The Rediff Special/B G Verghese

Bihar has the soil, water and sunlight to become a granary

So where does Bihar stand today? Very nearly at the bottom of the heap -- not just nationally, but worldwide. Its ablest students flock to Delhi and other central universities where they hold their own among the best. Bihar's brightest are outside the state while its poor migrate to other parts of India for work if they can. Yet Bihar has the soil, water and sunlight to become a granary. Latterly there has been some improvement; but the gap between performance and potential is enormous in every field.

The affairs of the state have been so ill-managed that it confronts a grave financial emergency, a serious winding down of the process of planned development, an educational and health crisis, a breakdown of institutions, and a loss of political credibility in the eyes of the people. Development funds have been kept in the Treasury in order to secure overdrafts with the result that budgeted allocations remain unspent. Salary disbursements especially to para-statal cadres, have been irregular. A bloated bureaucracy eats away a large part of available revenue.

This does not have to be so. A major ingredient missing is political will. The Naxalite groups contain many dedicated souls. But they have taken to violence, which is counter-productive and creates more problems than it can set right. Means are as important as the ends.

Jayaprakrash Narayan took the lead in organising the Bihar Relief Committee in 1966-67; but despite the excellent work done and the degree of mobilisation it evoked, the opportunity was allowed to slip away. Famine relief did not lead on to agrarian reform. JP became a fervent advocate of gramdan, more than bhoodan, and though whole villages and districts were donated in the course of the campaign, these remained token offerings lacking real substance. Even so, this might have provided a lever for land reform in some degree but was not so used. The bhoodan lands were not taken over and distributed quickly enough and the All-India Sarva Sewa Farms also failed to provide an innovative lead.

In the early 1970s JP raised his voice again corruption and pleaded for electoral reform. This was a forerunner of the Bihar movement which preceded the Emergency on 1975. It witnessed the beginnings of the Chhatra Sangharsh Yuva Vahini that attracted hands of idealistic student volunteers to work for social and economic regeneration. From this emerged JP's concept of Total Revolution which unfortunately lacked sufficient focus and direction. Agrarian reform was not a priority, though Vahini volunteers were much later to launch two notable movements: the first for distribution of the ceiling-surplus land of the Mahant of Bodh Gaya, which had been concealed through clever subterfuge; the other, still later, the Ganga Mukti Morcha.

Both movements confronted powerful vested interests and got snarled up in vexatious litigation. Ultimately, both triumphed as public and political opinion were sufficiently mobilised to carry the day. Sad to relate, the significance of neither achievement was understood and momentum was lost. The Ganga Mukti Andolan in particular rid the state and the country of a peculiar and damaging water zamindari which, under a Mughal firman, had placed all fishing (jalkar) rights 'between the high (food) banks of the Ganga' from Murshidabad to Bhagalpur under a certain family. This 'panidari had subsequently been subdivided among a few water zamindars who controlled far and away the richest and largest source of fish seed and inland spawning grounds in the country. Ganga fishermen were exploited and the fishing ground was degraded by poor management.

Earlier, in response to JP's somewhat nebulous and limited idea of establishing lok samitis to eradicate corruption in Bihar after the Emergency, I conceptualised a pilot, spearhead agrarian reform programme called Kosi Kranti which was to be executed in the command of a branch canal in the Kosi system. The new Janata Chief Minister, Karpoori Thakur, was enthusiastic. The Chief Secretary, P S Appu, a former Land Reforms Commissioner, took a personal interest in the project and was seconded by another highly dedicated officer, K B Saxena (now rural development secretary to the government of India). A small task force was organised in which academics, lawyers, social workers and field officials wee included.

The logic was simple. The strategy was to implement existing agrarian laws, to which all parties had piously subscribed and had then proceeded to scuttle over the years. This was to be achieved by concentrating and mobilising political governmental, legal and social forces in a finite area to a degree and in a manner that, with due preparation, would overwhelm all vested interests. The local peasantry was to be organised through NGOs and, hopefully, university volunteers. The breakthrough would open the door for wider replication, steadily enveloping the entire state.

The target area selected was five blocks in Purnea, a district with a heavy concentration of sharecroppers and an abysmally poor record in land reform. The first step was to prepare a complete and accurate land record of all holdings and cultivating rights by establishing the ground truth. Sharecroppers would be listed against specific plots tilled by them. Field maps would be prepared village-wise and farmers, organised in chak-sabha, would interact with legal aid teams to establish their claims in public before mobile land tribunals mandated by the revenue department. Only one appeal would be allowed, to the high court, and that too only on matters of law. The object was to make a reality of the outworn slogan of 'land to the tiller' with security of tenure and fair rents.

Homestead plots were to be distributed. All of this was prescribed under existing Bihar laws. Special revenue teams were to be assembled for each block, reinforced by IAS probationers who would thereby receive true-life field training through these settlement operations. Passbooks would be issued to all title-holders.

In the second stage, consolidation and rectangularisation was proposed to bring together fragmented farms in rather more viable operational holdings which would encourage land improvement and better water management and facilitate rotational canal watering or warabandi as well as conjunctive use through wells and bamboo tube wells (a local innovation). On-far development was to follow with the de-silting of clogged canals, land shaping and the digging of drainage channels to overcome waterlogging. The silt and mud removed was to be used to construct approach roads to villages so as to facilitate movement of produce and inputs to and from the market. Some of this was to be assisted through food-for-work programmes as a nutritional supplement. Credit and input supplies were to be organised and extension services strengthened.

The co-operation of existing landlords was to be solicited in the belief that they might be persuaded to assume a new and more benign leadership role in the future in view of their superior human and financial resources. Rising agricultural productivity, more intensive cultivation, greater employment -- with enforcement of statutory minimum wages -- and the consequent development of local markets would create opportunities for trade and agro-processing in which these elements could play an entrepreneurial role.

Mr Verghese's comments form part of the Kedar Nath Singh Memorial Lecture which he delivered in Chhapra, Bihar, recently.

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