Is drastic land reform an answer to the prevailing perverse ownership of land?

             

                The civil society organization and the government are deeply concerned with growing landlessness and land concentration because of its implications on the growing trend in rural areas that is why any discussion on rural livelihoods warrants an elaborate explanation of the emerging patterns of land ownership. To enlighten the discussion, we segmented surveyed households into seven groups. We can consider two issue in this context ; (a) The ratio of owners under different classes or groups, and(b) The proportions of the total land under their command. We observed that the proportion of households with only homestead land-called absolute or pure landless households-has decreased in the comparable periods from 35 percent in 1988 to about 29 percent in 2007.Theis information allows us to argue that landlessness in Bangladesh has decreased over time.

Owned land (ha)	Share of households               (per cent) 1988           2000         2007	Share of owned land                (per cent) 1988            2000         2007
Homestead only Up to 0.20 0.21-0.40 0.41-1.0 1.0-2.0 2.0-3.0 3.01 and above	35.1             34.4           28.7 12.3             15.8           30.2 11.6             15.1           11.7 21.7             19.3           17.0 11.2             10.2             8.2   5.3                2.4            2.4   2.9               2.9            1.8	1.6                1.6               7.8   2.4                3.2               4.7   5.5                8.2               7.5 22.7             23.2             23.0 25.8             26.8             24.9 20.8             10.8             12.7 21.2             26.3             19.4
total	100.0            100.0     100.0	100.0           100.0       100.0
Size of own land (ha)		0.61              0.53            0.48

But the share of functionally landless households (owing up to 0.20 ha or under 1.5 bigha) increased substantially during the same period of time.

The somewhat reduction of absolute landless households might surprise the readers, But several factors might have contributed to this trend.

           First, is the higher incidence of migration by the destitute households to urban areas.

         Second, the activities of the NGO’s in rural area providing access to credit might have borne fruits for them.

           And finally, it might have so happened that some of the pure landless households that improved their economic conditions with micro-credit may have gone for owning a piece of land for construction of house. However, the proportion of small land owning group stayed almost at the same level, although land under their command increased marginally.

It also appears that the proportion of both medium and large farmers have rapidly gone down since 1988. In this context we can also cast our attention on the existing disparity in land ownership pattern.

                        For example, as per the information of the last survey, households owning up to three bighas of land (up to 0.4ha) constitute about 70 per cent of all households but controls only 20 per cent of the total land. As opposed to this, only 4 per cent of households (with 15 bigha or 2 ha and above land) controls about one-thirds of the land (table: 4.1).

That land is becoming scarce day by day is indicated by the sharp decline in the average size of landownership per rural households. The average size of owned land stood at 0.61 ha in 1988 that significantly declined over time to perk at 0.48 ha in 2007-decline by 21 percent over the last two decades.

Owned land (ha)	Share of households               (per cent) 1988           2000         2007	Share of owned land                (per cent) 1988            2000          2007
Homestead only Up to 0.20 0.21-0.40 0.41-1.0 1.0-2.0 2.0-3.0 3.01 and above	35.1             34.4           28.7 12.3             15.8           30.2 11.6             15.1           11.7 21.7             19.3           17.0 11.2             10.2             8.2   5.3                2.4            2.4   2.9               2.9            1.8	1.6                1.6               7.8   2.4                3.2               4.7   5.5                8.2               7.5 22.7             23.2             23.0 25.8             26.8             24.9 20.8             10.8             12.7 21.2             26.3             19.4
total	100.0            100.0      100.0	100.0           100.0        100.0
Size of own land (ha)		0.61              0.53            0.48

The rapid rural-urban migration has not been able to arrest the decline in land endowment of an average household in rural areas.

The reduction is in the size of owned land could be attributed mainly to increase in population and fragmentation of households.

A closer look at the distributional pattern of land suggest that, due to the dwindling dominance of medium and large farms and the widespread presence of landless and near-landless households, it is pauperization-not differentiation-which has developed over time in rural Bangladesh. Under this state of things, we have serious doubt as to whether the objectives of putting up a land ceiling on the land owning groups, and then distributing the surplus to the landless households would work well. In other words, we have to see whether that could provide access to some land to the millions of landless and marginal landowning households to help them make a viable land holding. Imposing a ceiling of landownership at 3.0 ha

(this a ceiling imposed by the land reform in Japan and South Korea by the occupation forces after the second world war).

The reform will affect only the top 3-4 per cent of the households who would have very little surplus land to share with 10 million landless and near-landless households in the country. The bottom one-third of the households in the landownership scale would have to seek their livelihoods in the agricultural labor market or in rural non-farm occupation in any way irrespective of the land reform. And for this reason alone, the issue of redistributive land reform is likely to remain with a big question mark in the discourse on redistribution of land.

Some studies however indicate to a considerable amount of land in the hands of the government agencies that acquired land in the name development project, but didn’t utilize all the land for the project.

Also the government had acquired the land left over by non-Muslims who migrated to India in the aftermath of the partition in 1947 and during the war of liberation in 1971. Such land could be distributed to 10 per cent or so absolute landless households so that they have at least a piece to construct a house, to have some cover over their head.         

Reference::

Rural Economy and livelihoods

By Mahbub Hossain and Abdul bayes