New Land Policies of Sri Lanka

August 25, 2003

The Government of Sri Lanka is preparing to introduce a new land policy bill. This bill is based on the agreement in the "Regaining Sri Lanka" proposals, as well as an agreement with the World Bank. Government intends to approve this legislation very soon, however, this new law would be very destructive. The following is a brief analysis.

Print Article Email Article

1. Bill is described as a move to "grant land to 1.2 million people who do not have an inch of land of thier own" . This is not true. All these people have received land grants either under the LDO (Land Development Ordinance in 1935 ) or later as grants given to settler farmers under irrigated settlement schemes. Some others received land under the "village expansion schemes" or under the land regularization schemes, where unauthorized settlers' land has been regularized, when they have properly established settlements, this was done by holding land kachcheries.

2. All these grants were made with restrictions against their selling this land. This was to prevent them losing land due to poverty, indebtedness and other emergencies. This was a measure adopted in the recent history of Sri Lanka, to prevent the creation of a very large population of landless destitute or paupers. This has contributed to a lower rate of migration from rural to urban areas and it has also provided them some for of land based livelihoods.

3. All governments up to 1977 had policies of protecting their small scale agriculture and provided them with various support schemes to kept them in their livelihoods. Such measures have had a positive impact in keeping rural poverty and income disparities low. The ability of Sri Lanka to maintain a considerable level of food security and quality of life in the post Independence decades was a result of such policies, protecting the poor.

4. Market oriented policies were pushed by the WB since 1977 which reversed these positive achievements, considerably. In March 1996, the WB made its policy recommendations in the "Non Plantation Sector Policy Alternatives Report" which said that there was no "growth" in this sector since much of the rural agriculture is producing "low value crops" such as rice, vegetables etc. There for they recommended a shift from low value domestic food crop production to "high value ( export) crop production. It also said that the small farmers were unwilling to shift away from ric and other domestic food crops. So, they recommended creation of a "free land market" as an essential immediate measure to achieve "fast growth on the non plantation sector"

The obstacles to a "free land market" identified by the WB in this report were , firstly, the existence of a large land area granted by the Government where "free marketing of land" was legally prevented and there was much rural land that was jointly owned by the families. In such cases the individual members were not free to sell their land plots away. They needed clear , regularized "freehold titles"

The WB in 1996 wanted the government to intervene immediately to

1) grant " freehold titles" to all those who had these restricted land grants. The idea was to facilitate their selling of these land plots quickly and their moving out of this type of "low value" food crop farming.

2) to immediately initiate a process of regularizing individual land ownership in the case of land where such restrictions to selling of land existed.

Thus, it is clear that the intention of this proposal was to remove the protection that had been provided in the case of earlier measures in relation to land grants and land ownership.

The thinking behind this is two fold, though not admitted openly either by the WB or by the policy makers. Firstly, they need the land to be freed for investors and bigger commercial farmers, to be used for export crop production. The Government and WB now wants to expedite this process since they have so far failed to attract foreign investments, the way they have attempted over the last 25 years. So, they feel much more incentives and attractions have to be provided. Land and other natural resources are the biggest offers that Sri Lanka could now provide, in addition to cheap labour, made still cheaper, by removing labour protection laws and by creating a much larger population of "landless destitute" who will be compelled to migrate to cities as paupers.

This obviously would create a much bigger population of people without any livelihood, without the biggest source of their food security, where much of their food needs were met by the rural agricultural sector and the natural environment where they could collect food, even when they did not have the money incomes to purchase food. Sri Lanka, according to "Samurdhi Movement" figures has 2.1 million families receiving less than Rs 1,000 per month ( = US $ 0.33 /day )

This measure was suggested by the WB in 1996 with full knowledge that most of these rural farmers would quickly sell their land. This is not because the urban attractions in employment and living conditions for such poor people would be better. It is simply because they would be compelled to sell their land due to desperate conditions of poverty, indebtedness and other emergencies.

