Land Issues in Nepal by Jagat Basnet & Jagannath Adhikari

After the optimism voiced during the opening session, Jagat Basnet, Director of CSRC Nepal, and Dr Jagannath Adhikari, an independent researcher, gave some sobering statistics: 10% of the rural population is absolutely landless and over half of the rural population is functionally landless – lacking sufficient land to meet subsistence requirements. In a country with little arable land and where 5% of the wealthy hold 37% of arable land, absentee landlordism, unregistered tenancy and sharecropping have been critical factors leading to declining productivity.
Jagat Basnet expressed skepticism of the State’s interest in real land reform, stating that the focus thus far had been only on land administration. Efforts made by governments since Nepal’s 1951 land reform had failed to transform Nepal’s feudal structure or to reduce its food deficit. He concluded that land reform in Nepal requires a community approach and not market-led liberalism, and called for protection of the real tillers of the land in the new Constitution.
Dr Jagannath Adhikari spoke of the impacts of global processes including globalisation, climate change and foreign direct investment on land access in Nepal. He made a case for new policies to emphasize food self-sufficiency, to develop an integrated approach to land, water and forest resources, and to ensure that FDI in land does not damage poor people’s livelihoods.
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