Saturday 3 December 2016

THE AGRARIAN CRISIS : A. J. PHILIP



FROM THE BLOGGER’S LIBRARY: REMEMBERING K.B.SAHAY:24

This particular article was published in "The Hindustan times" (Patna edition) on March 12, 1989.

The original clipping of HT newspaper.
“The peasants are much more susceptible to revolutionary influences of the Marxists-Leninist kind than the urban classes, although the later, according to orthodox Marxism, should be the spearhead of the revolutionary movement.”


Land has always been the single most important cause of agrarian tension as manifested by the countless killings and massacres reported from the countryside of Bihar during the last three decades or so. Yet, very little has been done to sort out the land related problems that bedevil the State and threaten to tear asunder its socio-political fabric. And this is despite the plethora of legislative measures the State has enacted from time to time to counter the factors that breed violence, to restore peace in the villages and to uphold the lofty principle that land should belong to its tiller.

     Much water has flowed down the Ganga since the Government of Bihar made its first post independence legislative attempt to abolish the Zamindari System by passing the Bihar Abolition of Zamindari Bill in 1947. But even after 40 years of the trend setting legislation, the situation has not changed substantially as underscored by the assertion of Mrs. Uma Pandey in the HT series “Your Minister”, that her first priority would be implementation of land reforms., even the zamindari system has not become a thing of the past with some people claiming zamindari rights on fishing in the Ganga which caused the killing of a dozen fishermen in Bhagalpur a few months ago.

When the late Mr. Krishna Ballabh Sahay who, as Revenue Minister in the first Sri Krishna Sinha Ministry, moved the Bill in the Bihar Legislature, he could not have visualized that 40 years hence Mrs Pandey would still be mouthing the same platitudes of the Government’s determination to enforce land reforms with little meaningful effect on either the tillers or the owners of land. Land reforms had always been a contentious issue in the State as was transparent even during Mr. Sahay’s time. If today the late Mr. K. B. Sahay, who later became Chief Minister, is known as the “Father of Land Reforms in Bihar”, it is certainly not without reason.

At a time when politics and, to a large extent, society were controlled by the landed gentry, it was no mean achievement for Mr. K. B. Sahay to come up with the Bill which was sure to cause convulsions in the tradition bound, land steeped society. Sure enough, the entire land owning class controlled by the super zamindars who went about displaying the honours and titles bestowed on them by the alien rulers for services rendered to the latter, ganged up against Mr. K. B. Sahay. Not only that, they challenged the Bill in the courts which issued injunctions restraining the State from implementing it. Finally, the first Bill had to be repealed.

However, thanks to the support extended to him by Dr. Sri Krishna Sinha, the then Chief Minister of Bihar, Mr. K. B. Sahay could go ahead with his epoch making legislation despite the bitter opposition it generated among even a section of the ruling party. It was against this none too pleasing background that the Bihar Land Reforms Bill 1949, was passed by the State Legislature in 1950. The Act was set aside by the Patna High Court, where it was challenged by the Zamindars, as it felt it had contravened some provisions of the Constitution.

It was now the turn of the Central Government to bring forward the Constitution (First Amendment) Act to validate the Bihar Act. The amendment was challenged in the Supreme Court which, however, held it valid. The zamindars could only take solace from the fact that they could earn a respite from the law which promised to “replace the zamindari system of land tenure by a Raiyatwari System under which raiyats will hold their land directly under the Provincial Government (of Bihar) and to transfer to the Provincial Government all the rights of proprietors and tenure holders in land, including rights in forests, fisheries, and minerals” for as long as five years.

Apart from the legal man oeuvres that they resorted to, the zamindars made direct appeals to the national leaders with a view to stemming the tide against them and arresting the historical process. Dr. Rajendra Prasad, who became the first President, lent a receptive ear to them and wrote to Mr. K. B. Sahay: “Any hope that you may have of giving satisfaction to tenants by simply getting rid of the zamindars is doomed to failure unless it is accomplished by some positive steps for the betterment of the tenants lot, but I gathered …. That you were not thinking of the next step and that for the present you would be satisfied if you can remove the zamindars….. I have never been able to understand the justice or fairness of depriving a man of the management of his property”.

In picking holes in the Act, Dr. Prasad had perhaps, been influenced by the large numbers of memoranda’s and telegrams, one of which read “HON’BLE RAJENDRA PRASAD NEW DELHI IN HONOUR GANDHI JAYANTI APPEALING PEACE KINDLY DROP ABOLITION ZAMINDARI SAVE COUNTRY CIVIL WAR”, sent to him by the zamindars. Since they had, ultimately, to eat humble pie, they sought to undermine Mr. K. B. Sahay’s political career.

Zamindars formed the Janata Party which represented feudal reaction and was, essentially, an instrumentality of the Raja of Ramgarh Kamakhya Narayan Singh, who was the most bitter critic of Mr. K. B. Sahay, to challenge the Congress in 1952 General Elections.The reactionary party had to wait till 1957 election to defeat Mr. K. B. Sahay in Hazaribagh. It is a moot point whether the effectiveness of the Janata Party had more to do with his electoral reverse than the infighting in the Congress between him and another top leader Mr. Mahesh Prasad Sinha, who was also defeated in the same elections.

Since then the State has passed umpteen legislation to plug the loopholes in the original Act and to meet new eventualities but there has been little progress on the land reforms front. The factors that retarded the progress in this sphere are all too well known. As information regarding the Act began to filter down from the administrative heights in Patna to the villages, those who had high expectations were the most filled with disillusionment. The tiller found that the measure had not in the least benefited him.

What could have been the reason? “A State legislature controlled by essentially conservative forces, more concerned with the maintenance of status quo than with the need for progressive change that might affect positively the relationship of the cultivating peasantry to the land, enacted legislation which was tailored to the interests of the ex-intermediaries and the super landlord, that is, the State” says F. Tomasson Jannuzi, an eminent social scientist in his lucidly written in depth study “Agrarian Crisis- The Case of Bihar”. The Western scholar, who had done extensive field research in Bihar and submitted a thesis to the London School of Economics and Political Science based on his findings here, could not have reached this conclusion without basis. His widely read book provides enlightening reading.




One’s got to change the system or one change nothing. One can’t put things right in a hole-and-corner away.                                                                                                 
- GEORGE ORWELL.

“Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can't practice any other virtue consistently.”
-MAYA ANGELOU


 

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