Strengthening Democratic Rights: A Policy Analysis of Common Land Rights for Scheduled Castes in Punjab
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.62656/Keywords:
Democracy, Common Land, Untouchable, AccessAbstract
While India is the biggest democracy of the world, there is little attention paid to socio-economic inequalities especially to lower caste and untouchable people, as they are excluded in every sphere of life from antiquity to present. In political sphere, there is equality, one man, one vote, one vote and one value but in socio-economic life, there are still inequalities. There is no meaning of the right to vote for the people of downtrodden, untouchable who are still struggling for their basic legal land rights. According to Census of India 2011 Punjab has highest percentage of Scheduled Castes population in India (31.94%) but they own only 3.20 percent of agricultural land. Majority of SC population (73.33%) is living in rural Punjab but very few (6.02%) of them are cultivators. Because of landlessness scheduled caste people of Punjab started struggle to get their share in common panchayati lands. Actually government of Punjab has passed Punjab Village Common Lands (Regulation) Act, 1961 which provided 1/3 part of Panchayati Shamlat land is reserved for scheduled castes in Punjab. But in practice scheduled caste people are denied to access this common land by upper caste (Jatt Sikh) people which results a conflicts between these two communities of Punjab. Although everyone has equal rights to access these common land resources but Indian social set up prohibit some sections of the people from the access to commons just because of the caste they belong. The present paper is focused on economic inequalities in Indian democracy especially unequal land rights and unequal access on common lands in Punjab which results caste conflicts over use and access of common land
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