperatives and state farms was equally distributed among all rural households without regard to pre-communist ownership rights. Contrary to other transition countries in Central and Eastern Europe, Albania adopted a distributive land reform (like the CIS) and did not restitute land to former owners. The post-communist land reform of the 1990s was accompanied by special land privatization legislation, as Albania was the only country outside the former Soviet Union that had nationalized all agricultural land (in stages between 1946 and 1976).[15]
- Bulgaria: Upon independence in 1878 the overwhelmingly Turkish nobles estates were redistributed among peasant smallholdings. Additional reforms were implemented in 1920-23 and a maximum ownership 30 hectares was fixed.
- Czechoslovakia: Major land reform was passed in 1919 redistributing mainly German noble's estates to peasant smallholdings. By 1937 60% of noble land was expropriated with remaining land mainly in unarable arias or German and Hungarian lands. Almost all remaining lands were redistributed in reforms of 1945 and 1948.
- Denmark: In 1849 a section in the constitution had forbidden the creation of new fiefs and promised the abolition of existing fiefs. However fiefholders dominated the government and it was not until 1919 that the necessary legislation could be passed. This legislation transferred the fiefs to ordinary property that could be bought, sold and inherited like all other property. The state previously gained ownership to the fief if there was no male heirs and as compensation for the loss of this right the state demanded a one-time 25 % tax on the land and inventory of the fiefs. The value of the fiefs was assessed by the state itself. The tax rose each year the fiefholders waited to abolish their fiefs so the fiefs quickly disappeared. As part of the reform the state was entitled to take over one third of the land for a compensation that has since been criticised for being too small. This land was later handed over to smallholders. The tax levied on the estates as well as the division of land by ingheritance meant that the large estates as well as the estate holder class disappeared from Danish society and politics.
- Finland: In the general reparcelling out of land, begun in 1757, the medieval model of all fields consisting of numerous strips, each belonging to a farm, was replaced by a model of fields and forest areas each belonging to a single farm. In the further reparcellings which started to took place in 1848, the idea of concentrating all the land in a farm to a single piece of real estate was reinforced. In these reparcelling processes, the land is redistributed in direct proportion to earlier prescription. Both the general reparcelling and the further reparcelling processes are still active in some parts of the country. In 1918, Finland fought a civil war resulting in a series of land reforms. These included the compensated transfer of lease-holdings (torppa) to the leasers and prohibition of forestry companies to acquire land. After the Second World War, Karelians evacuated from areas ceded to Russia were given land in remaining Finnish areas, taken from public and private holdings. Also the veterans of war benefited from these allotments.
- France: a major and lasting land reform took place under the Directory during the latter phases of the French Revolution.
- Greece: At independence in 1835 the predominately Turkish nobles estates were redistributed as peasant smallholdings.
- Estonia and Latvia: at their founding as states in 1918–1919, they expropriate the large estates of Baltic German landowners, most of which was distributed among the peasants and became smallholdings.
- Hungary: In 1945 every estate bigger than 142 acres (57 ha) was expropriated without compensation and distributed among the peasants. In the 1950s collective ownership was introduced according to the Soviet model, but after 1990 co-ops were dissolved and the land was redistributed among private smallholders.
- Ireland: after the Irish Famine, land reform became the dominant issue in Ireland, where almost all of the land was owned by the Protestant Ascendancy. The Irish Parliamentary Party pressed for reform in a largely indifferent British House of Commons. Reform began tentatively in 1870 and continued for fifty years during which a number of Irish Land Acts were passed (see also Land War).
- Lithuania: the major land reform was initiated since the 1919 and was fully launched in 1922. The excess land was taken from the major landowners, mostly aristocracy, and redistributed among new landowners, primarily soldiers, or small landowners, 65,000 in total.
- Montenegro and Serbia: At independence in 1830 the predominately Turkish nobles estates were divided up among peasant smallholdings.
- Poland: there have been several land reforms in Poland. The most important include the land reforms in the Second Polish Republic (1919, 1921, 1923, 1925 and 1928) and in the People's Republic of Poland (1944).
- Romania: After failed attempts at land reform by Mihail Kogălniceanu in the years immediately after Romanian unification in 1863, a major land reform finally occurred in 1921, with a few additional reforms carried out in 1945.
- Slovenia and Croatia: With absorption into the kingdom of Yugoslavia land reform was passed in 1919 with subsidiary laws thereafter redistributing nobles estates among peasant smallholders. Additional reform was implemented in 1945 under the communist.
