Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is exploring the possibility of land reforms even as he has been slammed by activists for not having convened a single meeting of the National Council for Land Reforms (NCLR) headed by him since its formation in 2008. Dr Singh has directed the Planning Commission to set up a meeting with one of the key National Council for Land Reforms members P.V. Rajagopal, who has been on a countrywide tour to identify land issues in the rural India.
Accordingly, Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia has called a meeting on Tuesday with Mr Rajagopal and S.V. Manjunath, president of the civil society group Bharat Nirman Pratishtan. Dr Singh has directed the Planning Commission to “explore new ideas for eradication of poverty” with Mr Rajagopal and Mr Manjunath.
Earlier, the government had held a preparatory meeting of the NCLR’s non-official members under the chairmanship of rural development minister Jairam Ramesh in June. Even though the meeting had laid out a broad action plan to re-look the country’s unfinished land reforms agenda, the members were still unhappy for the Prime Minister failing to directly involve in the issue.
Speaking to this newspaper, Mr Rajagopal described the Prime Minister’s initiative for a meeting with the Planning Commission as “a positive development”, though he acknowledged that it was not a meeting with the NCLR as such.
Meanwhile, Mr Rajagopal, whose Janadesh Yatra in 2007 had actually resulted in the formation of the NCLR, is once again preparing to hit the national capital with a mass rally of one lakh landless people from across the country.