The New Nation - Internet Edition

THE number of the landless people is noted to be rising in the country. People are forced to sell their last parcels of ancestral holdings after falling into worse poverty conditions in the wake of natural calamities. They join the ranks of the worst ones in extreme poverty. According to one reliable assessment, the number of the landless in the population was 28 per cent in 1972 ; the number has increased to 50 per cent at present. The Bhumi Adhikar Parisad claims that the number of the landless today is as high as 54 per cent.

Considering the links between landlessness and poverty it is important to slow down if not stop the process through which people become landless. One way of taking care of landless people is to distribute government-owned khas lands among landless people. There is a countywide programme for this but it suffers from pervasive corruption and neglect. A newspaper report some time ago highlighted that in some districts including Sylhet about 53 per cent of the distribution of khas lands remained pending while the 47 per cent of those who received khas lands were undeserving persons.

In the cases of both undistributed and distributed khas lands, unlawful squatters are in possession using their links to locally powerful vested interest groups. The situation in Sylhet is symbolic of khas land distribution in other areas of the country. Clearly, there is the need to take action on two fronts: giving entitlement to truly landless and very poor persons and ensuring effective possession of khas lands and the eviction of undeserving people from such lands. Furthermore, insurance to cover the assets of rural people needs to be introduced to discourage sale of lands under distressed conditions.