Development Process and Its Implication on the Native Land Ownership

Abstract

Development process is a part of government and policy makers’ agenda to introduce and implement the policies in order to create wealth creation as well as to improve livelihood in both rural and urban areas. To avoid over-concentration of development in urban areas, new development schemes for rural area development are also ventured. As a result of this scheme, two strategies to occupy rural land often utilized by the capitalist ventures in collaboration with the private developers are the land purchasing from the native land owners and the land acquisition from the state authorities. The resulting effect of these actions has been the changing pattern in terms of land ownership to the land losing phenomenon. The aim of this article is to analyse the pattern and the mechanism underlying the lost of the Malay land ownership in the District of Larut, Matang and Selama, Perak from year 2000 to 2008 as a consequent of development process. Utilizing the data collected from Department of Valuation and Property Services, Malaysia, land transaction were recorded. The results of the aggregate land transaction between Malay seller vs non-Malay buyer and non-Malay seller vs. Malay buyer still show the huge differences in number of land transactions and land sizes. While there were 179 pieces with an equivalent to 204.79 hectares of land not returned to the Malay owners, however, the land transaction between the Malays vs. non-Malay buyer also decrease. Two major factors have been identified as the impetus of such undertaking, i) a rise of awareness of the Northern economic Northern Corridor Economic Region impact on rural areas and ii) the rise of awareness of land ownership as a source of supremacy. It is imperative more awareness programmes on the importance of land ownership and generating wealth commercially be given to the rural community to ensure the native land supremacy in the future.