The issue of gairan lands in the Marathwada region of Maharashtra is basically about regularising, or giving, commons land to landless dalits.

Villages have patches of land reserved for various common purposes such as grazing, burial grounds, temple lands, open spaces for worship, playgrounds, etc. These are classified in generic terms as Common Property Resources (CPRs).

Grazing lands, or gairan lands, provide fodder for cattle owned by farmers in the village. In pre-colonial times, these lands were owned by kings. Later, in the colonial period, they were brought under the control of the government that now has the power to legally confer ownership of these lands.

Land is crucial to agrarian communities, both as a means of livelihood and empowerment. But dalits, who through social custom have for centuries been relegated to the periphery of society, have been denied land and forced to work as bonded labourers for landlords. Though they too are agriculturalists and have an affinity for the land, any attempt on their part to own land has been fiercely resisted.

As awareness among dalits in Marathwada grew, they started aspiring to own land and become cultivators themselves. They saw land ownership as a means of breaking the bondage in which they were trapped. Since agriculture is the primary source of work and income in rural areas, land is a critical resource.

However, the dalits’ attempts to become cultivators were, and continue to be, stiffly resisted -- often through violence -- by caste landlords.

Marathwada dalits and land

One-fifth of Marathwada’s population is dalit. It is estimated that over 85% of dalits work in the agricultural sector as wage labourers. They are regarded as the ‘lowest’ in the social strata, in a caste-ridden society. They are marginalised both socially and economically. The status of dalits on major indicators of development, such as per capita income, literacy, food security, morbidity, mortality, and political participation is extremely poor compared to other communities in the same region.

Instances of violence against dalits are commonplace. Thus, the strong feudal socio-economic structure existing in Marathwada virtually denies all opportunities for development to dalits. For ages they have been dependent on, or rather bonded, to the upper caste landlords for their livelihoods.

As part of a research project to determine the status of dalits and their struggle for land rights, Paryay, Aurangabad, carried out a survey of 2,000 dalit families in the eight districts of Marathwada, on behalf of the Jameen Adhikar Andolan (JAA), in November 2005. The JAA encompasses 200 people’s organisations and groups spread over all eight districts of Marathwada.

The survey showed that most families have only one income source. The average annual income of the sample, from their sole and primary source of income, is Rs 10,860. Only 2% of families have a secondary source of income, the average income from which is only Rs 553. The number of families in which a member has secure employment is negligible. The official poverty line of the government is an income level of about Rs 20,000 per annum, per family.

Only 27% of families had access to electricity, of which less than 10% had legitimate electrical connections. To access drinking water, over 90% of families had to walk half to two kilometres, and only 9% of families had access to tap water supply.

Only 43% of families accessed government health services. Of 270 villages, an average of around one-fourth had no bus connection and no access through an all-weather road. A small number of villages (4.4%) had no access to electricity at all. The literacy rate of dalit families surveyed was 47%, while the literacy rate for the rural population of Marathwada is 57%.

Lack of rights and access to productive natural resources, especially land, in a predominantly agrarian society is a major form of disempowerment. Not possessing land compels the landless to become dependent on landowners not only for wage labour but also for other usufructs.

Data from the survey showed that about half the families in the sample were completely landless. They did not have access to any type of land, including encroached land. A little more than one-third of families had occupied gairan lands, but enjoyed no legal rights. Only 12% of families had independent land titles and 7.6% had joint land titles (shared with either the government or other private landholders).

Among the 19.6% with titles, only 0.25% had lands that were not distributed gairan lands (vatan lands and other type of ancestral lands or purchased lands). The data clearly showed that around 81% of the families in the sample did not have legally held lands, implying that a vast majority of dalits and other backward classes and tribes in Marathwada are, to a large extent, landless.

Data from the sample survey of landless families showed that in 93% of the sample families manual wage labour was the primary source of income. Subsistence land cultivation, or animal rearing, was a secondary source of income. In wage labour work, on average, men get wage work for 180 days in a year and women are able to get around 200-220 days of work in a year. Very few of them get the minimum wage stipulated by the government.

The economic disempowerment of dalits stems from their social disempowerment which comes from their lowly status in the caste hierarchy. This has also led to their political disempowerment. Dalits seldom participate in the process of governance. Their participation in the political process is limited to voting. Very few join political parties and though they may attend gram sabhas, their actual participation in the process of decision-making is almost negligible.

Owning land is seen as a way of breaking this vicious cycle of deprivation and disempowerment. Being located in a predominantly agrarian social and economic order, cultivable land is the primary resource that can ensure food and income security.

