State-owned land should be used to erase extreme poverty

A NATIONAL daily reported that the Land Ministry has decided to allow the investors including developers to build commercial establishments on the state-owned non-agricultural land and be in possession as the owners for a certain period. The decision has been taken in a recent meeting which also decided to lease out khas land on public-private partnership initiatives only. Experts said, the policy, if executed, will provide indulgence to the local political goons, influential and dishonest people to grab the land permanently which may bring natural disaster for flora and fauna.
The latest assessment of the Land Ministry stated that there are a total of 1843704.80 acres of khas land on the country. Of this, the government can rent out 349630 acres of agricultural khas land and 107933 acres of non-agricultural khas land. As the existing law will not allow land of the Court of Wards to come under the PPP arrangement, government officials recommended using non-agricultural khas land for commercial purposes under PPP. Private investors may here find a loophole in the new policy which force them to offer ample sized bribe to public officers for getting lease order as it disallows private investors individually. Interestingly, the Ministry had decided to no longer permanently lease out non-agricultural khas land for commercial use but allows erecting permanent structures on the land. Under the new policy, foreign investors or joint venture enterprises can take lease of non-agricultural land outside the metropolitan areas for industrial use and take lease of land in the metropolitan areas to build international hotels and motels.
Meanwhile, most of the khas land in the country are situated in the flood flow zone and are used as natural water reservations. Environmentalists opined that if commercial structures were erected on the land it would hamper the water flow, mainly during the monsoon, and result in water-logging in the area. Many varieties of plant and animals in the country will become extinct.
The government can use the state-owned land perfectly for eradicating extreme poverty by distributing the lands among landless people as research indicates, “economic growth tends to accelerate when people can access land fairly and efficiently and when land tenure is secure”. According to government records, 80 percent of the country’s poor, of whom 30 percent are extreme poor, live in the rural areas and most of these households are landless and survive by selling labour. It will be worthy in any sense if the state-owned land would be allocated among the extreme poor and entrepreneurs aiming at generating employment to erase poverty.