There are numerous cases in different parts of the country where village common lands are prime targets of land grabs. In rural India, land, whether privately owned or jointly used, is an important asset. Apart from ensuring food security and social status to a household, its value improves a family’s access to several other resources; for example, credit. Land grabs deprive marginal sections of their rightful access.
States like Punjab are no exception to this syndrome; common property resources such as land and groundwater have gradually declined. In northwest India, shamlat (common land), once an integral feature of almost every village in the region, is shrinking primarily because of encroachment by the economically powerful.
Despite having legal rights to village common land as per the Punjab Village Common Lands (Regulation) Act 1964, which reserved 33 per cent of shamlat land for Scheduled Castes (SCs), Dalit farmers have not only been denied access to these lands by big landlords through fraudulent means like putting up dummy candidates during auctions, not announcing the date of auction and tampering with village revenue records, they are also subjected to various atrocities like denial of drinking water and health care facilities, prohibiting entry to their fields to procure fodder as well as social boycott, murder and rape.
Women have been the worst hit as their dependence on common land for the provision of food, fodder (barseen) and foliage has always been more. Many a time, due to the absence of male members because of out-migration, the reliance on big landlords not only increases but it simultaneously makes them more vulnerable to various forms of exploitation including molestation.
As a response to such a crisis and atrocities. Punjab is slowly and silently witnessing the agrarian mobilisation of small-marginal farmers in several parts of the state. These mobilisations are woven around issues of rights of Dalits over village commons, their right to live in the villages even though they have no ownership and claim to land that they till, and ending sexual violence against Dalit women.
The most distinctive feature of these mobilisations is the active role of Dalit women, something which did not happen in the past. The movement has been spearheaded by farmer collectives such as Zamin Prapti Sangharsh Committee (ZPSC). Other collectives associated with the movement and fighting for a 33 per cent share of common agricultural land for Dalits are Krantikari Pendu Mazdoor Union (KPMU), Khet Mazdoor Union (KMU), Pendu Mazdoor Union, Punjab (PMU), Dehati Mazdoor Sabha (DMS) and Mazdoor Mukti Morcha (MMM).
Due to massive protests by Dalit collectives, the bidding amount [during land auctions] has come down in the Malwa region, particularly in Sangrur district. In the last auction held in 2023, the average bidding rate was Rs 20,000 per acre annually for the reserved category for taking shamlat land on lease for cultivation, much lower than the earlier Rs 30,000-35,000 per acre. Farmers from unreserved categories have to pay approximately Rs 60,000 per acre annually for taking common land on lease.
Although Dalits in the state have long been agitating to gain access to land, the movement has gathered momentum since 2008. It all began in Benra village in Sangrur district where a group of youth succeeded in bringing together the 250 Dalit households to collectively bid for land – sanjhi boli – rather than bid individually, and counter the high rates fixed for auction. They pooled money to enter a bid for an auction of 9 acres of common agricultural land. Not only did they manage to gain control of the land reserved for SCs but they also forced the district administration to reduce lease rates. Since then, the families that formed the collective have been farming the land together, growing wheat and paddy along with fodder for their cattle. According to ZPSC secretary, Gursewak Singh, Dalit collective farming is a successful model in 55 villages spread throughout the state. The movement has little trust in local panchayats and other state departments when it comes to land-related issues. In the recent past, protests have been organised by Dalit farmers in Patiala, raising slogans against the state government.
In collectives, farmers manage to pool not only land, labour and irrigation infrastructure but also agricultural inputs and harvesting labour to overcome resource constraints. This in turn increases the bargaining power of farmers, particularly marginalised groups, to engage in smallholder agriculture. Such trends are also reflected in the case of Sangrur district, where one can witness collective farming organised by the Dalit community in response to politics, manipulation and violence associated with the auction of reserved agricultural land. However, such developments need to be contextualised as no locality or space is ahistorical or apolitical. Collective farming by Dalit groups is an outcome of struggle and a possible solution to gain access to common agricultural land in a highly stratified social formation which is marked by patriarchy and caste.
According to newspaper reports, in villages like Balad Kalan, in the last few years, collectives have managed to mobilise farmers and form an 11-member village committee to help cultivate 120 acres of reserved common agricultural land meant for 133 Dalit families. One of the members, Rampal Singh, stated the following:
The committee manages the land and all related transactions. Men and women from our community work in the fields and get paid a daily wage. The remaining money, after deducting the input cost for the next year, is divided equally among all the families.
A recent study has shown that community farming has greatly benefited farmers from Balad Kalan and two other villages in Sangrur (Singh et al. 2019). According to newspaper reports, Dalit farmers have reaped significant dividends from collective farming (Singh 2019). One farmer said the following:
Last year, each household got five quintals of cereal, one trolley of fodder [no figures are available in kilograms] and ₹4,000 in cash for the year. Regular income has increased, too, in the form of ₹300 as daily wage, substantially higher than the H80 we were paid for working on others’ land.
Further, collective farming has also been instrumental in binding the village community together. In the absence of any collateral, households as collectives have emerged as effective pressure points to bargain and negotiate with arathiyas – the local village moneylenders – on matters of credit and loan. In this context, one of the farmers stated the following:
If you need to borrow input money from the market, it’s easier to do so for 120 acres, compared to 1 acre. The rate of interest is also low as the moneylender is giving a huge amount [as loan corpus]. The cost of input material such as fertilisers is low because you are buying in bulk. Similarly, you can bargain for better prices when selling the produce.
Further, according to organisations like ZPSC and KPMU, their role is not merely to mobilise Dalit families for collective bidding for the auction of farmlands but also to help them maintain and protect shamlat land from further encroachment. In this context, one of the members of a collective said:
We have formed a cooperative society – sangharsh samity – in each village to take care of the land that we acquired after much struggle. Farmers now approach the cooperative society for land-related issues rather than going to the local police station or panchayat. Some land is earmarked for animal fodder.
While there is no denying the fact that formation of village samitis was instrumental in mobilising Dalit communities for maintaining and protecting village common land, it has also resulted in conflict between Dalits and Jats of the village. In fact, samitis have now become symbols of Dalit unity and solidarity. One Dalit respondent said, “We are no longer afraid and can confront the big farmers collectively.” Such mobilisations have made Dalit farmers bold and confident in asserting their rights within the agrarian economy.
This was reflected quite vividly in the protest against the farm laws in 2020–21 wherein Dalit collectives under the leadership of ZPSC, KPMU and other groups could mobilise Dalit farmers from Punjab villages in joining the protest. The farmers’ movement was able to bring together Jats and Dalits under one banner to fight against farm laws announced by the Central government. Moreover, in September 2021, a Dalit was appointed as the chief minister of the state for the first time. It was seen as recognition of the collective struggle of the Dalit community for dignity and identity in the formal political space.
Excerpted with permission from Environmental Politics at the Local: Natural Resource Governance in India, edited by Satyajit Singh and Ajit Menon, Orient Black Swan.
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