(Miguel, you could take this one, for whatever it's worth.) Herald (Oct. 24) carried a very pertinent and incisive editorial, titled *Great Goan farm decay* on the State's pitiful agricultural scenario. (Goa depends almost entirely for its food supply on neighbouring states - grain, milk, meat, vegetables or fruit.)
The edit pertinently touched two of the most crucial causes:- 1. The erstwhile MGP regime's short-sighted agrarian reforms (the Agricultural Tenancy Act,1964, together with its infamous April-1976 Fifth Amendment, referred to as the Land-to-the-Tiller Act) ; and, 2. The systematic emasculation of Goa's age-old Comunidades, the ideal, co-operative, *Village Republics* that merited mention in the Socialist bible, Karl Mark & Frederick Engel's DAS CAPITAL. The same day, Oct. 24, coincidentally, the Gomantak Times, which attracts the maximum Public Notices among Goa's English language dailies (on account of its low Ad. tariffs) carried a pageful of notices. Five separate Public Notices show how a single agricultural tenant, from Calangute, is on his way to become a super bhatkar after lawfully dispossessing what must have been five erstwhile small bhatkars! Thanks to Land-to-the-Tiller legislation, or Goa's lop-sided Agrarian reforms, Goa's already poor agricultural output has been *reformed* -- in reverse! Welfare legislations ushered by the former MGP regime, though laudable in purpose, were severely myopic and ill conceived. As many believe, they were introduced not for any welfare or agriculture-related (economic) purposes, but largely for political mileage. Let's take a brief look at these. After Liberation, a Land Reforms Commission for Goa was appointed by the Union Government under the stewardship of A.L. Dias, a Pune-born senior I.C.S. (later I.A.S.) officer of Goan origin, who, after retirement, went on to become the Governor of West Bengal and some North-Eastern States and, alas, recently deceased. Before the Dias Commission Report could be out in 1964, local elections were called in 1963 and Goa's first MGP Government, headed by D.B. Bandodkar took the chair once occupied by former Portuguese rulers. Though, by then, a wealthy mine-owner himself, Chief Minister Bandodkar apparently nursed a grudge against the landed gentry of Goa, who generally hailed from the upper castes of both of Goa's major communities, the Hindus and Catholics. Any attempt to dispossess this landed gentry, or howsoever put them *in their place,* was bound to receive wide acclaim from the landless masses, the *bhaujan samaj,* who were led to believe that the former enjoyed 451 years of colonial patronage and now was time for their turn. Historical inequities had to be undone. Nothing wrong with that, in an egalitarian age. The point was, together with political considerations, the opportunity could have been used for some economic action too. Two birds could be got with a single stone - land redistributed more equitably and, at the same time, Goa's agriculture put on a sounder footing. The opportunity was missed, I believe, largely upon the half-baked and foresight-shorn advice of senior civil advisors brought in from across the borders on deputation. Agrarian reforms should have started with a survey of land holdings and their classification (yes, there was, at that time, no data whatsoever available to undertake any meaningful exercise in planning and decision.) After obtaining a fair idea of the type and size of land holdings, the next logical step would have been to legislate a ceiling on ownership (there were a few models available from other States where this law was enforced), and finally by a re-distribution of surplus land -- including statutes such as the Agricultural Tenancy Act. The entire exercise was hurriedly implemented in the most unplanned, sloppy, and topsy turvy manner. Cart before horse, actually. Even before the Dias Commission Report could be out, Chief Minister D.B. Bandodkar rushed through with an apology of Agricultural Tenancy Act, 1964. The Report, out the same year, was rendered redundant and lay in waste. The crippling blow to Goa's agriculture was, however, delivered by the much loved Chief Minister's daughter 11 years later. After the tumultuous issue of Merger v/s Separate Status was put to rest by the Opinion Poll, a life-threatening fracture in the Legislature group of the ruling party and Bandodkar's unfortunate demise in 1973, his daughter Shashikala Kakodkar assumed the reigns of Goa's top political office. In July 1975, she appointed a Committee under the chairmanship of her then Law Minister, Pratapsing Rauji Rane, to *examine the working of Comunidades and suggest modifications in their organisation and working.