Land Ceilings Bill – To The Freezer?

Maharashtra’s Revenue Minister , Shri V.P. Naik’s stout refusal during the monsoon session of the Assembly to commit the State Government to a deadline for the introduction of the Land Ceilings Bill is shortly to be followed by a decision to consign the Bill to the deep-freeze. A sizable section of the MPCC is opposed to it and the State Government itself is not over-anxious to table it in a hurry. The Bill will be all but forgotten until after the next general elections. Maybe, this will be cited as an instance of infraction of the Congress Party’s socialistic ideals by a Congress Government. But few will doubt that real politics is the motive behind the temporary abandonment. For, the fact is that if the Government of Maharashtra tables the Bill now it will be virtually writing off Vidarbha where the sentiment against the Land Ceilings Bill is very strong. Abandonment of the Bill, even temporarily, is bound to expose the Government and the Congress Party to bitter criticism from the opposition parties. But this should not deter the State Government and the PCC from speaking their mind now: for is they continue to play for time until general elections are actually upon us they will be hard put to it to explaining the rationale of the postponement of the Bill. The right thing to do is to declare frankly that the proposed bill — based solely on the imagined rights of the tiller and to the complete exclusion of the recognition of similar “rights” of h is urban counterpart— is the least they could do to keep Maharashtra in its present shape. Rather than seeming to appease the tillers with fragmented pieces of land, which will neither satisfy their needs nor increase agricultural output, the Government would do well to launch an intensive industrial programme on the lines of the Gujarat Government’s, and see to it that the resulting benefits percolate to the grassroots level in the next two years. That will not only help the Congress hold its voters but change the face of Maharashtra as well.
22nd December, 1960.