Sugath Kulatunga

Sunday Times of October 06, 2024 reports that the Govt. will carry on with Ranil’s Urumaya project. The report adds that the Land Commissioner has said President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, has instructed that land distribution should continue. I only hope that this report is not correct.

In November last year, I wrote on Lanka Web that the Urumaya program was the Return of the Millennium Corporation Compact (MMC) which was outright rejected by the then Govt. despite a promise of a financial package associated with it. This political scheme of Ranil appears on the surface to be farmer-friendly as it gives the farmer the legal right to the land and allow him to use it as a disposable asset with the right to dispossess the property which was restricted by the Land Development Ordinance of 1933.

in the present context, there is the grave danger of Rice Mill Owners, and money lenders, who would convert a mortgage to an outright sale. It is well known that most LDO Permit holders are in eternal debt. Today there will be more desperate landowners who are drug and alcohol addicts or plagued with health problems who would readily sell their lands for a pittance. With the LKR at 300 to a dollar, it would be a bonanza for foreign buyers to buy cheap land in Sri Lanka. What happened in Palestine when the Jews backed by financial institutions dispossessed the land of Palestinians and the aftermath that followed is not a flight of imagination. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sursock_Purchases

In addition, the outright sale of landholdings resulting in the fragmenting of farmland among dependents would be a serious disadvantage to mechanization and modernization of the already stamp-size farmlands. Fragmentation even among relatives is bound to increased litigation. In the rural areas, disharmony among neighbors and crime has its root mainly in land disputes.

It is misinformation that a Permit holder under the Land Development Ordinance could not raise essential funds on the security of the land. The Ordinance allowed landowners to mortgage the land to the Peoples Bank.

It is regretted that professionals in Agriculture and Sociology have not commented on this vexed issue.

References

*Land Use Policy 22 (2005) 358–372

Impacts and causes of land fragmentation and lessons learned from land consolidation in South Asia

Gajendra S. Niroula, Gopal B. Thapa

School of Environment, Resources and Development, Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok, Thailand 

*Land fragmentation in rural Sri Lanka: A Sociological analysis of a Southern Sri Lankan village

Vitharana, L.D.S.

URI:
http://repository.kln.ac.lk/handle/123456789/5770

* Sustainability of Agriculture
Haniza Khalid1 and Muhammad Dayyan2

The inevitable implications of fragmenting farmland ownership are (i) uneconomic land sizes and farm operations, (ii) greater tendency to convert the farmland to other uses (and hence, the subsequent decline of food production capabilities of the country.