commentary

the central budget and the state budget for

the prisons in India.

Conclusions
Despite its faults the draft policy does contain some fine recommendations. However,
a national prison policy must be much
more comprehensive than the one we have
before us. Overall the policy is very simplistic

in resolving the problems regarding prisons and prisoners in the country. A lot
more could have been achieved if there
were representatives from allied fields
rather than only the high ranking prison
and police officials on the committee.
Time and again the Supreme Court and
the various high courts in the country have
issued orders regarding the conditions of

Agrarian Reform: Lessons

from the Philippines
Manoshi Mitra Das

The Comprehensive Agrarian

Reform Programme in the
Philippines has made substantial
progress in dealing with land
reform. Much more remains to
be done and Filipino society is
actively engaged in critically
discussing the past and the
future of CARP. There are
lessons here for India where
policymaking circles remain
obsessed with growth and have
forgotten land reform.

Manoshi Mitra Das (mmitra@adb.org) is with

the Asian Development Bank.

32

hose who live outside the Philippines often associate it with tourism, labour migration, and the infamous dictatorship of the Marcos regime.
Rarely if at all do people associate it with
radical attempts at agrarian reform, in
particular land reform. For post-colonial
societies in south Asia, land reform was born
and died a quick death in most instances.
In India, where land is a state subject,
attempts at land reforms were not uniform. While the Indian National Congress
committed itself vaguely to land reforms
early in the Karachi Resolution in 1931, its
approach towards land reforms remained
lackadaisical. After independence, the results of land reforms were at best patchy,
with gains in a few states, and a large part
of the semi-feudal agrarian relations left
intact. The inequitable distribution and
control over land and labour has remained, until today, a fundamental cause
of rural poverty and the growth of violent
forms of rural protest. Today much of what
is termed as Naxal violence, is actually
rooted in the institutionalised inequality
characterising Indian society, to which
effective land reforms could provide an
effective solution. However, in the glow of
Indias economic growth rate obsessed
state, there is little serious attention being
given to land reforms today, by those in
positions of power and responsibility.
The situation in other south Asian countries is much more dismal in the area of
land reforms. However, the Philippines
sets a strong and positive example of the

the prisons in the country but it appears

that most of these orders have been
neglected in the drafting process of the
new policy.There is no action plan or time
line for changing the situation and implementing the policy. On reading the draft
policy it is hard to shake off the suspicion
that it does not envisage the recommendations being implemented seriously.

relevance of land reforms even today in

poverty reduction, and in fundamentally
altering power dynamics from a feudal
structure to a democratic one, where all
citizens can function equally without owing
any kind of servitude to another citizen.

Agrarian Reform Law

In the post-Marcos Philippines, the new
constitution passed in 1987 enshrined
high ideals of equality and social justice.
One of the main goals was agrarian reform. The statutory guarantee of agrarian
reforms was fulfilled in the following year
by the passage of the comprehensive
agrarian reform law (CARL) based on
which the comprehensive agrarian reform
programme (CARP) was implemented. The
duration of the programme was initially
for 10 years (1988-98) followed by an extension until 2008. Now the motion to get
it extended for another length of time is
gathering momentum.
The CARP is one of the most widereaching programmes of reforms, which
includes compulsory acquisition and distribution of all agrarian lands without exception, and entitles all tillers to land. It
has the unique distinction of including
comprehensive support services for beneficiaries of the programme gathered together to form homogeneous rural communities. These include credit, infrastructure
including power, roads, water supply and
sanitation, irrigation, processing facilities
and markets. Services of non-governmental
organisations are used to organise the
beneficiaries into cooperatives and other
organisations for technology transfer and
enterprise promotion among other services.
The programme was to be funded by
government budgetary transfers from
the appropriations of the ill-gotten
wealth of the Marcoses. While there is a
ready debate on the extent to which the
june 28, 2008 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

commentary

ill-gotten wealth of the Marcoses has been

unearthed, and appropriated, the programme has been financed by the government. Finance has been a problem specially
during the times of budget deficits. Deve
lopment aid has been used to garner resources for providing support services to
beneficiary communities.
Periodic assessments of the CARP are carried out by researchers who have evaluated
it as a success wherever a comprehensive
approach has been adopted to provide the
entire gamut of services associated with
the programme. It has contributed to reducing poverty among erstwhile tenants,
landless workers, and has demonstrably
increased their incomes compared to other
similar groups on non-beneficiary populations. There are still many unmet goals,
and many issues that need to be addressed.
However, at this point in time, the most
urgent need is to extend the programme in
order to complete its unfinished agenda.

