Sterile And Self–Defeating

Of all the policies of any government in India through many millennia, its land policy was always the most important. It must continue even now to be so in spite of every effort at industrialization and every immediately achievable quantum of success attained in that direction. Agriculture will continue to be the most important occupation of the people of our country for many decades yet. The pre-eminent importance in India of Government’s land policy follows from the number of families engaged in cultivation and deeply interested in its yield. One half of the national income comes from agriculture in spite of the prodigious proliferation of the bureaucracy and the funny way of statistics, which brings in all salaries of officials under national income. Seventy-two per cent of the population of working age live on agriculture and other rural occupations. More than 82 per cent of the people of India live even now in the rural areas, in spite of the seemingly large-scale flow of population into the urban areas.

The present Government of India rightly desires an increase, and a swift and sizeable increase in the production of food grains. But, alas, the policy laid down, and insisted on being followed, is sterile and self-defeating. The State governments, most of them, if not all, do not really believe in this policy; but it is forced down on them and accepted against the inner voices of their own judgment by reason of what is no less than complete enslavement of the States to the Central Government. This subservience is aggravated by the unitarian party authority, which makes the careers of ministers depend on conformity to the established creed. The dogma that all steps should be directed towards egalitarianism has become a rigid conformist church tyranny. State govemments have cast aside commonsense and even ignored public opinion, on account of the importance of maintaining the unity of their church.

The land policy of the present Congress regime can be described as immediate fragmentation and—if an ugly new verb is permissible—uncertainization of ownership and authority.

For decades before this, fragmentation had been recognized as an evil and steps were devised to cope with it. But the present policy is compounded of two elements—one being immediate deliberate fragmentation and the other a contradictory programme in the air, so to speak, which has not yet safely landed on the ground, of collectivization through voluntary, subsidized, semi- compelled ‘co-operation. Food production could not possibly increase under these conditions. Not less than water and manure and sunshine, what is, required is human zest and perseverance in all the difficult and tedious work that is involved in the raising of a food-crop. Zest in work is an individual phenomenon. It cannot be built up by organizational arrangements. This zest and perseverance was there in the old traditional race of farmers but Government and social reform prophets have done their best to extinguish it and have been trying to plant a new race of farmers on the land, their claim being based on poverty and only that. They have not the capital nor the know-how nor the livestock; nor can they ever hope to acquire these through grants out of tax- money distributed directly by Government or so-called co-operative semi-official agencies. A plenteous crop of corruption and malversation can be expected, not any advance in production.

This land policy of ceilings and uncertainization of authority and ownership, which has clearly demonstrated itself as a sterile and self-defeating policy, should be given up and buried. If effectively buried, it would indeed be quite as good as a fertilizer for immediate increased production. This may seem to be a figure of speech and an exaggerated partisan statement. But let what I say be tried; I am certain the results will show increased production at once. As I wrote last week, if this sterile and self-defeating policy is given up, and instead of ceilings and uncertainty and fragmentation, we pass legislation to give certainty of tenure and a fair ratio of the produce to all the cultivating tenants in big farms, and the smaller farms are left undisturbed, we are bound to have at once sizeable improvement in agricultural production. Instead of a decline by 3.3 per cent in the output of rice, wheat and barley as the Planning Commission’s recent review has brought to light, we shall have increased output and a new zest everywhere in this most vital industry of the nation, and it will have healthy repercussions all round.

Increased production is a very different issue from distribution of land to every one in the country who is not employed in a factory or government office. The former can be achieved by larger farms and improved methods of cultivation which call for investment, good management and a well-sized farm. The latter if prematurely undertaken, will lead to fragmentation and therefore to the opposite of all this. But perhaps the plot is to impose collectivization thereafter. If so, God help the nation!