Mr. Sahaji Gadhire
Astitva Samajvikas Va Sanshodhan Sanstha

[expand title=”Profile Details” swaptitle=”Close” id=”21-27b” text-color=”#f5f300″]

The Issue:
There are about 3 to 4 thousand villages on the boarder of Karnataka and Maharashtra where the
erstwhile princely states and British rulers had awarded land to poor and scheduled castes communities
as a gift in recognition of their services to their kingdom and society. These lands were
called watan or inam (gift as called in English) lands those days. The lands awarded per village ranged
from 50 to 250 acres and are documented in State government revenue records. After Independence,
the government abolished the watan system, through the enactment of the Bombay Inferior Village
Watans Abolition Act, 1958. However, the Act recognised Mahar, Ramoshi and Matang (an Scheduled
Caste small population in Maharashtra) communities’ need for this land for sustenance. The lands were
kept in their name but individually through an enactment.
The 1958 Act aimed to protect Dalits’ access to land. It made provision for re-granting watan land to
the individuals of watandar (holder of awarded land) communities. The families could claim the land
from the government by paying three years’ annual tax on the land. And, on paying 13 years’ tax, they
could have absolute ownership of this land. The Act also aimed to ensure that the watan land meant for
Mahar and Ramoshi people doesn’t fall out of their hands. This land cannot be transferred to persons
of other communities. Moreover, Dalit families can use this land only for agricultural and allied
purposes to sustain livelihoods. Over 6.28 lakh acres of land was awarded in watan to Mahar and
Ramoshi communities across Maharashtra, as per state government records.
However, despite the provision of re-grant in the 1958 Act, only a few Dalit families actually made a
claim for it, even many of them continued to cultivate the land. This is because the illiteracy and sheer
fear or lack of confidence to reach out to administration for updating land records in their name. Also
many of them did not have money to pay as taxes to get land transferred in their name which was
required as per the act.
So the land slowly slipped away from their hands. As a result of this the state government started using
the vast land in different district for its purpose such as to construct government offices, residential area
for administrative offices, commercial building and even declaring as village common lands or grazing
lands. The government didn’t notify the families since it didn’t consider them owners of this land. They
came to know about it only when after administration started frequenting the place to measure and
develop it. Many people felt that the land is snatched away from them which was once cultivated by
their forefathers. Due to too much interference of administration many families stopped cultivating the
lands fearing an action.
Now by 1990s, there were two categories of land owners. One which continued cultivating their gift
lands and other who preferred to work as a labour on the land of the upper castes or to migrate out.

Some families exercised both options due to crop yields were very low.

Climate Change impact:
Most of these lands were always of inferior quality and most of them are in semi-arid and highly drought
prone areas of eastern and central east districts of Maharashtra. The poor quality added with overall
impact of climate changes over the past five to six decades have turned the lands more unfertile. The
Our operational areas of Solapur and Sangli districts are highly vulnerable to drought conditions and is
also rain fed. There are hardly any irrigation project and only 17% land is under irrigation leaving large
number of farmers depend on south – west monsoon.
Linkages amongst the issues of Climate Change, social and land tenures of dalits;
Over the years with increase in family size the individual land size has also come down as less as 1 acre
or even in few guntas (arr) making it difficult for dalit and other gifted families to survive on these
lands. They have no option but to migrate out to sugarcane rich areas to work as sugarcane cutting
workers or as casual labourers or Collie/ porters in metropolitan and or industrial towns such Mumbai,
Pune, Palghar, Panwel, Thane, etc.
Although this was the positive development on one side, families are not able to develop these lands
due to poor soil structure, lack of resources /inputs, irrigation/water, implements, bullocks, etc. and
prefer to leave them ideal and migrate out for 6 – 7 months every year to earn their livelihoods. They
generally return during monsoon every year to their village where they work as agricultural laborers in
the nearby fields of rich farmers who exploit their labour. If such work is not available then they work
on rural employment guarantee programs of government as a daily wage labourers, if it is available.
Some of them also try to cultivate their lands if they are able to save some money and if monsoon rains
are good. This is the life cycle of most of our poor farming families and landess which have resulted in
an unending poverty. These poor and marginal communities are our project target population. Our
geographic operational is known as a Maan Valley which is a part of Krishna River basin of
Maharashtra.
This situation makes them difficult to sustain locally forcing them to migrate out to survive. There are
number of government schemes available for them, but they hardly reach to these communities due to
far flung locations of their hamlets /villages and poor administration. As in the other parts of the country,
the women of Maan valley too face gender discrimination in all walks of life within community and in
the society and further suffer more due to recurrent drought conditions. This entire poverty situation
deprives women from their rights and makes them more vulnerable. With this background in view
Astitva works with them and try to address their issues of health, nutrition, agriculture, horticulture,
water besides gender issues faced by women.
Solution:
On this background to help the dalits earn their land based livelihoods with respect and dignity there
is need to take up following measures immediately;
– Restoring the watan or gift lands to the families whose forefathers were given the lands by
princely states or by British rulers.

– All the cultivating families who are cultivating less than one acre of land need to be declared
as landless as per the existing provisions of the state laws.
– The landless must be given land under the existing land entitlement provisions under the state
government’s land allotment scheme namely “Karmavir Dadasaheb Gaikwad Sabalikaran and
Swabhiman Yojana”, which was approved in 2004. This scheme provides for land allottement
to landless farm labourers of Scheduled Castes community with an cultivable agriculture land
up to 4 acres in the vicinity of his/her village. As per the latest amendment of May 2018
(Cabinet Decision), scheme now provides for maximum purchase of 4 acres of non-irrigated
or two acres of irrigated land to a landless farm labourer.
– There is also need of helping women too give them land to address their all related gender
issues.
– There is need of pro-active initiatives from administration in this regard in term of visiting
such villages, help communities collect necessary documents, prepare applications, submit the
same to and follow up with the concerned departments especially Revenue and Backward
Class Development Boards to ensure the dalits including single and landless women headed
households.
Astitva has been closely involved in making such demand to the state government. It has also helped
some dalit and other poor families to cultivate their small lands in the Solapur district using climate
resilient farming practices and also dry land horticulture. Hundreds of families are now earning their
respectable livelihood at their doorstep due to measures taken up by us by addressing climate change
and land rights issues.

Shahaji Gadhire
President
Astitva Samaj Vikas va Sanshodhan Sanstha, Sangola

[/expand]