Protection of agricultural land : A little late but still commendable
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: July 11, 2014 -

An agricultural land in Imphal :: Pix - TSE

It is heartening to learn that the Congress Legislature Party, currently synonymous to the Government of Manipur because of their overwhelming majority in the State Assembly and virtual absence of opposition has finally awakened to the growing need for protection of agricultural land.

A country or a State may be highly industrialised, still agriculture occupies the primary provenance of all types of economies, primitive, backward, developing or developed.

That is why, agriculture remains a closed, well protected sector, not opened to foreign investment even in the US and Japan, the leading champions of liberalism and globalization.

Herein lies the paramount importance of agriculture and agricultural land. Agricultural land and food security constitute a dyad fundamental to economic well being of a country.

The State Government has two tools in its hand, the New Land Use Policy and the Manipur Land Records and Land Revenue Act which can be applied in its efforts to protect agricultural land.

Yes, many fertile paddy fields have been turned into brick fields, schools, colleges, roads, offices and fish farms.

In fact, there is a hectic process of commercialization of agricultural land. Obviously, brick fields, schools and even fish farms earn much higher profit than cultivation of paddy.

Any paddy field once converted into brick field can never regain its fertility. If it does, it would take a century.

By transforming paddy fields into brick fields, schools and fish farms, a few hundred of people may be earning huge profits but the State as a whole is simultaneously losing 100 times the value of income they are earning.

Putting it another way, the fertile agricultural lands have been turned into gold mines for the brick field owners, school founders and fish farm owners, but for the State as a whole, those transformed agricultural lands are just like exhausted mines, barren and useless and what it as stake is food security of the present generation and many more generations to come in future.

It is not only the private individuals who have been exploiting agricultural land in the most destructive manner, the State too has a large share when it comes to acquisition of vast tracts of agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes. In fact, the State is the frontrunner in terms of exploitation of agricultural land in irreversible manner.

The State has been acquiring agricultural land for many non-agricultural purposes starting right from expansion of roads and airport to construction of industrial growth centre, hydel power project, dam and expansion of trade centre, etc.

The construction of Industrial Growth Centre at Waiton, Chingarel in Imphal East district, a scheme initiated in the Eighth Plan by the Government of India in 2008, concerns acquisition of 519.843 acres of agricultural land affecting 339 pattadars.

Given all these facts, the State Government, if it is determined to protect agricultural land, must start the process of retribution with itself.

Sound planning and systematic execution backed by strong political will are the only tools needed to protect agricultural land as envisaged by the Congress Legislature Party.

One more thing, the State, more precisely its policy planners should learn to think out of the box. The Greek philosophy which embodies destruction is an inherent element of development is obsolete.

In its classical origin, and not only in ancient Greece, development was understood as a natural process in which phases of renewal, expansion, contraction and decomposition followed each other sequentially according to a perpetually recurrent cycle.

This understanding of development has no place in this cyber age. People are fed up of empty promises and rhetoric. Act and demonstrate you can deliver.

This is our humble suggestion.