The policies related to agriculture have also been adjusted to make it worse for the small scale rural producers. The situation related to paddy marketing is a clear illustration. Closing down of Paddy Marketing Board and the complete withdrawal of Government from paddy marketing, agriculture services and subsidies, production and distribution of good quality seeds, proposed privatization and marketing of water, including irrigation, restrictions and non supportive policies in agricultural credit, continued promotion of TNC involvement in promoting use of, unnecessary, destructive and very expensive agro-chemicals and inputs, recent increase in fertilizer prizes make the situation worse.

Therefore, the intentions are very clear.

If we are to take this up as a rights issue, the following areas may be important,

1. Looking at the importance of the change of policy proposed and its possible consequences, this is a decision that should have been taken with very extensive public discussion and debate. Firstly, the WB's recommendation in March 1996 should have been revealed to the public and they should have been allowed to respond. These recommendations have not been publicized. Generally these are not even discussed in Parliament. ( The present Policy Reforms pakage, now named " Regaining Sri Lanka" and its earlier version 'Connecting to Growth : Sri Lanka Poverty Reduction Strategy' , should also have been revealed and debated. This was not done even in Parliament. WB's Country Director Mr. Peter Harrold recently complained about this too.)

2. The formulation of the policy of "land titling" has been done since 1996, with participation of WB experts. We know that the WB's experts team, headed by a person named Ms. Jessika Mott has been visiting Sri Lanka and working on this for all these years. But, the public and the members of Parliament have been kept in the dark. What is worse is the fact that the Ministers responsible such as D,M Jayaratne of the previous government and Rajitha Senaratne of the present Government have been giving a totally distorted, intentionally misleading interpretation of the objectives of this policy.

3. Giving people the legal right to have ownership of land seems to be a progressive measure. All farmers movements have been demanding that farmers should be given land, and ownership and control over land is a right. It is argued that the people will improve their land and make them more productive when they have an assurance of ownership. It is also argued that the possibility that these farmers will now have to lease out their land when necessary would be a positive measure towards improving their economy. However, the way it is done and the circumstances would lead to very different results, namely many, many farmers will be compelled to voluntarily lose them.

4. The PRSP, "Regaining Sri Lanka" says that rural to urban migration would be encouraged and it is assessed that the rural to urban migration would increase in the future. It is envisaged that the Urban population would reach 50 % by the year 2010. At present there is no such rapid increase in Rural to urban migration. Therefore it is clear that this is an intention of the policy reforms package.

5. There is a massive allocation of funds in the new policy and the loan agreements reached in Tokyo in June 2003 for construction of super highways and other networks of roads, airports and ports. It is said that this is being done to improve "connectivity" connecting the rural poor to the fast growing national and international markets. It is said that this connectivity is an essential measure to facilitate the process of the rural poor, small scale producers linking up with the bigger markets.

It is difficult to see examples where such physical linkage alone reducing poverty and benefiting the poor. In fact there are numerous examples where it has worked the other way. But, if massive rural to urban migration is envisaged, it is obvious that these proposed highways and other infrastructure is being built not for the poor rural farmers, but for potential rich investors in commercial agriculture for export.

7. Lastly, it is useful to look at the situation in terms of UN Human Rights Conventions. Is this not a violation of the Social, Economic and Cultural rights. There are many proven ways of improving the farmers economy, food security, and livelihoods, using ecological farming approaches.

Use of Integrated Pest Management ( IPM), paddy and other crop farming avoiding use of chemical pesticides, weedicides etc have proved to reduce cost of production by about Rs. 4,000 / acre

This is about a 1/4 th reduction in cost of production on 1 acre of paddy. There are other tested methods of reducing cost of production in rice and also other food crops. There is better possibility of applying this in small farming. The poor farmers are capable of doing it too, since these methods are not capital intensive. Government violates its responsibility of ensuring food security , right to livelihoods etc, since the Government has undertaken to do all that needs to be done in order to protect such rights.

Sarath Fernando

Co- Secretary
Monlar
www.geocities.com/monlarslk