Our Politics of Dispossession- part 4

Quantification of impact
As part of the multi-year study that led to Professor Barakat and his team's new book, the following data collection instruments were used: primary data via panel studies of 16 districts, follow-up study on households surveyed in the 1997 study, Population Census, Land Survey, Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics logs, Tahsil and Thana land revenue records, etc. Below are some key findings of this research:

Kafkaesque legal nightmare
In the absence of a permanent legal solution to the issue of Enemy/Vested Property Act, individual plaintiffs suffer unimaginable hardship and legal delay in attempting to retrieve their land. In a majority of cases, the legal process itself bankrupts the Hindu family, while the land-grabbers, with collusion of the government land office, and usually with backing of the political party in power, maintain their decades long grip on the land. In an example of the exhausting time-span of such legal cases, we can look at Mehir Chandra Bhomick vs District Commissioner of Brahmanbaria under Justice Salma Masud Chowdhury.

The land in dispute originally belonged to Sharat Chandra and Tara Nath Chakraborty. After Sarat's death, his sons Haridas and Krishna Kanto became heirs. Basanta Kumar and his two brothers purchased the property in 1968. After this, the land was purchased by Mehir Bhomick, but the DC of Brahmanbaria declared the land as "Vested" in 1984. The land occupants then filed a statement claiming that the original Hindu owner had left for India in 1965 and the land was "vested" from that time onwards. The trial court decreed the suit and Bhomick filed appeal, after which a retrial decided in his favour in 1995. The DC then filed another appeal in 1997, which resulted in a judgment in his favour in 2000. Bhomick now applied under section 115 of Code of Civil Procedure and received a judgment in his favour in 2007. However, the process is not resolved and one can imagine the DC again filing an appeal using the loopholes created by non-repeal of Vested Property Act. This entire legal procedure is over a land totaling 20 decimal. A legal layman may not comprehend all the legal routes via which such matters are resolved, but anyone can conclude that most Hindu families that have had their land grabbed in last five decades will not have either the resources or the stamina to pursue such an exhausting legal process.

The case of Jayanta Kumar Roy illustrates the dangerous role of local land offices and multiple historical ironies. Roy was killed in 1971 by the Pakistan army, but instead of receiving a posthumous "freedom fighter" certificate, his family's land was seized by local agents as "vested property." After campaigning on this issue for decades, his nephew Anjan Roy finally received an intervention from the chief advisor's office declaring that the land was not "vested property." In spite of this, the land occupant has continued to build a permanent structure on this land, with no effective action taken by the Pabna District administration.

1. Households: 43% of all Hindu households (1.2 million) have been affected by EPA/VPA. 57% of households that lost land lost an average of 100 decimals. Survey data shows 33% of affluent Hindu families lost land due to EPA/VPA. 50% of affluent households had at least one close relative who lost land

2. Total Land: Total area of land lost is 2.01 million acres, which is 5.5% of Bangladesh's total land mass but 45% of land owned by the Hindu community. The research shows two numbers: one is the impact on Hindu community as measured by the official land records, the second is the impact as measured by survey data. The survey data shows 22% more land loss (2.6 million acres) than official records. The type of land lost is typically agricultural, homestead, pond area, orchard, fallow land, etc.

3. Value: Assuming average market price of land as seen in the year 2007, total value of land lost is Tk. 2,416,273 million (Tk. 3,106,636 million from survey data).

4. Sale Value: Even if land is being lawfully sold, the price of Hindu-owned land is reported as Tk. 900,000 per acre, as compared to Tk. 1,500,000 for similar Muslim-owned land

5. Methods of dispossession: Influential parties grab land in connivance with Tahsil and Thana Revenue Office, Tahsil and Thana Revnue Office itself grabs land. Death and/or out-migration of one member of a Hindu family is used as excuse to enlist the whole property. Influential parties grab the land by using violence, local thugs, and forged documents. Influentials allure sharecroppers to occupy land, and then become eventual owners, etc.

6. Accompanying harassment: Harassment that accompanies land-grabbing includes obstruction in casting vote in elections, obstruction in harvesting crops, workplace intimidation, property destruction, eve-teasing, looting, robbery, obstruction in shopping, extortion, etc.

7. Political affiliation: Barakat's research also shows that grabbers try to change their political affiliation with each change in government. We can conclude that either party affiliation is switching after change of government, or ownership is switching from one party affiliate to another.