KAMALIKA PIERIS
Philip Gunawardena is best
remembered for the Paddy Lands Act of
1958. The main objective of this Act was to provide security of tenure of a
permanent and heritable nature and regulate the rents paid by tenants. However
its implementation was flawed owing to administrative deficiencies, observed
Nimal Sanderatne.
The first Paddy Lands Bill was
passed in 1953 under the UNP. It was a limited attempt at tenancy reform and
was focused on Hambantota and Batticaloa alone. Under this Bill, tenant and
owner should sign an agreement, valid for 5 years. Philip found that in
Hambantota, only two such agreements had been signed. Landlords avoided written leases. Without
clear tenancy agreements, the benefit was for the money lender, said Philip.
Philip brought a revised Paddy
Lands Bill before Parliament. It was
entirely designed and implemented by Philip. It was a
comprehensive Bill dealing with the whole question of tenancy, security of
tenure, rights of landlords and tenants. It was to ensure long term security
for the tenant and limited very strictly the rights of the land lord.
The
new act gave the ande goviya tenure without a time limit. The number of tenant farmers affected were
around 300,000. Philip said the Bill
would also free the tenant from his traditional servitude to the landlord. The
tenant’s children had to work in the landlord’s house as servants, often
without pay. Due to pressure from SLFP
the bill did not include Colonization schemes.
Philip introduced his Paddy Lands
Bill in 1957. Meegama said that this
Bill was perhaps the most important Bill presented in Parliament since 1947. This Bill will benefit the Kandyan peasantry
more than any other worker. The Kandyan peasant is the most down trodden, said
Philip. Philip spoke in both Sinhala and English on
the Paddy Lands Bill.
Paddy Lands
Bill was passed on Dec 19, 1957, with 61 for and 7 against. The Paddy Lands Act
provided permanent security to the thousands of tenant farmers, who
formed about 51 % of the cultivators. The Act also regulated the rents payable
by the tenant to the land owner. The
Act said that the landlord share was to be limited to a fourth of the crop.
The lands
were to be administered by a cultivation committee elected by the landlord and cultivator
in the proportion of 3/4th to
be of cultivators. The power of the landlords was reduced by weighting these Committees
heavily in favour of the actual cultivators. The Act also created a new Agrarian Services
Department , to ensure its implementation.
The first
role of the Cultivation Committees was to help in the implementation of the
tenancy provisions of the Act (Sections 8-19). The Committees were also
authorized to act as intermediaries between landlord and tenant in the
collection of rents, etc., thus reducing the personal hold of landlords over
their tenants. This would also bolster confidence of the tenant-cultivators to
actively claim their rights under the law.
Secondly, the
Cultivation Committees were given important development functions, with powers
for the advancement of paddy cultivation in their areas. They were given access
to technical advice in the form of Agricultural Extension Officers and Village
Cultivation Officers, who were made ex-officio members of the Committees, but
with a right only to speak but not to vote at their meetings. It was hoped that
with such technical advice emanating from within, and adopted by the
Committees, would enable both paddy production and water-management to be
greatly improved by the farmers.
A third major
innovatory function of the Cultivation Committees was in respect of
(irrigation) water management, with the Committees taking over the functions of
the Irrigation Headmen (Vel Vidanes) at field level. These functions, among
others, included enforcement of rules relating to cultivation dates, clearing
of channels, fencing, etc, as well as improving water management said Chandra Arulpragasam..
There was provision in the Paddy Lands Act to
confer powers to the cultivation committees to make mandatory decisions for
better cultivation practices in order to enable maximum production, added Garvin
, but this section was not activated.
Chandra
Arulpragasam observed that the Act was
an important innovation. For the first time in South and South East Asia, legal powers in
the implementation of tenurial reforms and the management of irrigation and
cultivation at field levels were given to an elected body. The idea that an
elected body of semi-educated farmers could take over functions from the
government bureaucracy was revolutionary at that time.
The rent
payable on a particular field was fixed as one-fourth share of the harvest. Only
the cultivator would know how much that harvest was. The Act recognized that
such questions could only be answered at field level by farmer groups. This was
at least 40 years ahead of its time, concluded Chandra.
There were a lot of objections to
the Bill, including tremendous
opposition from the SLFP in the MEP, especially CP de Silva. The landlords were up in arms. The paddy owners objected strongly. Nothing should be done
to disturb to the ancient hallowed
practices, they said.
Crippling amendments were made to
the Bill. Philip said he had wanted to implement the Paddy Lands Act in the
entire island within three years, but under pressure from landed interests and
capitalist interests, he had to make it five years. The number of landlords in
the Cultivation Committee was increased to 25%. They could refuse to
attend. They did and the committees
could not function.
There was euphoria among the
tenant-cultivators and agricultural workers when the Act was passed, heightened
by their participation in the formation of the Cultivation Committees, which
they felt would support them against arbitrary eviction and higher rents. Nanda Wanasundera recalls, there was one
tenant on the paddy land in Peradeniya, owned by her mother, who insisted she
must get three fourths with Mother getting only one fourth.
Garvin
Karunaratne said, I
introduced the Paddy Lands Act in the Matara District and was ably assisted by
a band of able Divisional Officers. We held publicity meetings everywhere
where we whipped up the enthusiasm of the people through oratory. All of
us followed the Hon Minister’s prowess in oratory, without the
fire. When landlords evicted cultivators we held inquiries and prosecuted
the landlords. With the management of paddy cultivation in the hands of
the cultivators we were on the path to advanced management.
