Who talks of land reforms these days? Not even the Communists who were once associated with this piece of legal fiction! Yes, land reforms have become a piece of legal fiction only. The reality is otherwise!
Today, the trend is land-grabbing! Today, you can grab as much private and public land as you can, as your money power or muscle power enables you!
That is the sad reality!
In most states, there are no land reforms related courts functioning. The land owners, the poor and unfortunate land owners who inherited their landed properties from their ancestors had seen their lands grabbed by tenants and in reality by unscrupulous elements in society.
Who doesn’t know that in Kerala in 1959,when the late EMS Namboodiripad was the Chief Minister he promulgated an ordinance that one fine morning rendered so many land owners paupers in a minute! In Palghat district, we know for sure that many decent families became paupers and also we know that many of the most unscrupulous elements who were cultivating the lands as tenants and who didn’t pay for ages suddenly found themselves with unexpected property owners!
So, that is one reason when Nandigram erupted on the national scene and when the public consciousness was awakened by the ruthlessness of the CPI(M) cadres in West Bengal no one came to the rescue of the Buddadeb government. Only if you make a trip through the Bengal countryside, you will realise what the comrades had done in the name of Karl Marx and Lenin, not to speak of in the name of Stalin!
Our Indian Communists have done the maximum damage to the ideas of land reforms, they all thought that by grabbing the land in the name of some ideological idiosyncrasy, they can change the world. They in reality created the most backward and the most poor and weaker sections out of the once rich Bengali society!
Kerala is a state shunned by anyone who thinks of starting an industry!
Such is the lawlessness when it comes to the rule of law.
Only a Tata perhaps can withstand the assault of a Mamata Banerji and co. and the CPI(M) now faces the reality of what an unlawful regime could and couldn’t do!
So much for land reforms laws that in the hands of unsuspected bourgeois regimes, from the Congress to the DMK to the TD regimes in TN and AP, have used and misused the provisions of the land reforms laws to settle political scores with opponents.
Now, all this is to bring home the point that there are no land reforms as such except that when ever it suits the ruling regimes you can do anything with other people’s private properties and wealth. This price we pay for a democratic government!
Now, to cut the story short, we have before us the news that the President of India has withheld asset to the Bill on land grabbing in Karnataka. In Karnataka, land grabbing is a pastime for the big and the powerful!
As per the latest report of the Joint Legislature Committee headed by a former MLA A.T.Ramaswamy that 45,000 acres of land worth a whopping Rs.50,000 crores had been grabbed.
Who grabbed the lands? Whose lands have been grabbed?
If you ask such questions then you open up a Pandora’s box!
If you are the one who chooses to listen to a leader like Deve Gowda then you will know that land grabbers are not the poor souls who want to make some small bucks. It is the big corporate giants and it is the big contractors, who all do the land grabbing through an elaborate process of state government agencies in the name of developing giant IT parks, giant high ways corridors.
Of course, in all the land grabbing, you can’t leave out the unscrupulous politicians! That is why when the unfortunate MLA was compiling his report, the enraged politicians stormed his office and in fact locked his office! The excuse was that the legislature was suspended under the President’s rule and what business this gentleman had to compile a list in which he mentions all the important politicians’ families.
Yes, land grabbing is a social stigma. But not in Bangalore where the rush to built houses, violate building rules are a daily routine! That is urbanisation for you! You can imagine why there was so much noise over the Supreme Court ruling over the sealing of commercial properties in New Delhi and also when the sealing was undone now!
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