* Between themselves, Goa's 224 Comunidades owned over 60 percent of all cultivated land in Goa. Despite the Portuguese colonialists reign in their powers, Comunidades were the power house of Goa's agriculture. They could not freely put their land to optimum use -- the Portuguese had by law mandated that Comunidades could cultivate their lands ONLY through tenants selected for a three-year tenure by public auction. Despite the odds, Comunidades took care of village irrigation and provided an array of agrarian related services. Goa's Comunidades had taken much over 2,000 years to be made and sustained by the collective sweat and toil of her *gaonkars,* had survived four alien empires from Kadambas to Husseins to Dilkhans to Albuquerques that at various times in their chequered history sought to weaken or destroy them and, ultimately, to freedom in 1961: only to be issued a virtual *death warrant* under a rule of our own. (It is a different story that the Rane Committee Report reads like the work of a moron. Other than blunders in history -- e.g. that Comunidades originated in 1526 and were, thereby, Portuguese institutions, as untrue as ironic, because the colonial power in fact tried to stifle Comunidades! - - to unabashedly plagiarising, without acknowledging, from the Dias Commission Report, the Rane Report was an unmitigated disaster. To cap it all, instead of suggesting measures for improvement which it was in the first place supposed to do, the Rane Committee ACTUALLY recommended the scrapping of Goa's Comunidades!!) But Shashikala was perhaps a young angry woman in a hurry! Without even waiting for her Law Minister to submit his Committee's Report (which eventually came in December-1976), she went ahead with the Fifth Amendment to the Agricultural Tenancy Act. In a nutshell, this infamous statute held that, as of April-1976, all agricultural *Tenants* (the word is not even *Tillers* and there is a substantial difference between the two) were *deemed to have purchased* the land they tilled -- for a price that would be fixed by Government in future. This *future* arrived only a decade-odd later, that too in the form of a ridiculous pittance of a land price, payable over 10 equal annual installments! What was more, the law was unjustly made applicable to Goa's ancient *Village Republics,* the Comunidades, which by Portuguese law still in force in April-1976, could cultivate their land ONLY through agricultural tenants. That law was not a crippling blow to Comunidades alone. The small and marginal field owner, who may have entrusted cultivation to a good neighbour, while he took off to sweat it out away from home, family and friends in Mumbai, Africa or a sea life for enhancing the family's resources, also lost his field. A new breed of *Super Bhatkars* like our friend from Calangute in the above Public Notices, emerged. Even the parent law of Maharashtra, from which our own version was copied, was far more liberal. After promulgation/enforcement of the Land-to-the-Tiller law, Maharashtra accorded not one BUT THREE opportunities to the erstwhile land holder to resume cultivation (technically called the *Right of Resumption.*) Goa never heard about such Right of Resumption! With the ownership of even such small and marginal land holdings *deemed to be* transferred in the form of this Lottery Ticket to the lucky few, with the agricultural powerhouses of the State reduced to the status of *toothless giants,* there was only one direction Goa's agriculture sector could move. The end result: We moan of declining agricultural production despite wonder seeds, improved farming techniques and doling of subsidies. We growl of neglect of village *bandaras* and there being no irrigation water for a summer crop on one hand and former year-round village wells now drying up, on the other. We decry fields being felt fallow, and converted for construction. And of course, we growl that Goa still is almost entirely dependent on neighbouring States to provide us our food... I don't know whether these archives are available on The Navhind Times' website, but a serious student of the subject may access these articles on the subject: 1. *Comunidades - Legal Murder* (NT, July 3, 1977); and, 2. *Rane Committee Report - a farce* (NT, July 10,1977) (both by yours faithfully) Regards/Valmiki ########################################################################## # Send submissions for Goanet to [EMAIL PROTECTED] # # PLEASE remember to stay on-topic (related to Goa), and avoid top-posts # # More details on Goanet at http://joingoanet.shorturl.com/ # # Please keep your discussion/tone polite, to reflect respect to others # ##########################################################################