- Soviet Union
- Scotland the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 ends the historic legacy of feudal law and creates a framework for rural or croft communities right to buy land in their area.
- Sweden: In 1757, the general reparcelling out of land, began. In this process, the medieval principle of dividing all the fields in a village into strips, each belonging to a farm, was changed into a principle of each farm consisting of a few relatively large areas of land. The land was redistributed in proportion to earlier possession of land, while uninhabited forests far from villages were socialized. In the 20th century, Sweden, almost non-violently, arrived at regulating the length minimum of tenant farming contracts at 25 years.
[edit] Africa
- Ethiopia: The Derg carried out one of the most extensive land reforms in Africa in 1975.
- Kenya: Kenyatta launched a "willing buyer-willing seller" based land reform program in the 1960s, funded by Britain, the former colonial power. In 2006 president Mwai Kibaki said it will repossess all land owned by "absentee landlords" in the coastal strip and redistribute it to squatters.[16]
- Namibia: A limited land reform has been a hallmark of the regime of Sam Nujoma; legislation passed in September 1994, with a compulsory, compensated approach.[17]
- South Africa:The Native Lands Act of 1913 "prohibited the establishment of new farming operations, sharecropping or cash rentals by blacks outside of the reserves"[18] where they were forced to live. "Land restitution" was one of the promises made by the African National Congress when it came to power in South Africa in 1994.
- These property rights are extremely important as, not only do they empower farmer workers (who now have the opportunity to become farmers) and reduce inequality [19] but they also increase production due to inverse farm size productivity. Farmers with smaller plots who live on the farm, often use family members for labor, making these farms efficient. Their transaction costs are less than larger plots with hired labor.[20] Since many of these family members were unemployed it allows previously unemployed people to now participate in the economy and better the country's economic growth.[21]
- The Land Reform Process focused on three areas: restitution, land tenure reform and land redistribution.[18] Restitution, where the government compensates (monetary) individuals who had been forcefully removed, has been very unsuccessful and the policy has now shifted to redistribution with secure land tenure. Land tenure reform is a system of recognizing people's right to own land and therefore control of the land.
- Redistribution is the most important component of land reform in South Africa.[22] Initially, land was bought from its owners (willing seller) by the government (willing buyer) and redistributed, in order to maintain public confidence in the land market.[18]
- Although this system has worked in various countries in the world, in South Africa is has proved to be very difficult to implement. This is because many owners do not actually see the land they are purchasing and are not involved in the important decisions made at the beginning of the purchase and negotiation.
- In 2000 the South African Government decided to review and change the redistribution and tenure process to a more decentralized and area based planning process. The idea is to have local integrated development plans in 47 districts. This will hopefully mean more community participation and more redistribution taking place, but there are also various concerns and challenges with this system too.[23]
- These include the use of third parties, agents accredited by the state, and who are held accountable to the government. The result has been local land holding elites dominating the system in many of these areas. The government still hopes that with "improved identification and selection of beneficiaries, better planning of land and ultimately greater productivity of the land acquired..." [24] the land reform process will begin moving faster.[25]
- As of early 2006, the ANC government announced that it will start expropriating the land, although according to the country's chief land-claims commissioner, Tozi Gwanya, unlike Zimbabwe there will be compensation to those whose land is expropriated, "but it must be a just amount, not inflated sums."[26][27]
- Despite these moves towards decentralization, these improved practices and government promises are not very evident. South Africa still remains hugely unequal, with black South Africans still dispossessed of land and many still homeless. The challenge for the incumbent politicians is to improve the various bureaucratic processes, and find solutions to giving more South Africans secure land tenure.
- Zimbabwe: Efforts at land reform in Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe moved, after 15 years, in the 1990s, from a "willing seller, willing buyer" approach to the "fast track" land reform program. This was accelerated by "popular seizure" led by machete gangs of "war veterans" associated with the ruling party. Many parcels of land came under the control of people close to the government, as is the case throughout Africa. The several forms of forcible change in management caused a severe drop in production and other economic disruptions. In addition, the human rights violations and bad press led Britain, the European Union, the United States, and other Western allies to impose sanctions on the Zimbabwean government. All this has caused the collapse of the economy[citation needed]. The results have been disastrous and have resulted in widespread food shortages and large scale refugee flight.
[edit] North America
- Canada: A land reform was carried out as part of Prince Edward Island's agreement to join the Canadian Confederation in 1873. Most of the land was owned by absentee landlords in England, and as part of the deal Canada was to buy all the land and give it to the farmers.
