Laying the groundwork

Yediyurappa’s new land reforms are meant to modernise agriculture and help turn Karnataka into a ‘factory of the future’. How good is the plan?

- PRATHIMA NANDAKUMAR

ON MARCH 1, 1974, chief minister D. Devaraj Urs implemented a revolutionary land reform that helped thousands of landless tenant farmers in Karnataka take ownership of the fields they had been cultivating. As land was redistributed among the poor to free them from exploitative tenancy laws and absentee landlords, a slogan resonated across the state— Uluvavane bhoomi odeya, or the tiller is the owner of the land.

Forty-six years later, the state government led by Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa has brought about another set of game-changing land reforms. On September 26 this year, the assembly passed, by voice vote, the Karnataka Land Reforms (Second Amendment) Bill, replacing an ordinance promulgated in July this year. The amendment lifts restrictions on buying agriculture land, and repeals certain sections of the parent act of 1961, which bars non-farmers from buying farmland and penalises those who falsely claim that they are eligible to own farmland.

Opposition parties allege that the amendment reverses decades of farm reforms and imposes a “modern-day zamindari system” on farmers. They have been supporting statewide protests by farmers, dalits, labour organisations and pro-Kannada outfits, which want the amendment and the farm bills recently passed by Parliament to be withdrawn.