National Rural Summit

On May 5 and 6, 2008, the National Rural
Summit (NRS) was convened by the
Catholic Bishops Conference of the
Philippines (CBCP) on the critical issue of
completion of agrarian reforms, land reforms in particular. The meetings served
to clearly establish the linkages between
reviving an ailing agriculture sector, with
the urgency of restructuring agrarian society and rural relations of production.
The urgency around the discussions related both to the need to extend the CARL, as
well as to respond to the challenges posed
by the rice crisis, which has wittingly or
unwittingly brought agriculture and food
production back to centre stage from
where it had been upstaged.
By 2008, the programme had accomplished approximately 50 per cent of its
objectives. However, there are still large
targets that remain incomplete. There are
still approximately three million ha of land
to bring under compulsory acquisition and
distribution. It also has large backlogs in
terms of agrarian justice and programme
beneficiaries development (PBD).
Strong resistance by landowners, lack
of adequate funds, lack of capacity among
CARP implementing agencies, particularly
the department of agrarian reform (DAR)
and department of environment and natural
Economic & Political Weekly EPW june 28, 2008

resources (DENR), to achieve coordination,

and address all aspects of a complex programme, are among the major factors responsible for the lack of completion of
the CARP.
The serious issues surrounding these remaining tasks, the urgency of tackling the
widespread and deep poverty in rural areas,
the deep inequality characterising rural
society and power structures in the country,
the need to direct investments into improving rural productivity and marketing, and
thereby rural incomes and overall food production, the determinationof farmers organisations, civil society, the church and
the state to gather forces together to address these issues effectively with lasting
solutions, brought all such forces together
in the NRS to presshome the need to act
quickly to extend the CARP.

The Pre-Summit
The pre-summit at the University of
Philippines, Diliman was an exciting event,
with a feeling of shared urgency running
through the entire event. Farmers from
different parts of the country demonstrated
outside the venue, and tellingly articulated
the seriousness of their intent to get the CARP
law extended so that its objectives can be
fully realised. Inside the venue, there was
the catholic church represented by archbishops and bishops and priests from all

INSTITUTE

OF

over the country, and legislators from both

houses of senate and congress, civil society
and farmers organisations, academe and
the media. The shared concern among all
participants was to bring about consensus on
the extension of CARP, and narrowing down
of differences in the key areas of the programme for extension. At the plenary, attention was brought to bear on all the different
bills presented to both houses on CARP extension. One of the most important issues
raised at the plenary related to therelatively low levels of womens participation in
CARP as direct beneficiaries of land reform.
The plenary gave way to working
groups that were organised along all the
aspects related to CARP extension. The
consensus that seemed to be running
through most of the working groups was
that although there were defects in the
CARP implementing agencies and their
functioning, it was urgent to get the CARP
extended, and later on bring about reforms
to the programme. I attended the group on
PBD and there the urgency of providing
farmers with access to rural credit was
highlighted. There was considerable debate
as to the feasibility of using the certificates
of landownership awards (CLOAs) for collateral. The opposition to this was strong,
based on the argument that the CLOAs were
already mortgaged to the Land Bank of the
Philippines. Secondly, agrarian reform

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33

commentary

beneficiaries (ARBs) should not be at risk

of losing their land titles in case of their
failure to pay back crop loans. Instead,
some form of state guarantees were sought
for credit to ARBs, as well as their access to
crop insurance and health insurance.
On the second day, the summit saw
powerful figures of the church and the
state along with civil society coming together to establish a broad coalition of
forces in favour of the extension of CARP.
The resounding view that emerged from
the legislators present was that CARP must
be extended. However, reforms are urgently needed in implementation practices
in order to bring about greater transparency. The legislators made it clear that the
plight of small farmers with regard to
credit, access to technology, infrastructure and markets, were considered the basic causes behind low productivity and
low rural incomes. These aspects need to
be considered along with the CARP, in order to make a lasting dent on poverty and
food production.