- United States:
- Following the American Civil War, the Radical Republicans attempted to put a land reform through Congress, promising "forty acres and a mule" to newly-freed blacks in the South, which was ultimately rejected by moderate elements as "socialistic." This failure left blacks without an economic base, and was one of the key contributing factors to the development of sharecropping and segregation.
- The Dawes Act of 1887 split the Indian tribal lands into allotments held by individual Indians. Most tribal land still owned by ethnic Indians was recollectivized in 1934.
[edit] Asia
- China has been through a series of land reforms:
- In the 1940s, the Sino-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction, funded with American money, with the support of the national government, carried out land reform and community action programs in several provinces.
- The thorough land reform launched by the Communist Party of China in 1946, three years before the foundation of the People's Republic of China (PRC), won the party millions of supporters among the poor and middle peasantry. The land and other property of landlords were expropriated and redistributed so that each household in a rural village would have a comparable holding. This agrarian revolution was made famous in the West by William Hinton's book Fanshen. In 1948, Mao envisaged that "one-tenth of the peasants" (or about 50,000,000) "would have to be destroyed" to facilitate agrarian reform.[28] Jen Pi-shih, a member of the party's Central Committee, likewise stated in a 1948 speech that "30,000,000 landlords and rich peasants would have to be destroyed."[28] Shortly after the founding of the PRC, land reform, according to Mao biographer Philip Short, "lurched violently to the left" with Mao laying down new guidelines for "not correcting excesses prematurely."[29] Mao insisted that the people themselves, not the security organs, should become involved in the killing of landlords who had oppressed them.[29] This was quite different from Soviet practice, in which the NKVD would arrest counterrevolutionaries and then have them secretly executed and often buried before sunrise. Mao felt that peasants who killed landlords with their bare hands would become permanently linked to the revolutionary process in a way that passive spectators could not be.[29] Actual numbers killed in land reform are believed to have been lower, but did rank in the millions,[28] as there was a policy to select "at least one landlord, and usually several, in virtually every village for public execution."[30] R.J. Rummel, an analyst of government killings, or "democide", gives a "reasonably conservative figure" of about 4,500,000 landlords and better-off peasants killed.[28] Philip Short estimates that at least one to three million landlords and members of their families were killed, either beaten to death on the spot by enraged peasants at mass meetings organized by local communist party work teams or reserved for public execution later on.[29] Estimates abroad ranged as high as 28,000,000 deaths.[28] In 1976 the U.S. State department estimated that there may have been a million killed in the land reform;[31] Mao estimated that only 800,000 landlords were killed.[28]
- In the mid-1950s, a second land reform during the Great Leap Forward compelled individual farmers to join collectives, which, in turn, were grouped into People's communes with centrally controlled property rights and an egalitarian principle of distribution. This policy was generally a failure in terms of production.[32] The PRC reversed this policy in 1962 through the proclamation of the Sixty Articles. As a result, the ownership of the basic means of production was divided into three levels with collective land ownership vested in the production team (see also Ho [2001]).
- A third land reform beginning in the late 1970s re-introduced the family-based contract system known as the Household Responsibility System, which had enormous initial success, followed by a period of relative stagnation. Chen, Wang, and Davis [1998] suggest that the later stagnation was due, in part, to a system of periodic redistribution that encouraged over-exploitation rather than capital investment in future productivity.[32]. However, although land use rights were returned to individual farmers, collective land ownership was left undefined after the disbandment of the People's Communes.
- Since 1998 China is in the midst of drafting the new Property Law which is the first piece of national legislation that will define the land ownership structure in China for years to come. The Property Law forms the basis for China's future land policy of establishing a system of freehold, rather than of private ownership (see also Ho, [2005]).
- India: Due to the taxation and regulation under the British Raj, at the time of independence, India inherited a semi-feudal agrarian system, with ownership of land concentrated in the hands of a few individual landlords (Zamindars, Zamindari System). Since independence, there has been voluntary and state initiated/mediated land reforms in several states. The most notable and successful example of land reforms are in the states of West Bengal and Kerala. After promising land reforms and elected to power in West Bengal in 1977, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) kept their word and initiated gradual land reforms, such as Operation Barga. The result was a more equitable distribution of land among the landless farmers, and enumeration of landless farmers. This has ensured an almost life long loyalty from the farmers and the communists have been in power ever since. In Kerala, the only other large state where the CPI(M) came to power, state administrations have actually carried out the most extensive land, tenancy and agrarian labor wage reforms in the non-socialist late-industrializing world.[33] Another successful land reform program was launched in Jammu and Kashmir after 1947. However, this success was not replicated in other areas like the states of Andhra and Madhya Pradesh, where the more radical Communist Party of India (Maoist) or Naxalites resorted to violence as it failed to secure power. Even in West Bengal, the economy suffered for a long time as a result of the communist economic policies that did little to encourage heavy industries. In the state of Bihar, tensions between land owners militia, villagers and Maoists have resulted in numerous massacres. All in all, land reforms have been successful only in pockets of the country, as people have often found loopholes in the laws setting limits on the maximum area of land held by any one person.
