On a scorching morning in July last year, Malliah woke up early. The cropping season was nearing its end and his two-acre field stubbled with paddy was ready for a fertiliser boost. Armed with his title deed, he made his way to the urea bank set up at the Kowdipally mandal in Medak district. It was his first time here. He joined a long, snaking line at the rear. Hours later, in the late afternoon, Malliah was still waiting for his turn. When it finally arrived, he produced his papers; the heavily subsidised bag of urea within reach now. The lady at the counter pored over his details. Then, she asked for his Pattadar Pass Book for the land. He didn’t have one. She pulled out the revenue department’s big book of names, the pahani, to check government records. Malliah’s name was missing. Since his father’s death a few years ago, Malliah had sought a change in ownership on paper without any success. He had also lost the whole day in a line at the end of which there was no urea for him. Now, he would have to return to the open market to buy it, but at a much higher price.

At the end of the season, when Malliah harvested his plot, the yield fell short by four quintals. The application of fertiliser hadn’t been timely because of the missing records. Now, multiply his loss with 10 lakh other farmers in Telangana, who incur losses every crop season due to poorly maintained records, and the lie of the land becomes an inescapable truth.

Subsidies on seeds and fertilisers and crop loans are difficult to obtain, if farmers cannot produce copies of any of the 11 records needed to stake their claim to the lands they till. Vulnerable to land grab, criminal cases in revenuecourts and falling yields, land insecurity is rampant here.

On February 20, when Parliament passed the Andhra Pradesh Re-organisation Bill (2014), India’s 29th state was born. The 60-year-old Telangana movement had grown legs and walked into reality in an election year. Three weeks prior to that, Landesa, a non-profit network dealing in land rights, embarked on a ‘land caravan’ across Telangana to find out whose land it was. They marched through 10 districts — from the semi-urban areas of Sangareddy and tribal lands of Adilabad, to the red corridors of Khammam and Pochampally in Nalgonda, where the Bhoodan movement once took wing.

According to the Koneru Ranga Rao Land Committee Report (2006), since its formation AP, especially Telangana, has seen strong pro-poor land legislations — land reform acts, tenancy acts, prohibition of land grabs acts etc. Despite that, on-ground implementation has been weak. While the AP government has officially assigned over 40 lakh acres, far less is in the hands of farmers and under cultivation.

Interestingly, in his first Chai pe Charcha, Narendra Modi spoke of the urgent need for re-surveys of land across the country. Earlier, in 2008, union minister for rural development Jairam Ramesh launched the ₹1,000 crore National Land Records Modernisation Programme. Although nine states have fully implemented it, AP is yet to begin work for nearly 30,000 of its villages. “The first thing Telangana’s new government will have to do is a land re-survey,” says Suneel Kumar, the State director of Landesa. Land, he adds, has to be resurveyed every 30 years by the government. The last land survey in Telangana was conducted from 1936 to 1942; and in the Andhra region, before 1900!

B Venkatiah is, by all accounts, a model farmer. In Gummadavelli village, Gurrampode mandal, Nalgonda district, that is a rare achievement. The NS left canal that runs from Nagarjuna Sagar dam, the only source of water in these parts, kisses the borders of Gummadavelli and rushes on to water the oasis of Hyderabad, leaving behind thousands of acres of parched lands in Nalgonda. Despite this, Venkatiah’s fields have prospered. In a village overrun by Indiramma (a State government housing scheme) structures, he owns a pukka house. He also drives his own Hero motorcycle. According to the sarpanch, Raghava Reddy, he is their poster boy. However, Venkatiah is a worried man. “I have a Pattadar Pass Book. I have the title deed to my lands. But my name is missing from the pahani. Without that I’m not eligible for any of the government’s schemes,” he says. “The Village Revenue Officer (VRO) comes, but he can’t write records. Even his visits are irregular. Every time I try to get the records corrected, I shell out ₹5,000. But it never gets done.”

The incompetence of tehsildars and VROs is so high, we’re told, that 150 acres of land in Gummadavelli has been allotted to 86 families under one survey number. Which of the 86 can claim it as their own? In a village of 3,000 most are landless, says the sarpanch.

The same story echoes across villages of Nalgonda district — in Palwai, Thanedar, Koppole, Parvatagiri, Kathalguda. Even the tandas, sandwiched between villages and inhabited by the Lambada communities, are beset by similar problems, despite the special government pattas for STs.

In Parvatagiri village, Elamma’s family have been waiting for the settlement of their lands for 45 years. They received 15 acres as inam in 1969 from the then Nizam. According to the AP (Telangana area) Inams Abolition Act, 1955 (reinforced by the State government in 1973), inam lands need regularisation to transfer occupancy rights. While more than nine lakh acres of such land has been settled, thousands of acres are yet to be transfered. “For the last two years, officials couldn’t determine if it’s inam or Wakf board land,” she says, clutching all the documents in her possession. Suneel Kumar examines them and says it’s inam alright. “Then why are they taking so long?” asks Elamma.

The land caravan rolls into Kathalguda village next. Plots allotted for Indiramma houses lie vacant. “There’s no government assigned land here,” says Thorapukla Anand. “Most of us live on rent. Benami and kabza of plots occur routinely. There’s no land even to bury a dead man!” In many villages populated by SC households across Nalgonda, finding land for graveyards is also a major problem.

