Jarr Romm

Abstract

Half of India's land is uncultivated and publicly used. Although the uncultivated half of India is a resource of immense value, development strategists have given little attention to its potential contribution to economic growth. It is typically viewed as a residual, a waste or a reserve rather than as a significant part of national productive capacity. Investment in it is minor relative to the intensities of use accompanying the growth of population and of demands for its products and services. The resourse deteriorating as a result. The costs of its products and environmental damage are rising. The people who derive their livelihood from it face increasingly uncertain future and are thus under greater pressures to take what they can today. Current depletion reduces substantially the rate of expansion in national productive capacity and weakens the relative position of villagers who depend on it. There is compelling reason to formulate policies for the uncultivated half that promote investment in it and that are consistent, in quality, and purpose, with those already developed for other parts of the nation's resource endowment. This paper addresses issues in the developmentally oriented land policy for the uncultivated half of India. It poses four basic questions, Why is investment in the Uncultivated half so low? What conditions are necessary if investment is to increase? How might public policies promote these conditions? What would a framework of development policy for uncultivated lands contain? They easay offers few answers to these questions, but attempts to suggest sufficient possiibilities to justify the establishment of a mechanism such as a Public Lands Commission, that would assess the conditions of uncultivated lands and recommend policy for them. The first part of this paper was published in the January, 1981 edition of the Indian Forester. It defined land policy as a public strategy for investment, and proposed that the framework of investment-oriented policies for cultivated lands be extended to the uncultivated half. It analyzed conditions - ecological, demographic, legal, economic, administrative and social - that seem to affect investment levels on uncultivated lands, and proposed criteria for the classification of these lands by their investment potential. It also presented models of land management units, involving both village and governmental participation, that would foster incentives for investment in publicly used lands. This second and concluding part discusses features of administrative and market systems that affect uses of uncultivated lands, and considers how they might be modified to increase investment in these lands. It also considers aspects of policy that presently constrain or might stimulate investment in the uncultivated half, concluding that present po1icy does not appear to be governed primarily by the purpose to increase land productivity but by others that have become inconsistent with that purpose. It traces the reasons to structure of policy formation that does not yet accommodate the broadening range of interests in uncultivated lands, and gives examples of modifications in structure which can promote higher levels of investment and productivity. The paper derives from a historical perspective. The questions now asked about the uncultivated half are similar to those addressed for agricultural lands several decades ago. Agricultural development strategy evolved from the early, often frustrating, experiance of community development initiatives and is now supported by a rigorous capacity for policy formation, implementation and assessment attained over the years, The uncultivated half of India is the next frontier of development. Current programs in social forestry, rangeland and watershed management are pioneers, akin to early community development efforts, generating the experience from which the elements of a general policy framework for uncultivated lands can be derived. If the history of agricultural land development policy is appreciated, mechanisms can be created now to shorten the timelag between pioneering initiatives on uncultivated lands and the emergence of a broadly applicable framework of policy and programs.

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