Nepal in 1965: Focus on Land Reform

Abstract

This was a rather dull year in Nepal, in which the only real excitement was engendered by the land reform program. The enactment of comparatively ambitious land legislation in 1963 and 1964 aroused little public controversy at the time, as it was widely presumed that there would be the usual long delay in implementation of the program. It was a surprise and shock to most people, therefore, when the government commenced efforts to implement land reform in 16 of Nepal's 75 Development Districts in November 1964. Land Reform Officers, with vaguely defined but broad coercive powers, were appointed to these 16 districts, and quickly became the focus of a muted but occasionally public struggle with local landowning interests, particularly in the Tarai-the rich agricultural area on the Gangetic plains in southern Nepal-where the implementation program was concentrated. The ceiling set on land holdings was the provision of the program that aroused immediate concern. But the procedures adopted by the government, which permitted widescale dispersement of holdings, soon reduced apprehensions on this point. The actual area of land declared to be surplus in the 16 districts was only slightly over 100,000 acres. The impact upon land holding patterns was further diminished by the fact that almost all of the surplus was in the Tarai (indeed, half was in one district) which already has large areas of uncultivated land available for exploitation. There was virtually no surplus in the hill districts in which there is a severe land shortage. By mid-1965 public attention had shifted to two innovational aspects of the land reform program, the interception of agricultural debts by local committees and the compulsory savings system. The elimination of a typically usorious traditional credit system and the redirection of local capital to the non-agricultural sector were the primary objectives of these programs. Neither had as yet made very significant progress by the end of the year. This was probably fortunate, as the government did not have a viable credit system ready to replace the traditional credit structure, which apparently continued to function on only a somewhat reduced scale. The adverse impact of these programs on agricultural production was, thus, kept to a minimum. The criticisms voiced by foreign experts of the timing and staging of some aspects of the land reform program seems not to have diminished official satisfaction that some kind of land reform program is finally being im-