While the heat and dust over the issue of Special Status will continue till, as it happens, drift off towards the next most immediate issue, this is the best time to revisit, discuss and close the issue of how Goans manage their own land.
Currently the issue of semantics, pride, and political one up-manship is dominating this debate. There seems to less serious intent on drawing effective legislation and closing a lingering issue and a far greater rage on political failures of not being able to push and get the Special Status signed, sealed and delivered. However, this rage is required. An emotional public outburst moves mountains, forces legislation to be enacted and ensures delivery of governance. And political failures and the fear of rejection is the only fear that ruling politicians have.
An immediate case in point is the decision to send the finalisation of the Regional Plan to the House Committee. While the move is nothing but a time buying tactic, public outrage forced the Chief Minister to commit to some action on the plan even if it is lip service. The formation of the House Committee will open up the Chief Minister to further scrutiny. While he can hide under the cover of the House Committee he opens himself for more criticism.
Hence any pressure on the Chief Minister from downright condemnation to calls for mass resignation of all MLAs is welcome and is a legitimate pressure tactic. But that cannot be an end in itself. The promise of Special Status was made by the Prime Ministerial candidate in the early tentative stages of the election campaign when every seat counted. The decision to reject the demand has been made by a Modi government that doesn’t really care about these two seats from Goa, even as Manohar Parrikar would like to believe. But even as we push the issue back to the Centre, successive governments are as critically guilty of some painstaking work that has indeed taken place which could have given Goa enough control over its own land, without going into a dizzy of confusion the Chief Minister has, such as suggesting a constitutional amendment or a fresh law.
Herald is trying to drive home one point repeatedly. There has been willful non-application of mind on the issue of protecting land. Governments have reduced a fine body like the law commission to a parking lot of legal minds without being serious about ever considering their recommendations seriously. The Ramakant Khalap led Law Commission consisting of Ramakant Khalap, Adv Cleofato Coutinho and Adv Mario Pinto Almeida Report number 18: Conservation and Management of Agricultural Land and Water Bodies, saving Goan agricultural land for Goans…”is succinct in its solutions a) Ban on holding agricultural land by persons who are not agriculturists and b) Ban on sale of agricultural properties to non-residents and non agriculturists.”
The biggest loophole in the system is that an agriculturist has never been defined which allows people like beer barons and former airline tycoons to call themselves agriculturists. The definition was also suggested. “A person who cultivates land personally within a reasonable distance from the agricultural property held by him.” The draft bill had seven salient features of which the second feature stated, “Prevention of sale of Agricultural lands to non-agriculturists and non residents,” taking into account that in Maharashtra, Karnataka and most other states, non agriculturists cannot purchase or even hold agricultural land. In the absence of such law in Goa, agricultural lands, especially orchard lands are purchased by rich non Goans who keep land fallow and unproductive for speculative reasons. Therefore the draft bill proposed to define an agriculturist as one who resides in a radius of 10 kilometers from the concerned land and who has an approved plan of agricultural development and a non residential as some one who has not stayed in Goa for a continuous period of 25 years.
This report was not even considered either by the previous government or the Parrikar government which has the South Goa MP Narendra Sawaikar as Chairman. But the Commission comes in very handy as a scapegoat. For instance after the evacuee property bill was sent back by the Governor to the Chief Minister with several questions alleging that it was a cut and paste job, the government’s informal stand is that it was based on a Law Commission report. On checking the report you realise that it was rigidly specific about the Mayem evacuee property alone whereas the Government bill, as Herald has reported, is a straight lift from the legislation of Daman and Diu which encompassed all land which the government sought to be put in its disposal.
Since the disinterest in meaningful exercises of the Law Commission is established, let is go back on fundamental flaws the government has- again wilfully made. Every Land Revenue Code prevents the sale of agricultural land. In 1968, the Congress government dropped this enactment, by accident or design we do not know but it needs no further elaboration, to figure what it was. Meanwhile the tenancy act needs to be strengthened, which no one has quite looked at. A mundkar who becomes an owner by paying an abysmally low price should debarred from selling these tenanted lands. This eventually protects mundkars as well as allows them to be land owners. The Law Commission in its first report on ownership rights of mundkars had recommended that the State should in-fact provide the funds to mundkars to buy lands which they were cultivating as loans, with a sunset clause thereby giving a cut of period by which these transactions should be complete.
The failure to do that has resulted in a complete take over of villages by private parties with the mundkars completely crushed and cheated in the process. Tiracol village has been purchased by a single party and so has Allorna village again in a North Goa taluka. This has also been possible because Goa does not have any land ceiling laws, thereby allowing land sharks to take over.
Therefore, when the shouting and political mud slinging is over and we put these things in perspective, the ruling class across politics and business in Goa will emerge as the biggest villains of not protecting land meant for Goans.
