LAND MATTERS

Most 'causes' that people espouse are not causes at all, they are about what lands people can secure, and what resources they can control.

John Kenneth Galbraith the Nobel prize winning economist known for his book The Affluent Society said, if anybody says that he is doing something for the cause of a specific community or folks of a given ethnicity -- very probably behind that claim is a campaign to control territory, and the riches that go along with the terrain.

Land therefore -- no pun intended -- is the great subterranean issue, subterranean in the sense that the issue is the big one that lies behind the grand rhetoric and the sloganeering on revolution, rights, and indeed about the preservation of religious and ethnic identities.

It's significant therefore that the President seems to understand the emotive power of land issues to move and change the political landscape. That's why he is being extra-careful about complaints about land grabs.

In a recent interaction he had with some of the officials of district agencies that have administrative control over land, there was a quote-worthy exchange that took place.

The episode was aired on national television. At one point the President tells one of the officials that there are certain newspaper articles about arbitrary land acquisition - and the official replies that newspaper stories are often based on wrong information. The President responds that this does not matter, adding that that there must be an investigation launched to get at the truth of the matter.

Arbitrary acquisition of land is the single most volatile political issue, in the light of what has been stated above. Land and property is one issue -- verily, the single issue -- that causes war, insurgency, ethnic strife, and all the other confrontations that can variously be seen as conflicts based on religion and perhaps even gender.

Land acquisition therefore has to be carefully managed -- or rationalized. Acquisitions have to be for productive use, and while there should be few reservations when acquiring plots for productive purposes, the state taking over of land that smacks of land-grab activity should be outlawed, as the President obviously intends.

There can be no hotels on tank bunds, no houses on game reservations. The flip side of that is that there can be no stalling of infrastructural development, on grounds of sentimental attachment to property by groups of persons, or for petty reasons such as inability to move to alternate state allotted plots.

Development is hard work, and never pleases everybody. The worst is when commentators cavil about pavement hawkers and squatters being rounded up and sent out of Colombo's prime plots.

Those who say that these people should be allowed to remain on humanitarian grounds should have their heads examined. Which metropolis expanded, and took on the character of a habitable environment that is conducive to tourist and resident alike, by encouraging a sentimental policy on pavement hawkers and squatters?

The country's biggest land issue is of course the one that the war was fought over. Prabhakaran and his brigands wanted land - their followers in the Tiger rump, still want the land. The rest of the hoopla about rights, self determination, ethnic discrimination etc, is all code for 'we want this swathe of territory - we want the land.'

As much as land grabs cannot be allowed anywhere else in the country, this land grab cannot be allowed either. If power devolution will lead to a land grab, that is an area that needs to be looked at with microscopic scrutiny.

The north and east is in sum, extended real estate. But this large piece of real estate is also strategically located, and is resource rich with the large coastline factored in.

It's acquisition by any party will be the biggest land grab from the Sri Lankan people, making little incursions into game reservations -- wrong as they are -- look minor infractions by comparison. Land grabs big or small should come under rational national scrutiny, and anything that amounts to a land grab for all intents and purposes, should be outlawed.