Struggle for land rights

As the awakening among dalit leaders grew with the influence of western liberal thought, during the colonial period, leaders like Dr Ambedkar challenged the caste system and various types of injustices meted out to dalits. This included denial of land rights and the right to become cultivators. Dr Ambedkar and his followers, like Dadasaheb Gaikwad, mobilised the dalit masses to engage in the struggle for land. Dalits participated in the satyagrahas led by Dadasaheb Gaikwad, in 1958, and again in 1964. This forced the government to pass some resolutions that provided land to the landless.

As the dalit movement spread, more dalits, particularly Mangs and Mahars, became involved in the struggle for land. Marathwada became a new and vibrant centre for dalit activism on the issue of land rights. Since purchase of arable land was out of the question, given their economic condition, the only option left was occupation of common village lands or gairans. Since only the government has the power to legally confer ownership of gairan lands, the struggle is between the dalit community and the government.

NGOs and civil society organisations have also lent their support to the issue of dalit rights. Prominent among them are the Manavi Hakka Abhiyan (Campaign for Human Rights -- CHR), the Marathwada Lok Vikas Manch (MLVM), and the Jameen Adhikar Andolan JAA (Land Rights Movement).

The rigid social structure in Marathwada, however, did not recognise this new dalit assertion. Upper caste cultivators and landowners viewed the transformation of dalits into self-employed cultivators as a threat to their social and economic status. Also, when dalits start cultivating their own lands they prefer not to work as agricultural labourers on the lands of large landholders, which is detrimental to the latter’s survival and prosperity.

Thus, apart from the quest for a livelihood, land ownership is also seen as a means to achieve higher social status. Hence, occupation of gairan lands by dalits often led to opposition and repression by the upper castes.

Present status of gairan lands

It is estimated that 20,000 hectares of gairan lands in Marathwada were occupied by 1990; currently, the area is estimated at 3 lakh hectares.

By 1991, the state government had regularised occupation on gairan lands by 23,938 people, of whom 19,582 were dalits. Since then several government resolutions have been passed to give legal entitlements to land (pattas) to dalit labourers. But most remain only on paper.

Though a majority of land in the region is privately held, there are abundant gairan lands that can be distributed to the landless for cultivation -- around 231,300 hectares which is 3.6% of the total geographic area.

For its survey, the Jameen Adhikar Andolan collected data on landholdings in 270 sample villages. The data shows that three-fourths of the total non-private lands are gairan lands. In the sample villages, the amount of gairan lands is more than double the average gairan land availability for Marathwada.

Further analysis of the data shows that the pressure on private lands is greater compared to the pressure on gairan lands. This implies that sufficient common lands are available for re-distribution to the landless.

To assess how much land is available for distribution and how much land has been distributed, the Jameen Adhikar Andolan research project studied commons land in 873 villages. The total land area studied was 56,833 hectares. This sample is around 10% of the total grazing land, forest land and other unutilised government land available in Marathwada.

Most of this land is in the possession of landless dalits. On an average, 3.69 hectares of land is available per occupying family. However, a large part of the land has not yet been legally distributed. Only a small portion has been legally distributed and titles given to their occupiers.

Of the 56,833 hectares of commons land studied, 53,111 hectares were occupied by the landless (including distributed land). Around 52,822 hectares were not yet legally distributed, while 4,011 hectares were legally distributed.

Of the land distributed, 72% is in Nanded district alone. In Aurangabad district, not a single land record showed independent private holding of re-distributed gairan lands.

The districts of Jalna, Latur and Osmanabad have less than 5%, and Beed, Hingoli and Parbhani less than 10% each of total distributed lands. Geographically, the distribution of land is uneven within the region.

Of all the records studied, only three had a woman’s name as the primary holder. Of these, two were widows of soldiers. Of the land distributed, around two-thirds are held by dalits and tribal people. The rest is either held jointly by dalits and non-dalits, or by other castes. In around 15% of cases, the caste of the landholder could not be ascertained. This data shows that most of the land distributed was given to dalits and tribal people.

Data obtained from the sample study also shows that 63% of non-private land is held by the government. In 25% of the land, the government’s revenue department has joint holding with others such as private holders and other government departments.

Many of the lands are being used for non-agricultural and non-grazing purposes, such as cemeteries, brick-making units, mining, sugar factories, housing colonies, etc. The Jameen Adhikar Andolan alleges that the government and local power elites find it convenient to divert gairan lands to other uses since there is no mechanism by which the government can be held accountable for diverting the land to non-grazing and non-agricultural purposes. In the case of private lands they would have to undergo a long process of acquiring the land from private holders, and in the case of forest land, it would require permission from the central government.