- Japan: The first land reform, called the Land Tax Reform or chisokaisei (地租改正) was passed in 1873 as a part of the Meiji Restoration. Another land reform of Japan was carried out in 1947 (at the occupied era after World War II) by the instructions of SCAP by the proposal from the Japanese government. It was prepared before the defeat of the Greater Japanese Empire. It is also called Nōchi-kaihō (農地解放,emancipation of farming land ).
- Sri Lanka: In 1972, the Government of Sirimavo Bandaranaike, through the Land Reform Law, imposed a ceiling of twenty hectares on privately owned land and sought to distribute lands in excess of the ceiling for the benefit of landless peasants. Both land owned by public companies and paddy lands under ten hectares in extent were exempted from this ceiling. Between 1972 and 1974, the Land Reform Commission took over nearly 228,000 hectares. In 1975 the Land Reform (Amendment) Law brought over 169,000 hectares of plantations owned by companies (including British-owned companies) under state control.[34]
- Taiwan: In the 1950s, after the Nationalist government came to Taiwan, land reform and community development was carried out by the Sino-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction. This course of action was made attractive, in part, by the fact that many of the large landowners were Japanese who had fled, and the other large landowners were compensated with Japanese commercial and industrial properties seized after Taiwan reverted from Japanese rule in 1945. The land program succeeded also because the Kuomintang were mostly from the mainland and had few ties to the remaining indigenous landowners.
- Vietnam: In the years after World War II, even before the formal division of Vietnam, land reform was initiated in North Vietnam. This land reform (1953–1956) redistributed land to more than 2 million poor peasants, but at a cost of from tens[35] to hundreds of thousands of lives[36] and was one of the main reason for the mass exodus of 1 million people from the North to the South in 1954. The probable democide for this four year period then totals 283,000 North Vietnamese.[37] South Vietnam made several further attempts in the post-Diem years, the most ambitious being the Land to the Tiller program instituted in 1970 by President Nguyen Van Thieu. This limited individuals to 15 hectares, compensated the owners of expropriated tracts, and extended legal title to peasants who in areas under control of the South Vietnamese government to whom had land had previously been distributed by the Viet Cong.
- South Korea: In 1945–1950, United States and South Korean authorities carried out a land reform that retained the institution of private property. They confiscated and redistributed all land held by the Japanese colonial government, Japanese companies, and individual Japanese colonists. The Korean government carried out a reform whereby Koreans with large landholdings were obliged to divest most of their land. A new class of independent, family proprietors was created.[38]
 | This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2009) |
- Philippines: During the Macapagal Administration in the early 1960s, a limited land reform program was initiated in Central Luzon covering rice fields. During the martial law era of the Marcos Administration, Presidential Decree 27 instituted a land reform program covering rice and corn farms. Rice and corn production under this land reform program was heavily supported by the Marcos Administration with land distribution and financing program known as the Masagana 99 and other production loans that led to increased rice and corn production. The country produced enough rice for local consumption and became a rice exporter during that period. The Aquino Administration in the mid 1980s instituted a very controversial land reform known as CARP which covered all agricultural lands. The program led to rice shortages in the succeeding years and lasted for 20 years without accomplishing the goal of land distribution. The program caused entrepreneurs to stay away from agriculture and a number of productive farmers left the farming sector. The CARP was a monumental failure in terms of cost to the government and the landowners whose lands were subjective legal landgrabbing by the government. CARP expired at the end of December 2008.[39]
[edit] Oceania
- Australia: See Aboriginal Land Rights Acts.