Thirty-year-old Kavitha has been a community surveyor in this mandal, since 2005. Her team of 35 surveyors and field assistants, recruited as part of Indira Kranthi Patham (IKP) launched in 2000, act as the go-betweens for villagers and the revenue department. “We go from village to village, collect all the complaints and tell them how to fill the paperwork. But we get little support from the revenue department and that makes our job difficult,” she says. At the last sadassalu (village revenue court), 185 issues were brought to the department’s notice. “About 160 were rejected and dismissed. That didn’t solve any problems. Now, people find it hard to trust us.”

CLB Shastri is a deputy tehsildar in Nalgonda. He has spent 27 years in the revenue service and served as secretary of the union. When asked about the deep-seated mistrust of the department, he minces no words. “In their current shape, land records are less than 30 per cent accurate. The pahani is in tatters,” he says, “But look how overworked we are. Put on election duty, disaster relief, and made to handle the public distribution system. Where’s the manpower? Look at the quality of recruits for the posts of VROs and tehsildars. They don’t know a PPB from a title deed. We want a mandal reorganisation. And land re-surveys.”

Out of line

The National Highway 44, the longest highway in the country, connects Varanasi to Kanyakumari, touching Bangalore and Hyderabad. It has also brought the Agency district of Adilabad, AP’s second-most backward district, closer to Hyderabad. Ichoda is one among many villages that fall by its side. Location notwithstanding, it doesn’t seem to derive any of the the benefits that a major highway ought to bring with it. At the Mandal Praja Parishad office, people gather from villages nearby. Since the implementation of the Forests Right Act (FRA) began in 2008, tribals here have been caught in the forest and revenue department crossfire. Shakuntala, a Gond tribal, is from Chincholi village. Her six acres, planted with Nilgiri trees, were taken over by the forest department along with the land of three other families. The revenue department was of no help. “I sat outside the forest department till they returned my land. The other families were scared. Now I have my fields, while they have to work as coolies and roll beedis,” says Shakuntala.

Land alienation and poor-to-poor discrimination are other problems peculiar to Andhra’s Agency districts. Despite the regulations that prohibit the transfer of tribal land to non-tribals, nearly 48 per cent of the properties have passed into non-tribal hands. VNVK Sastry, former director of India’s Tribal Research and Training Institute and former advisor to the government on tribal development, says, “Around 25 lakh acres of land is still under Section 4 notification (not yet declared reserved forests). But the forest departments have taken over, evicting tribals from lands they have occupied for decades”. If the new State doesn’t solve these issues, he says, there’s a fear that doras (landlords driven out by the Telangana rebellion) will return. “There could even be another peasant uprising.”

Blood and revolution

The road to Indravelli shuts down once a year in April. No vehicles are allowed and police nakabandi stands strong. Part of the red corridor, it’s also one of the sites of the Telangana rebellion. Nearly 33 years ago, on April 20, hundreds of tribals were gunned down by the police. Even today, visitors at a martyr’s statue just outside Indravelli, risk police attention.

At Ratnam Celinamma’s, the women of Indravelli have gathered for an impromptu meeting. Celinamma’s twin dogs yelp at her rabbits sleeping close by. Broods of chicken scurry about and the twins raise their pitch. Cups of chai arrive and everyone huddles closer to listen to Celinamma, the de facto spokesperson who served as the president of the Zilla Samakhya twice. Celinamma, who came to Indravelli as a young bride in 1981 says, “Doras (landlords) ran the place and the girijans had no legal rights to their lands.”

Soon after Celinamma’s arrival, Indravelli was scarred by the incident that propelled the Telangana revolt. “It was on April 17, a Friday, when hundreds of girijans had gathered in the village square. They were demanding pattas to their lands. Three days had passed but the protests showed no signs of winding up. On Monday, April 20, the weekly mandi was to be set up. Amid the market’s chaos, policemen walked up to the protesters. Poking Drupati bai in the ribs, one of them teased her, saying ‘How long do I have to fast, get going now’. In a flash, Drupati, who was chopping onions, drew out her knife and stabbed him.”

What followed forms one of the bloodiest episodes in the Telangana rebellion. Drupati bai was killed. Hundreds more died in the police firing. Official records, however, claim 13 people died. “They lied,” says Celinamma. “The bodies just piled up. We took them to the nearby jungles. There was no place to bury them. Dogs followed the stench into the forests, fed on the flesh of the dead, coming back in hordes, biting our cattle.” Since then, the State has, arguably, over-compensated the STs while declaring other communities — SCs and OBCs — non-tribals. So girijans are protected by the Forests Rights Act, non-tribals like Celinamma have become targets of discrimination. “It is the law that discriminates between the communities here,” says Sastry. The assignation of land is as much about pedigree, as it is about paperwork.

In Indravelli village, the ratio of STs to SCs is 70 to 30. “Only 16 people of our community possess lands. The rest are landless and jobless,” Celinamma says. Nirmala, 25-year-old mother of two daughters, has a degree in nursing but no job or land. “I’m repeatedly rejected. What do I do with my degree,” she says . “I want to educate my kids but will it help?”

Yet it’s here, in Indravelli, that the hope in the new State of Telangana shines brightest. “This land is our mother,” says Nirmala. She has no land, we remind her, but she insists this will change, “Telangana is our land and I’m going to be a VRO.”

Last year, Telangana Rashtra Samithi President K Chandrasekhar Rao promised three acres to each Dalit family in the new State. But without a re-survey and reform, only a new rebellion can carve this land out of Telangana.

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