Conclusion

There are still large tracts of land in Marathwada that could be distributed to dalits and the landless. However, their struggle to occupy and cultivate these lands, and also pressurise the government into distributing the land, is strongly resisted by the upper castes and other vested interests.

Despite certain resolutions by the government to regularise occupations made on gairan lands, very few occupiers have obtained legal land titles thanks to the nexus of powerful local elites (mainly upper caste landowners) and local government officials who create obstacles in the effective implementation of these resolutions and laws. For example, when, in 2002-2003, the chief minister of Maharashtra declared that all government wasteland (padi jamin) should be made available to the landless poor and dalits, tehsildars stated on record that there was no landholding without entitlements, though the fact is that 75-80% of waste and gairan lands were available in almost all the villages.

The struggle for land by dalits and the landless and their organisations and movements is therefore an ongoing one. It is rooted in their aspiration to break free from the vicious cycle of deprivation and disempowerment. Dalits clearly see that only when they are able to earn secure and sustainable livelihoods from cultivation will they be able to break the vicious cycle in which they have been trapped for centuries.

Hence, the core issue is how to ensure secure, sustainable, and dignified livelihoods for dalits and the landless.

• Securing and protecting rights to access and control resources, natural and man-made.
• Improving the productivity of existing gairan lands.
• Developing the capabilities of marginalised communities to exercise their rights and increase the productivity of their resources.

Such a comprehensive strategy requires the active participation of several stakeholders: the government (a crucial stakeholder), organisations involved in the land rights movement, and the larger civil society consisting of the media, intelligentsia, and academia.

• Effectively implement existing rules and laws: All levels of administration must curb corruption and other malpractices in the implementation of existing laws to ensure land rights to the landless.
• Implement a uniform policy and umbrella law for land rights to the landless that goes beyond the proclaimed land reform slogans such as ‘land to the tiller’, and to ensure that those who are not tillers (or tenants) but who aspire to be honourable cultivators are given at least a minimum amount of cultivable land, and rights and access to other natural resources.
• Improve the productivity of existing marginal lands: A special scheme needs to be developed (besides the present scheme for micro watershed development) for comprehensive development of the lands of small and marginal landholders and common lands such as gairan lands through soil and water conservation measures. Local dalits and landless must be given rights to these lands and to water, developed through these conservation measures, and also given wage employment on a priority basis in these conservation and development activities.
• Increase the skills and capabilities of marginalised sections: Vocational skills, especially in land and animal husbandry, will enable dalits to earn secure and adequate livelihoods. Various training schemes need to be reoriented so that they provide livelihood-centred training, not just job- or employment-oriented training.
• Provide easy access to credit: Lack of access to credit for securing inputs for agriculture is a basic problem that drives the poor to exploitative moneylenders. Appropriate credit institutions and land-based credit schemes need to be evolved to respond to the specific ground realities of cultivators such as gairan landholders.

• Mobilisation and rights advocacy: Organisations involved in the cause must build the capabilities of dalits and grassroots workers to meet the evolving challenges by increasing levels of solidarity among dalits across village and districts to effectively resist oppression at the village level.
• A more effective dalit leadership: The contemporary dalit leadership is keen on gaining political power through the electoral process. But the experiences of the past three decades show that this strategy has serious limitations. It has not provided the political space to the dalit movement to make significant changes in the social and political structures at the grassroots level, especially in rural areas. Unless such structural changes are effected in the social, political and economic system, the issue of rights and justice to dalits will continue to remain unresolved. Hence, new forms of leadership need to be developed from within the community and existing organisations. Organisations must review their structures and processes with a view to promoting new leadership that can face new challenges in this era of globalisation and liberalisation.
• Community-based action: Members of the community must be made aware of their situation, especially about the vicious cycle in which they are trapped. Hence, prolonged and sustained community-based action to build awareness needs to be undertaken.
• Increasing skills and capabilities of the landless: In the case of gairan landholders, increasing the productivity of their lands is the most relevant and critical form of empowerment. Hence, activities to improve the skills and capabilities of the landless, to enhance land productivity, need to be undertaken. This includes enabling them to access government schemes.

Since January 2006, the Jameen Adhikar Andolan, with support from the PACS Programme, has been working in 240 villages on the issue of dalit land rights. Under the guidance of AFARM, JAA’s PACS Programme partners are also helping gairan land occupiers develop sustainable livelihoods through soil and water conservation and organic farming.

(This backgrounder is based on ‘Deprivation, Disempowerment, and Struggle: A Study of the Status of Dalits and Other Landless Sections in Marathwada and their Movement for Land Rights’, a study conducted by Paryay, Aurangabad, on behalf of the Jameen Adhikar Andolan, November 2005)