- Fiji: In a reverse that proves the rule of land reform to benefit the native and indigenous people, the land in Fiji has always been owned by native Fijians, but much of it has been leased long-term to immigrant Indians. As these leases have reached their end-of-term native Fijians increasingly have refused to renew leases and have expelled the Indians.[citation needed]
[edit] See also
- Agrarian reform
- Anti-globalization movement
- Communism
- Eminent domain
- Homestead principle
- Georgism
- México Indígena
- Land rights
- Land claim
- Restitution
- Squatter
- Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus
- Land Banking
[edit] References
- ^ Land Reform, Land Settlement and Cooperatives, FAO, Rome
- ^ Zimbabwe's "land reform" is considered by some to be not land reform at all, but merely the change in ownership from one elite (white farmers) to another (ZANU-PF commissars).
- ^ "Redistribution" as Euphemism or, Who Owns What? Philosophy Pathways, Number 65, 24 August 2003, by Anthony Flood
- ^ "Cuba: Historical Exception or Vanguard in the Anticolonial Struggle?" speech by Che Guevara on April 9, 1961
- ^ James Read, Bolivia head starts land handout, BBC News, 4 June 2006. Retrieved 20 July 2006.
- ^ "Morales signs controversial bill into law." [1], Taipei Times, 30 November 2006. Retrieved 30 November 2006.
- ^ Gleijeses, Piero. "The Agrarian Reform of Jacobo Arbenz." Journal of Latin American Studies 21, 3 (1989): 453-480.
- ^ Jaime Suchlicki, Mexico: From Montezuma to the Fall of the PRI, Brassey's (2001), ISBN 1-57488-326-7, ISBN 978-1-57488-326-8
- ^ as quoted in Heydemann 1999 p.193 'Authoritarianism in Syria: Institutions and Social Conflict' 1946-1970 Cornell University Press Ithica
- ^ "Syria - Agriculture". Countrystudies.us. http://countrystudies.us/syria/43.htm. Retrieved 2010-06-27.
- ^ Hinnebusch, R. 2001 p.55 'Syria Revolution From Above' Routledge New York
- ^ a b "Iran - Rural Society". Country-data.com. http://www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-6428.html. Retrieved 2010-06-27.
- ^ Amid, M. (1990) 'Agriculture, Poverty and Reform in Iran' London, Routledge
- ^ a b c Statistical Yearbook of the Popular Republic of Albania 1963, Department of Statistics, Tirana, 1964
- ^ Z. Lerman, C. Csaki, and G. Feder, Agriculture in Transition: Land Policies and Evolving Farm Structures in Post-Soviet Countries, Lexington Books, Lanham, MD, 2004.
- ^ Joseph, Odhiambo (2006-08-22). "Pledge to redistribute Kenya land". BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/africa/5275670.stm. Retrieved 2010-06-27.
- ^ Namibia: Land Reform to Cost Billions
- ^ a b c Deininger, Klaus. "Making Negotiated Land Reform Work: Initial Experience from Colombia, Brazil and South Africa." World Development Vol. 27(1999): 651-672
- ^ Keefer, Philip, and Stephen Knack. "Polarization, politics and property rights: Links between." Public Choice 111(2002): 127-154
- ^ Van den Brink, Rogier, Glen Sonwabo Thomas, Hans Binswanger, Agricultural Land redistribution in South Africa: towards accelerated Implementation. 1st ed. Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2007
- ^ Torstensson, Johan. "Property Rights and Economic Growth: An empirical study." KYKLOS 47(1994): 231-247
- ^ Lahiff, Edward. "Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies." Land Reform in South Africa: A status Report 2008 38(July 2008): 1-42
- ^ Hall, Ruth. "Decentralisation in South Africa's Land Redistribution." Presentation to the PLAAS regional workshop on Land Reform from Below? Decentralisation of Land Reform in Southern Africa. Program for land anad agrarian studies. Kopanong Conference Centre, Kempton Park, Johannesburg. 23-04-2008. Address
- ^ Lahiff, Edward. "Program for Land and Agrarian Studies." Land Reform in South Africa: A status Report 2008 38(July 2008): 1-42
- ^ Hall, Ruth. "Decentralization in South Africa's Land Redistribution." Presentation to the PLAAS regional workshop on Land Reform from Below? Decentralization of Land Reform in Southern Africa. Program for land and agrarian studies. Kopanong Conference Centre, Kempton Park, Johannesburg. 23-04-2008. Address
- ^ "IRIN Africa | Southern Africa | South Africa | SOUTH AFRICA: Deadline for land transfer negotiations set | Governance | News Item". Irinnews.org. 2006-08-15. http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=55132&SelectRegion=Southern_Africa&SelectCountry=SOUTH_AFRICA. Retrieved 2010-06-27.
