Herald today (Oct. 24) carried a very well-written and incisive editorial, titled *Great Goan farm decay* on the State's pitiful agricultural sector. (Goa depends almost entirely for its food supply on neighbouring states.)
The edit pertinently touched some of the causes: the erstwhile MGP regime's short-sighted agrarian reforms (the Agricultural Tenancy Act,1964, which together with its infamous Fifth Amendment, is referred to as the Land-to-the-Tiller Act) and the systematic emasculation of age-old Comunidades. Coincidentally, the Gomantak Times, which attracts the maximum of Public Notices among Goa's English language dailies (on account of its Ad. low tariffs) today carried a pageful of notices. Five separate Public Notices show how a single tenant from Calangute is on his way to become a super bhatkar after lawfully dispossessing what must have been five erstwhile small bhatkars! Welfare legislations ushered by the former MGP regime, though laudable in purpose, were severely myopic and ill conceived. Largely for political mileage. What should have started with a survey of land holdings and their classification, followed by a ceiling on ownership, and finally by a re-distribution of surplus land - and only then by statutes such as the Agricultural Tenancy Act, was implemented in the most topsy turvy and sloppy manner. Cart before the horse, in fact. I don't know whether these archives have now been uploaded on The Navhind Times' website, but a serious student of the subject may access the following two articles: 1. *Comunidades - Legal Murder?* (NT, July 3, 1977); and, 2. *Rane Committee Report - a farce?* (NT, July 10,1977) (both by yours faithfully) Regards/Valmiki (P.S.: The 2nd citation is a report by the then MGP Minister for Law, and later the Congress Party's longest-serving Chief Minister, Pratapsing Rauji Rane, who unabashedly plagiarised a previous - and far more studied - report by a Commission headed by A.L. Dias, a Goan former ICS officer and Governor of West Bengal - recently, alas, deceased.) ########################################################################## # Send submissions for Goanet to [EMAIL PROTECTED] # # PLEASE remember to stay on-topic (related to Goa), and avoid top-posts # # More details on Goanet at http://joingoanet.shorturl.com/ # # Please keep your discussion/tone polite, to reflect respect to others # ##########################################################################
