Uttarakhand Chief Minister Harish Rawat had recently promised that land consolidation would be implemented in the mountainous districts of the State in the next three years at a public meeting while campaigning for Congress candidate from Garhwal parliamentary constituency Harak Singh Rawat. After completion of voting for the lok Sabha polls on May 7 in Uttarakhand, the people in the mountainous regions are now hoping that the chief minister will start working on the execution of his promise.
Although the Uttarakhand Government has spent crores of rupees on measures aimed at enhancing the agricultural yield in the mountainous regions of the State, these efforts have proven to be futile so far. There is a vast difference between the agriculture production in the mountainous and plain region of the State with high food grain yield in the plains and very low yield in the mountainous regions. Due to this, farmers in the mountainous regions and remote villages have started quitting agriculture. The migration of the villagers from their villages in the mountains is a major problem facing the State. The reason behind farmers quitting agriculture in the mountainous regions is that inspite of hard labour, the farmers are not able to produce enough to feed their families throughout the year. This has caused the villagers to opt for migrating to towns in the plains in search of employment.
land consolidation and improved irrigation are two of the major factors required to increase the yield of food grains in the mountainous areas. The failure of the Agriculture department to motivate the farmers and provide the required seeds, fertilisers and other materials to enhance production to farmers is also responsible for the dire condition of farming in the hills. Thirteen years after formation of the State, nothing substantial has been done for facilitating the development possible by land consolidation and improved irrigation. The public is of the opinion that the Agriculture department is mired in corruption.
In 2004, the then Congress State Government had announced the formation of Uttarakhand Bhumi Sudhar Parishad, but the existence of this council remained limited to official files and no work was conducted by it for land consolidation. later, during his term as the CM, Maj Gen (retd) BC Khanduri had constituted a committee for this in February 2009, after seeing positive results in Haridwar, Uttarkashi and Udham Singh Nagar but no efforts were made by the council in this regard. Activist and founder of the land consolidation movement, Ganesh Garib stated that land consolidation can not be facilitated only on cooperative basis until vital efforts are made by the government at the ground level.
The people of Uttarakhand are now looking upto the CM Harish Rawat with the hope that he will ensure necessary efforts to save the villages from ruin by ensuring land consolidation otherwise the villages in mountainous areas will become deserted in a few years. The villagers can prosper through farming only if land consolidation is implemented effectively, Garib stressed.
The farms in the rural mountainous regions of the state are scattered which limits the gain to farmers.