New Delhi: The opposition alliance in Bihar is exploring a poll promise to implement long-pending land reforms, reviving the 2006 D. Bandyopadhyay Commission’s recommendations that Chief Minister Nitish Kumar rejected during his first term despite having set up the committee himself.
The panel, steered by Bandyopadhyay, a retired civil servant who played a pivotal role in implementing land reforms in West Bengal in the late 1970s under Operation Barga, submitted its report in April 2008.
It recommended legislation to protect bataidars, or sharecroppers, and to impose a cap on land holdings. The recommendations were aimed at limiting land concentration, providing security to tenant farmers, and redistributing land to the landless and marginalised rural workers.
The report drew fierce backlash from land-owning upper castes in Bihar, prompting Kumar to shelve the recommendations. Even the RJD had organised protests against the recommendations.
At the time, Kumar reportedly told Bandyopadhyay that if someone stole a sum of money, no one would object, but if they tried to take another person’s wife or land, people were ready to resort to violence, highlighting the political risks in upsetting the traditional power structures.
Seventeen years later, the debate has resurfaced in opposition ranks about whether to include a promise to implement the commission’s recommendations in the alliance’s election manifesto. Primarily, it is the Left parties that are urging the Congress and RJD to include the promise in the Opposition’s manifesto.
Some leaders within the state Congress remain skeptical, questioning whether such a pledge would benefit the party or the broader alliance. Upper caste leaders in particular have expressed reservations, a party leader involved in drafting the manifesto told ThePrint.
The leader added that the national leadership appears more receptive, viewing the proposal as consistent with Rahul Gandhi’s emphasis on social justice.
“But it is a risky proposition. At the time the report was submitted, even some leaders who are now close to Nitish Kumar had organised mahapanchayats against it. This includes Rajiv Ranjan Singh (Lallan), who is now a union minister. Congress’s Akhilesh Prasad Singh, who was then in the RJD, had jointly protested with the LJP too,” said the Congress leader.
The argument against the recommendations was that it would deepen the rift in Bihar’s social structure. While Kumar had sought to wriggle out of the situation by saying that the recommendations of the commission were not binding, BJP leader and then Deputy CM Sushil Modi had called it a “dead issue”, effectively torpedoing the report.
The manifesto is expected to be launched on 28 October. A CPI(M-L) Liberation leader told ThePrint that the commission’s recommendations include a ceiling of 15 acres for families of five, redistribution of land to the lowest quintile of agricultural labourers, and allocation of land to homeless non-agricultural rural workers.
The proposals also include a new law to protect sharecroppers’ rights, guaranteeing them 60 percent of the produce if the landowner bears the cost of production, and 70 to 75 percent if the sharecropper provides the inputs.
After Kumar backed away from implementing the recommendations, Bandyopadhyay had observed in an article published in the Economic and Political Weekly in 2009 that accepting or rejecting the proposals was the government’s prerogative.
“However, these recommendations were made with all good intentions to give the coalition parties in power in Bihar an opportunity to break the semi-feudal fetters which impeded the unleashing of the creative productive energy of the working peasants,” he wrote.
Bandyopadhyay is remembered not only for the Bihar commission but also for his work in West Bengal, where he played a key administrative role in Operation Barga.
The programme, launched in the late 1970s, legally recognised sharecroppers cultivating rented land, granting them protection from eviction and a fair share of the produce. It is widely regarded as one of India’s most successful land-reform initiatives.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
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