Oped»
Feudalism is alive and well
JUL 18 -
Land lies at the heart of many of the world’s most compelling contemporary issues—from climate change to armed conflict, from food security to social justice. Since the turn of the millennium, land issues have reclaimed centre stage in national and international development debates, which increasingly focus on access to land in promoting economic growth and alleviating poverty. The distribution of agricultural land in Nepal, as in many poor countries, is profoundly inequitable, giving rise to social tension, impaired development and extreme poverty. These exploitative imbalances are legacies of elite class regime and institutionalised feudalism, posing serious threats to future prosperity and sustainable peace.
Donor-driven development projects focusing on land governance and elite-based policies and programmes have sought to impose market-led capitalist ideals, further polarising power and marginalising the poor. This toxic blend of national feudalism and international hegemony has placed the world’s poor agrarian societies in a perilous predicament; for one-sixth of the world’s population, nearly a billion farmers, without security of land ownership, the situation is grave. Confronted with this menacing dystopia, it has become increasingly urgent to assess the ways in which land is owned, accessed and regulated.
A dismal system
Nepal is one of the most relevant countries today for contemporary debate on land reform. Our small, mountainous nation, landlocked and sandwiched between the giants of China and India, is home to around 28 million people; it is one of the world’s poorest countries with one-third of the population living below the poverty line. The dramatic topography renders 80 percent of the land uncultivable, yet three-quarters of the population depend on agriculture for their livelihood, one-third of whom are marginal tenants and landless farmers.
Nepal’s pattern of land ownership is the corollary of over 100 years of autocratic monarchy and Rana regime, with successive kings and Ranas treating the land as their personal property; distributing large tracts to military leaders, officials and family members, in lieu of salaries or as gifts. This feudal system deliberately precluded ordinary people from owning land and ensured their continued position as agricultural servants. Non-farmer elites began to accumulate considerable land holdings as a form of security and status which precipitated the well-established class structure of landlordism today; a dismal system whereby those who work the land have little ownership over it. Landlessness affords no status in communities and disenfranchises millions from their basic human rights. Without the possession of a land certificate, people are denied access to many government services such as banking, electricity, telephone and potable water. The landless are further victimised by non-government services, preventing them from keeping livestock and prohibiting them from accessing community forest land.
Systematic failure
Nepal’s land governance remained subject to capricious rulers until the first Land Act was introduced in 1964. In response to a fledgling land rights movement initiated by tenant farmers, the incumbent monarchic regime introduced the act with the aim of “showing a human face”. It imposed land ceilings with redistribution of the surplus to needy farmers and pledged to end the ritual of offering vast land grants to royal favourites. In practice, ceilings were not enforced, little land was redistributed, and landlords rather than tenants often benefited. No further significant land reform measures occurred for the next 40 years, and the 1964 Land Act remains at the centre of Nepal’s land reform legislation even today.
The People’s Movement of 1990 reintroduced multi-party democracy to the Kingdom of Nepal, bringing new hope. In 1996, amendments to the original land act stipulated that any tenant farmer who had cultivated a piece of land continuously and was registered as a tenant in the landlord’s land certificate, would be given the right of tenancy and the right to receive half the land they farmed. As a majority of the tenants were unregistered, landlords reacted predictably by evicting them from their land and refusing to grant secure tenancy contracts. In a country as poorly developed as Nepal, where it can be many days’ walk to the nearest road, and even further to reach a centralised bureaucracy, it served to formally terminate tenancy rights for over half a million families.
Land reform policies in Nepal have failed to significantly redistribute land, improve agricultural productivity or realign socio-economic power imbalances. The main reason for this lies in the conflict of interests with decision makers. Government leaders are closely tied to landlords, if they are not landlords themselves. This corrupt nexus of power has ensured the continued failure of land reform and the perpetuation of a feudal society. The main output of imposing land ceilings was concealment of ownership; the main product of land records reform was authenticating elite ownership; the main effect of tenancy registration was eviction; the main consequence of modernisation was abuse of customary rights and eviction of landless and tenant farmers.
All eyes on land
Land reform is a complex political issue for many developing countries that are shackled by entrenched inequities in land access and ownership. Highly unequal land ownership breeds social tension and political unrest and inhibits economic growth. While Nepal faces its own particular land related issues, some common themes prevail; the lack of political will to formulate and implement effective land reform, entrenched inequitable power structures, exclusive legal systems, a lack of information dissemination and the age-old millstones of corruption and excessive bureaucracy. Across the board, authorities are seen to be rich in rhetoric and poor in deed. The rising discontent among landless and small holder farmers has forced open an ideological debate between neo-liberalism, centralised elite domination and pro-people policy making. The majority rural poor have begun to find their voice, and Nepal’s civil war will act as a warning that their land grievances can quickly turn to violence.
It is abundantly clear that the best approaches to land reform are those that integrate security of ownership, livelihood, resource management, agriculture input and community empowerment and mobilisation. Land reform must redistribute land widely enough to preclude any dominant land-owning class and be accompanied by a support structure to sustain productivity. The expansion of rural markets that will follow will generate growth, and this will lead to stable peace and national development. All eyes are on land reform to see if the coming government seizes the unique chance to institute such an innovative, rational and scientific process of land reform.
(The author is a land rights activist)
Jagat Basnet
jagat.basnet@gmail.com
Posted on: 2010-07-19 08:23
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