Recommendations
The recommemdations that were going to
be presented to the president from the
summit included the following points:

(i) urgent action required by congress to

extend CARP; (ii) need to provide adequate
funding to complete CARP; (iii) PBD should
continue even after land acquisition and
distribution (LAD) and other activities are
completed; (iv) CBCP should ask the house
and senate to move quickly on CARP
extension; (v) large landholdings should be
prioritised and brought under compulsory
acquisition; (vi) there should be a general
review of non-distributive schemes such as
the stock distribution option (SDO); (vii) the
actual land use should be the basis of
coverage; (viii) there should be a full review
of land conversion of irrigated and irrigable
lands to non-agricultural uses, which is
illegal. It is, however, widespread and need
to be reviewed; (ix) rationalise land use
planning nationwide; (x) all titles granted
to ARBs should be indefeasible; (xi) the
department of agriculture (DAR) should
monitor the land market around CARP
lands; (xii) there needs to be full support
for PBD; (xiii) there needs to be full provision for rural credit for ARBs; (xiv) there
must be equal rights for women under
CARP CLOAs; and (xv) in view of several
compensation related cases in the courts,
and recent verdicts regarding large payments to landowners, it was agreed that

attention needs to be paid to the basis for

compensating landowners. Purely marketbased compensation can be disastrous for
CARP funding. A consensus needs to be
evolved with legislators, and the judiciary,
on this critical issue.
At a time when attention is being reluctantly turned internationally towards agriculture and rural development (but not
land reforms as a way out of poverty), the
Philippines thus sets a valuable example
of political consensus building between a
church committed to poverty reduction
and equality in society with dignity for all,
farmers groups consisting of educated
farmers well able to articulate their priority issues and concerns, civil society
groups representing all shades of opinion
including the more left of centre groups
among others committed to supporting
the farmers cause, and progressve lawmakers. There is a lively debate going on
in the media on these issues, quite unlike
the current Indian media fascination with
growth, glamour and entertainment,
while routinely not going into the fundamental issues plaguing rural society and
perpetuating the deep inequality between
the few haves and the many more havenots in Indian society.

REVIEW OF WOMENS STUDIES

April 26, 2008
Between Public and Private Morality

Maithreyi Krishnaraj

The 'Virtuous Woman': Law, Language and Activism

Kanchana Mahadevan

Body as Space, Body as Site: Bodily Integrity and Women's Empowerment in India

Kanchan Mathur

Ethnographies of the Global Information Economy: Research Strategies and Methods

Carol Upadhya

Gender Budgeting in Disaster Relief: Need for a New Methodology

Mainstreaming Gender, Engendering Development: Reflections on a Case Study

Meenakshi Thorat
Padmini Swaminathan, J Jeyaranjan

The Review of Womens Studies appears twice yearly as a supplement to the last issues of April and October. Earlier issues have focused on:
Gender in Medical Education (April 2005); Gender Budgeting (October 2004); Women, Work and Family (April 2004); New Challenges (October 2003);
Women, Work, Markets (October 2002); Women and Education (April2002); Women: Security and Well-Being (October 2001); Women and Philosophy
(April 2001); Reservations and Womens Movement (October 2000); Women, Censorship and Silence (April 2000); Women and Ageing (October 1999);
Gender Inequities: Focus on Tamil Nadu (April 1999).
For copies write to
Circulation Manager
Economic and Political Weekly
320-321, A to Z Industrial Estate, Ganpatrao Kadam Marg, Lower Parel, Mumbai 400 013.
email: circulation@epw.in
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june 28, 2008 EPW Economic & Political Weekly