Non-Enforcement of Provisions of Tenancy Act in Goa

May 27, 2008	(Be the first to rate this story!)  Loading ...
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This article is to remind the government, the agriculture, revenue and panchayat departments, the block development officers (BDOs), the village panchayats and the gramsabhas about their statutory role clearly laid down since June 1975 and responsibilities regarding the agricultural land assets. The gramsabhas may continue to agitate against mega projects, tourism, mining and other issues but it is their duty to make their own panchayats work to enforce the statutory directives under the agricultural tenancy act, 1964.

It is the duty of every gramsabha to verify the enforcement of the directives to be followed by tenants in cultivating lands held by thema issued by revenue department on 13 June 1975 and published originally in the official gazette, Series II, No. 12 dated 19 June 1975. If the government authorities, the BDOs, the respective village panchayats and the gramsabhas fail in enforcing these simple, common sense directives then there needs to be a judicial cognizance of such failure. These directives were made in the right spirit of agricultural advancement and for bringing certain discipline in agricultural operations. Otherwise what was the purpose of the agricultural tenancy act, 1964? On careful scrutiny of the traditional farming operations under the communidades and the work undertaken by the serious farmers, I found that there was nothing extraordinary about these directives. The government only provided strong statutory support in the interest of enhancing the agricultural production. So why these simple directives are not given wide publicity every year? Why are these not enforced scrupulously?

The government issued these directives under rule 15A of agricultural tenancy rules, 1965. Section 15A, subsections 3, 4 specify the mechanism of enforcement and subsections 5 and 6 specify the procedure to be followed for non-compliance of the directives. These clauses should be publicly read in each gramsabha meeting and be translated and explained in Konkani. But what our BDOs and village panchayats are doing? They are actively encouraging indiscipline. That’s one of the reasons for agricultural decline and diversion of tenanted lands for real estate projects. Instead of vast lush green rolling carpets of paddy and beds of local and exotic vegetables, flowers we see dance floors, scrap yards, farmhouses, hotels, garages, buildings sprouting from tenanted agricultural lands.

Villagers have become addicted to the subsidy culture. Tenants associations are looting and plundering Goa khazan belt but no gramsabha would be able to ask them about compliance of the above-cited directives. To illustrate, let me quote the directive ii) (a), In case of Khazan lands marginal to river banks and subject to inundation of saline water, preliminaries of cultivation such as ploughing or digging, de-silting of drains, maintenance and repairs to the protective bundhs, shall be completed, latest by the end of may to ensure better desalinisation of fields with the first monsoon showers and to prevent wind and water erosion. Remember, this directive was issued 33 years ago and has never been enforced after the Congress party captured power. Let us look around in villages dominated by the Khazan lands.

You would see only illegal pisciculture in progress abetted by the ecologically insensitive taluka mamlatdars in gross violation of the Supreme Court directives in the Jaganathan case. Such utter lawlessness has ruined Goa ecology and rural economy. It has created artificial rural unemployment, culture of subsidies and political patronage. All social and environmental activists can treat the above-cited directives as a test case. There are thousands of well-trained local youth willing to take to intellectually satisfying modern agro-horticulture. But they have no land because of the absentee cultivators and their refusal to comply with the government directives.

At the heart of the whole issue lies the future of Goa agricultural lands and farming operations. The word tenant has lost its meaning after the Fifth Amendment. All tenants are now deemed as cultivators. So naturally, it is their duty to cultivate the lands held by them as per the rules in force. Otherwise the gramsabhas, if they really mean business, should make a list of these absentee cultivators and recommend invoking of section 36 of the tenancy act, 1964 enabling the government to assume the management of these uncultivated lands. I underline here that more than 20 thousand hectares of good, fertile agricultural land is being deliberately kept uncultivated, but no political party or government has shown the will to invoke section 36. Such sensitive issues are conveniently kept aside by the gramsabhas because absentee cultivators do not care for agricultural progress “they just want to grab the piece of potential real estate, a source of their perceived future windfall income and sit idle without growing even a blade of grass in their lands. This according to me is a far bigger and serious issue than foreigners purchasing land in Goa. Ever since the foundation of Goa gaunkaris or village communes, there was no system of private land holdings. All the land and the natural resources belonged to the people.

They paid land revenue to the kings. The Indo-Portuguese historian, Dr Pissurlenkar work on Luso-Maratha relations leave no doubts about the mess which the Portuguese, created with the land tenure ship in Goa. Large fertile parcels of land got fragmented. Consequently, agricultural production began to decline from the middle of 19th century. The first serious note of Goa agrarian tragedy was taken by famous political economist Francisco Luis Gomes “who wrote a critical essay on Goa land management problems. Then, self taught commodity economists like Kashinath Damodar Naik also wrote a series of well researched essays on the agricultural decline in Goa. The last real scholarly and serious work was done immediately after liberation by J C Almeida. The two volume Portuguese-English tomes (1967) chronicled the traditional agricultural economy in minutest details with voluminous statistics. Goa could never complete the process of land reforms after 1964 because the ruling parties only created vote banks and never addressed the fundamental ecological and economic issues. Now Goans are paying the price for this blunder.

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