- ^ "SA land expropriation to start soon : Mail & Guardian Online". Mg.co.za. 2009-11-24. http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=263484&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__national/. Retrieved 2010-06-27.
- ^ a b c d e f Rummel, Rudolph J. (2007). China's bloody century: genocide and mass murder since 1900. Transaction Publishers. p. 223. ISBN 9781412806701. http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE2.HTM.
- ^ a b c d Short, Philip (2001). Mao: A Life. Owl Books. pp. 436–437. ISBN 0805066381. http://books.google.com/books?id=HQwoTtJ43_AC&pg=PA436&dq=Mao+landlords+and+members+of+their+families+killed&ei=qHULSafGIJLsMvT9yKQE.
- ^ Twitchett, Denis; John K. Fairbank, Roderick MacFarquhar. The Cambridge history of China. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 052124336X. http://books.google.com/books?id=ioppEjkCkeEC&pg=PA87&dq=at+least+one+landlord,+and+usually+several,+in+virtually+every+village+for+public+execution&ei=wP14R6muKIi0iQHR4ezAAQ&ie=ISO-8859-1&sig=9REVjFOEIx_4TIMFixd7fhgC9FY. Retrieved 2008-08-23.
- ^ Stephen Rosskamm Shalom. Deaths in China Due to Communism. Center for Asian Studies Arizona State University, 1984. ISBN 0-939252-11-2 pg 24
- ^ a b "SD: Institutions : Land reform in rural China since the mid-1980s, Part 1". Fao.org. http://www.fao.org/sd/LTdirect/LTan0031.htm. Retrieved 2010-06-27.
- ^ [Heller, Patrick. 1999. The Labor of Development. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, Chapters 2 and 3.]
- ^ "Sri Lanka land reform legislation". Country-data.com. http://www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-13209.html. Retrieved 2010-06-27.
- ^ Communist Party of Vietnam, Kinh nghiệm giải quyết vấn đề ruộng đất trong cách mạng Việt Nam (Experience in land reform in the Vietnamese Revolution), available online: http://dangcongsan.vn/details.asp?topic=2&subtopic=5&leader_topic=79&id=BT1060374012
- ^ The Viet Minh Regime, Government and Administration in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, Bernard Fall, Greenwood Press, Connecticut, 1975.
- ^ "Statistics Of Vietnamese Democide". Hawaii.edu. http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP6.HTM. Retrieved 2010-06-27.
- ^ "South Korea - The Emergence of a Modern Society". Countrystudies.us. http://countrystudies.us/south-korea/36.htm. Retrieved 2010-06-27.
- ^ CARP not renewed, inquierer.net, 3 January 2009.
[edit] References
- P.P.S. Ho, Who Owns China's Land? Policies, Property Rights and Deliberate Institutional Ambiguity, The China Quarterly, Vol. 166, June 2001, pp. 387–414
- R. H. Tawney, Land and Labour in China New York, Harcourt Brace & Company (1932).
- Fu Chen, Liming Wang and John Davis, "Land reform in rural China since the mid-1980s", Land Reform 1998/2, a publication of the Sustainable Development Department of the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
- William H. Hinton. Fanshen: A documentary of revolution in a Chinese village. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1966. ISBN 0-520-21040-9.
- P.P.S. Ho, Institutions in Transition: Land Ownership, Property Rights and Social Conflict in China, (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)
- Mark Moyar, "Villager attitudes during the final decade of the Vietnam War". Presented at 1996 Vietnam Symposium "After the Cold War: Reassessing Vietnam".
- Summary of "Efficiency and wellbeing for 80 years" by Tarmo Luoma on site of TEHO magazine.
[edit] External links
- Land Research Action Network:News, Analysis, and Research on Land Reform
- Land Reform in Scotland
- Fast Track Land Reform in Zimbabwe
- The Land Reform of 1919–1940: Lithuania and the Countries of East and Central Europe
- FAO Multilingual Thesaurus on Land Tenure
- FAO International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD), March 2006
- Civil Society conference "Land, Territory and Dignity", March 2006
- William Rees-Mogg, South Africa's bitter harvest, The Times, 11 September 2006
- World Bank archived online discussion: "Can Formal Property Titling Programs Ensure Increased Business Investments and Growth?"
- The Distribution of Bolivia's Most Important Natural Resources and the Autonomy Conflicts Center for Economic and Policy Research
- Promised Land: New Documentary Follows Struggles Over Land in South Africa - video report by Democracy Now!
- Rural Development Institute, Securing land rights for the world's poorest
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