Landless population and poverty
Monday, 25 June 2007
Abdul Haque
BANGLADESH still has a largely agrarian feature with the greater part of the population remaining tied to agriculture and living in rural areas. The economy has diversified a great deal over the last two decades. However, notwithstanding industrialisation and growth of services, agriculture continues to be the single biggest source of sustenance, income and earning for the predominant number of the population. Therefore, the ownership of land or control over it continues to be a very important concern for those dependent on agriculture and land ownership. The relationship between poverty and worsening of poverty with landlessness is an umbilical one. Land ownership has been fragmenting due to division of land between successors and individual ownership of land getting smaller with population growth. The growingly smaller size of the plots is also considered to be less helpful for feasibly introducing mechanised cultivation and application of other advanced techniques. Nonetheless, the millions of tiny plots dotting the rural areas are considered to be assets by their owners who are safeguarded from worse form of poverty descending on them by the small parcels of productive land on which they somehow subsist.
Landless people usually drift towards cities and tend to create problems of congestion, squalor and other negatives there. To keep the cities liveable or in decent conditions, the migration of the very poor due to landlessness should be checked by different means. Policies should be in operation to control the tendency towards landlessness in the rural areas. According to a report in this paper the other day, landlessness has decreased somewhat. A survey conducted by the official Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) found out that total percentage of landless people in the country comprising both rural and urban areas was 48.9 per cent in the year 2000 which came down to 40.0 per cent in 2005. However, some 56 million still remain in the landless category, and this is a huge number.
Landlessness must not be seen absolutely as a liability because it may not be counted as leading to total hopelessness and economic misery in all cases. Many people on ceasing to be farmers, succeed in trades, services , small manufacturing and other occupations . But the stark reality for the greatest number of the landless usually is the worst poverty. Therefore, there are compelling reasons to keep landlessness in check. Only adoption of appropriate policies and their applications in a concerted manner will contribute to this end. First of all, the real reasons that encourage landlessness should be identified and addressed. It needs realisation that landlessness or the voluntary or pressurised sale of land occurs mainly under very distressful conditions of the victims such as during crop failures, natural calamities, etc. The introduction of rural insurance can be an answer as well as a legislation that would make sale of land under distressed conditions unnecessary. Institutional loans at nominal rates of interest should be available to the rural poor under such specially difficult situations. Integrated anti-poverty strategies and programmes should be pursued so that sustainable improvements in the life of the poor becomes possible and they do not have to slide back to the worst poverty in a particularly difficult year.
Government should also have an active policy of settling the landless in the khaas (government-owned) lands and in the lands now being formed in the coastal areas through accretion. Settlement in the accreted land can be carried out only after some preparatory works designed to consolidate these newly-formed lands and make them secure for human settlement. In all of these areas, government should have not only policies on paper. The execution of the policies without a pause would be of real value.
BANGLADESH still has a largely agrarian feature with the greater part of the population remaining tied to agriculture and living in rural areas. The economy has diversified a great deal over the last two decades. However, notwithstanding industrialisation and growth of services, agriculture continues to be the single biggest source of sustenance, income and earning for the predominant number of the population. Therefore, the ownership of land or control over it continues to be a very important concern for those dependent on agriculture and land ownership. The relationship between poverty and worsening of poverty with landlessness is an umbilical one. Land ownership has been fragmenting due to division of land between successors and individual ownership of land getting smaller with population growth. The growingly smaller size of the plots is also considered to be less helpful for feasibly introducing mechanised cultivation and application of other advanced techniques. Nonetheless, the millions of tiny plots dotting the rural areas are considered to be assets by their owners who are safeguarded from worse form of poverty descending on them by the small parcels of productive land on which they somehow subsist.
Landless people usually drift towards cities and tend to create problems of congestion, squalor and other negatives there. To keep the cities liveable or in decent conditions, the migration of the very poor due to landlessness should be checked by different means. Policies should be in operation to control the tendency towards landlessness in the rural areas. According to a report in this paper the other day, landlessness has decreased somewhat. A survey conducted by the official Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) found out that total percentage of landless people in the country comprising both rural and urban areas was 48.9 per cent in the year 2000 which came down to 40.0 per cent in 2005. However, some 56 million still remain in the landless category, and this is a huge number.
Landlessness must not be seen absolutely as a liability because it may not be counted as leading to total hopelessness and economic misery in all cases. Many people on ceasing to be farmers, succeed in trades, services , small manufacturing and other occupations . But the stark reality for the greatest number of the landless usually is the worst poverty. Therefore, there are compelling reasons to keep landlessness in check. Only adoption of appropriate policies and their applications in a concerted manner will contribute to this end. First of all, the real reasons that encourage landlessness should be identified and addressed. It needs realisation that landlessness or the voluntary or pressurised sale of land occurs mainly under very distressful conditions of the victims such as during crop failures, natural calamities, etc. The introduction of rural insurance can be an answer as well as a legislation that would make sale of land under distressed conditions unnecessary. Institutional loans at nominal rates of interest should be available to the rural poor under such specially difficult situations. Integrated anti-poverty strategies and programmes should be pursued so that sustainable improvements in the life of the poor becomes possible and they do not have to slide back to the worst poverty in a particularly difficult year.
Government should also have an active policy of settling the landless in the khaas (government-owned) lands and in the lands now being formed in the coastal areas through accretion. Settlement in the accreted land can be carried out only after some preparatory works designed to consolidate these newly-formed lands and make them secure for human settlement. In all of these areas, government should have not only policies on paper. The execution of the policies without a pause would be of real value.