The Rediff Special/B G Verghese
Such is the pressure of landlessness and unemployment that the
poor are ranged against the poor
Bihar was permanently settled by Cornwallis in the early nineteenth century and brought under zamindari. The government was interested
in collecting revenue and did not pay much heed to how this was
done. The zamindars let out their vast holdings, which were leased
out again, further sublet, and so on in tiers of sub-infeudation
with helpless serfs, bataidars (sharecroppers), marginal
farmers and landless labourers (all lower castes) at the bottom
of the heap. The agrarian scene truly conformed to the saying
"Large fleas have little fleas on their backs to bite them;
little fleas have lesser fleas and so on ad infinitum."
Begar, debt, bondage and increasing immiserisation was
to lot of the poor peasant.
Came Independence and the abolition of zamindari in fulfillment
of the Congress promise of land to the tiller and the removal
of all intermediaries. The Bihar Land Reform Act, 1950, abolished
zamindari with payment of compensation and provided for land reforms.
The Act was challenged and was only validated in 1952. By then
landlords had masked their ownership in a variety of benami
transactions. Further, the state found it had received very
incomplete and inaccurate records of rights from the erstwhile
zamindars, which hampered conferment of cultivation rights or
pattas on those actually farming the land.
Records of rights, unsatisfactory as they were, were often received
only after much delay. The plight of bataidars
was worse and their exploitation and insecurity continued unabated.
There were loopholes regarding the zamindar's right to retain
buildings and appurtenant lands. They were entitled to keep ill-defined
homestead plots as well as khas or so-called self-cultivated lands
as under -rajyats. Factories, golas, mela grounds and income therefrom
could also be retained. The Act was ambiguous and vested large
powers and sources of income in the hands of the former landlords.
Undisclosed benami transfers were commonplace.
It might well have been said: "Zamindari is dead. Long live
zamindari!" Litigation, appeals and amendments notwithstanding,
little had changed for a great many. However, a class of small
zamindars and middle peasants were able to assert their rights,
marking the rise of the middle castes. Land settlement operations
proceeded at snail's pace and orders were soon bogged down in
litigation and appeals.
Consolidation has only been carried out
on a limited scale and has been used as an instrument of dispossessing
actual cultivators of good land assiduously improved through much
toil. Bataidari remains the bane of large parts of Bihar.
Such is the pressure of landlessness and unemployment that the
poor are ranged against the poor. One man's ouster is another
opportunity.
Mr Verghese's comments form part of the Kedar Nath Singh Memorial
Lecture which he delivered in Chhapra, Bihar, recently.
Tell us what you think of this article
| 
