Durand Appuhamy Negombo Courtesy The IslandƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ 

In a weekend newspaper, a Tamil journalist has revealed that the President has agreed in one-to-one talks with TNA leader R. Sambandan that, among other things, exclusive powers over land will be devolved and all state land in the province will be vested in the Provincial Unit, though this Unit has been not yet agreed upon. There would be provision for the “Centre to request and use lands necessary for other national projects”. I find it dangerous to grant any province exclusive power over the very limited resource of land. This exclusive power could easily be abused and the exclusive clause could be interpreted and implemented to exclude others not belonging to the predominant ethnic group in the province. Already it has become fashionable to say, “do not change the demography of the area”. At a time when what we want is one land, one country, one people and one nation, how can exclusive powers over land promote such a salutary outcome? DidnƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢t our soldiers fight over every inch of land to make our country one land and one nation?

Surely the politicians cannot be unmindful that we do have a fast growing population and everyone born in this country would require land to live on, land to make a livelihood, land for education, land for recreation, land for health services, land for roads and land for growing food. Therefore equal access, or at least, uninhibited access to land for any of the above purposes should be available to all. The acute human-elephant conflict is a case in point. Some in the south have no access to land for food cultivation. So they have invaded the forest abodes of elephants and are relentlessly killing these majestic animals every day. The irony is that this is allowed to happen when there is plenty of land available in the north and the east.

I accept that the devolved units would need land too, but not exclusive powers over land especially as Sri LankaƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢s land area is strictly limited and contracting everyday owing to sea erosion. We do not have land reclamation from the sea as in Holland. I do expect that cast-iron safeguards against abuse would be in place in the clauses granting power over land to the provincial units.

The other point I would like to counter is the question of the actual population living in the north and the east. I think the old percentages quoted by various persons are completely out-of-date. We will soon have the 2011 all-island census in a few months. I expect this will have some revealing information as far as the north and the east are concerned. If the Tamil population is very much less than the blindly accepted current figure of 12%, then many factors will come into play. The granting of exclusive power over nearly two-thirds of the total land area in the country to such a tiny minority would be absurdly inappropriate and a gross injustice to the rest of the population. This is all the more reason why care should be taken and all aspects considered in granting any powers over land to any provincial unit given that any such grant would become irretrievable in the future.

Durand Appuhamy Negombo