But things
did not work out that way. The landlords got the Cultivation Committees
declared legally invalid. The
Cultivation Committees were legally invalidated soon after their formation. Since
the law and relevant regulations stipulated that all Cultivation Committees
shall have twelve members, the refusal by landlords to elect their
representatives would render most of the Committees invalid anyway, observed
Chandra.
Faced with
this situation on the ground one year later, we took the position (with the
agreement of the Attorney-General) that if the landlords failed to elect their
three representatives, the cultivators could elect the full twelve members of
the Committee, since they (the cultivators) were entitled to elect a number
not less than three-fourths” of the Committee.
The landlords then consulted Mr. H. V. Perera,
the highest legal luminary in the country. He argued in Appeal Court that since the landlords were
to elect a number but had elected
nought representatives. Nought is not a number. The Cultivation Committees were
therefore not legally constituted. On
this abstruse mathematical argument, the Court decided that the Cultivation
Committees were not legally constituted.
All past and
future actions of such Committees were also declared null and void. This ruling
encouraged the landlords to boycott the Cultivation Committee elections all
over the country, thus rendering them legally invalid and their actions legally
void, said Chandra.
Cultivation
Committees collapsed in the year
following their legal invalidation. This collapse caused great demoralization
among the cultivators, since they had gained great socio-psychological support
from the Committees in standing up for their rights. With their collapse, many
tenants surrendered their rights, accepting their plight as hidden tenants”
with no rights under the law. There was chaos in the paddy fields too, since
there was no agency left to ensure that the fields were fenced or the water
issued.
Since these
Committees had by law taken over important irrigation and cultivation functions
(the vel vidanes having been abolished) their invalidation led to a breakdown
in the common arrangements for cultivation and irrigation, thus causing
complete chaos in the field.
The
Department of Agrarian Services organized rounds of field-level meetings,
trying to encourage the Cultivation Committees to hold fast, promising that
legal amendments would soon be forthcoming to remedy their legal incapacity.
But these amendments came too late. They were passed only after the landlords
had already evicted their tenants, and only after the Cultivation Committees
had been seen to have failed in their cultivation and irrigation duties, thus
losing the confidence of the farmers themselves, concluded Chandra.
Chandra Arulpragasam had more to say. In early
1958, I was appointed Deputy Commissioner of the Agrarian Services Department,
in charge of implementing the Paddy Lands Act of 1958. In setting out to draft
the Administrative Regulations under the Act, I came across a number of
structural, legal and operational considerations, which probably had not been
foreseen by its authors. This was probably the first time that it was being
looked at by an administrator with field experience – and the first time that
it was being looked at by someone who was new to the Paddy Lands Act and to its
thinking.
The
legal provisions of the Act were likely to be challenged and its
implementation obstructed. This made it necessary to examine its provisions
from an adversarial point of view – which revealed many legal and
administrative vulnerabilities. Also, there were new problems of implementation.
For example, the Act safeguarded tenants, but there were no records of tenants
or of landlords. New records of land ownership, tenancy, etc. would have to be
created from scratch before implementation could even begin.
The
Commissioner of Agrarian Services happened to be abroad for three weeks. Thus,
not only was I was the Acting Head of a Class I, Grade 1 Department at the age
of 28 years, but I also needed policy-level help, because this was hitherto
unchartered territory in the country.
So I asked for an appointment with the
Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Phillip Gunawardene, the author of the Act, whom I
had never met before. The Minister was charming, affable and even fatherly,
over a cup of tea and cakes in Parliament. Getting down to business, I brought
to his notice the number of legal difficulties and some of the administrative
problems that needed his guidance.
In
administrative terms, it was clear that there had to be two separate elections:
one for the owners to elect their members, and one for the actual cultivators
to elect theirs. This required that separate electoral lists be prepared for
the owners and separate ones for the cultivators. Given the predictable
opposition from the landlords, every name on every electoral list was liable to
be challenged, while the elections themselves could be disputed in law.
I was so
intent on my presentation of the potential legal problems of the Cultivation
Committees that I failed to notice that he had tossed his spectacles on the
table, which was a sign (I was told later) that he was losing his patience –
and his temper.
I was only half way through my list when he
suddenly banged his fist on the table with a loud noise, stopping me abruptly.
Young man” he exclaimed: Have you come across these difficulties in the field
– or are they in your head?” When I pointed weakly to my head, Go and work”,
he thundered! And when you come across these problems, then you come to me!”
I scooped up
my files and scooted .This was the first and last time that I saw Mr. Phillip
Gunawardene. Within a few months, every one of the legal and administrative
problems that I had raised with the Minister had come to pass, said Chandra.
The Act needed certain changes. 50
amendments had been prepared. Philip
pointed out that the necessary amendments to the Act were ready when he was
asked to resign. But they were not introduced and many tenants were evicted
from their lands. They blamed it on Philip, observed Meegama.
The enforcement of the Act
depended on its proper administration. But Philip could administer the Paddy
Lands Bill for only one year. Philip
was pushed out of the Cabinet, to be succeeded as Minister of Agriculture by
Mr. C. P. de Silva.
C.P de Silva was opposed to the Act, He decided to let it
fester in its own legal difficulties so as to discredit it countrywide. He was
not prepared to push through the amendments which had been prepared, and which were badly needed to plug the legal
loopholes, nor was he prepared to
publicly repeal the act, since it was popular.
The
Paddy Lands Act, even without amendments could have been successfully
implemented under a supportive minister and dedicated officers in the Agrarian
Service Department, said Meegama. ( Continued)
