Land Reforms in Andhra Pradesh

Land Reforms were introduced in late 60's, and different states implemented at various times between late 60's and 70's. In most of the states (may be in all the states), the way they implemented was really bad for all the landlords.

This act caused lot of problems to many people in Andhra Pradesh. The surprising thing for me was, P.V.Narasima Rao (Who started economic reforms in India) was the main person who implemented major part in Andhra Pradesh.

When this act came into rule, effective that day, a family was allowed to have only certain limit of the land. If any family had more than the limit, that was taken over by the government and given it to the poor people who did not have land. All the land transactions and divorce cases in the last 6 months were reviewed, and in many cases, they cancelled those transactions, and did not consider those. (Few people had taken divorce for the name sake, so that, they become two families, and hence can keep extra land.)

If the government does not want one person having huge land, then they should have given enough notice to all the people who have more than a limit to sell the land to others before the reasonable deadline. If they don't sell the land before the deadline, then the land can be taken over by the government. But, government did not do it, and they had done it in (almost) retrospective.

The way, they implemented was so bad that, it caused many problems in the state. There were many families who had bought land just before the act came into rule by taking loan. After this act came into rule, the government had taken over the excess land. To repay the loan, they had to sell the remaining land they had, and finally end up losing everything. Many families collapsed because of this act.

In those days, if the land owner dies, then the legal heirs were not pro-active in registering the land with their names. Because of that, according to the documents, the land belongs to someone who had died 20 years back. But, if they were pro-active in registering, now, the same land may belong to 5-6 people. If the government goes according to the documents, and if the land crosses the ceiling limit, the government will take over the excess land. If the government allows the legal heirs to register with their names, then there may not be any excess land.

After the government took over the excess land from others, it distributed evenly to all the poor people who did not have land. Because of the distribution to everyone evenly, the land that everyone got was very less (may be in the order of 10 cents (0.1 acre) or so). Farming anything less than 2 acres of land is unproductive. The farmer cannot live on land less than 2 acres. The expenditure for farming is very huge for small land when compared to the returns. When the government distributed the land to the poor people, nobody's life got changed because of that (may be except those who sold their land unofficially and got enough money to live for sometime).

After the government brought this rule, many people went to courts, and lawyers became very prosperous. The government spent more money in implementing the ceiling act (including the court cases) than the value of the land that it got.

Eventhough government knew these things before itself, but, changing any of those would have been suicidal for the political party. So, they went ahead with their plans to save their party and finally destroyed many families and made big loss to the state.

The insider written by P.V.Narasimha Rao is an inspired life story of P.V.Narasimha Rao from his birth till 1973 (When his term finished as the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh). Apart from the general politics during that time, it dealt mainly with the land reforms. He wrote this book after his retirement from politics (after he implemented free-market economics). Still, he wrote that book as a supporter of the land reforms. On a side note, his close friend Aruna in his book was Lakshmi Kanthamma.

Asalem Jarigindante written by P.V.R.K.Prasad (Secretary to P.V.Narasimha Rao, when he was C.M. of A.P as well as when he was P.M.) also has few articles about land reforms. Most of the above points are taken from that book only.

God Sent Me to Show How to Play Cricket

Courtesy: Rajesh Tiruveedula

Joke on Intel and McAfee

Intel CEO: "We need antivirus, can someone buy me McAfee?"
Few hours later,
"Done."
"Great, which version?"
"Version ... ?"

I read this joke few days back, and I could not understand it. Today, I understood it after reading the news that, Intel bought McAfee.

Unnecessary Expenditure by the Government

Recently, Government started a new scheme by which, it pays Rs.35,000 per annum per student to the corporate junior colleges as the fees for the selected poor students. Government has allocated more than Rs.21 crore for this. If the same money is allocated to improve the government junior colleges, the number of beneficiaries would increase by atleast 10 times.

Government is ready to give Rs.25,000 for an operation to the corporate hospital in the name of Arogya sri, but, it is not interested in giving resources worth of Rs.5,000 to a government hospital which can do the same operation. Government is ready to spend lakhs of rupees for an operation, but, is not ready to spend Rs.10 per person for the medicine which will prevent the disease in the first place.

Government may say that, they want to give quality service to the poor people by this. But, first government should provide basic necessities to everyone and if it has surplus money, then it can improve in other aspects. When there are many people who are not getting basic health/education, instead of providing them less expensive facilities, if government takes more expensive approach just for very selected people, that does not do any good for the state.

Mail Alerts on Way2sms - IISc Life (BhOndOO)

We can setup email alerts by SMS from way2sms. If we setup email alerts on way2sms, and if anyone sends mail to <OurId>@way2sms.com, then they would send SMS to us with the sender and subject of the mail.

This is a really good feature from way2sms. But, the problem is, the mail alerts expire exactly after 14 days from the date of activation. Before expiring the alerts, they don't give option to renew. After expiring, you will not get mail alerts till you activate the alerts again. This is one big drawback in this.

With Way2sms, we can send an SMS in future (in the next 10 days). What I used to do was, I used to setup a future SMS alert as a remainder to renew my alerts. After 10 days, when I get the SMS alert, I used to setup another future SMS alert for 4 more days as a remainder. Even then, there was a loss of alerts for few hours.

Now, I realized that, there is much simpler way. After 10 days, I can deactivate the mail alerts, and activate it again. With that, it will expire 14 days after the re-activation, and I can have another SMS alert in 10 days. With that, I don't lose even a single mail alert.

Update: With ibibo.com also, we can setup mail alerts, and there is no need to renew mail alerts. But, it sends few promotional SMSes once in a while.

IISc Life

IISc Life is a very good blog written by my classmate Rupesh Nasre. I like the stories of bhOndOO very much. If you have some interest in reading love stories or humour stories, then I would strongly advise you to read the bhOndOO stories.

After reading the story, Does she love me?, I thought, I should not delay any time in reading the stories of bhOndOO. As soon as the article is published, I should read the story. I use google reader for reading anything. But, the frequency is not high enough and SLA for reading this blog will not be met with this. I asked for enabling the posts via mail, and he enabled it. Even that did not meet my SLA. I created way2sms mail account, and I enabled forwarding of the blog mails to my way2sms email account and enabled mail alerts. So, whenever there is any post, I get mail on my gmail account, which forwards to my way2sms account, which sends an SMS alert to my mobile. I have GPRS on my mobile, and can browse from my mobile. So, except when I am in sleep, I can read the posts within half an hour after posting it in iisc.wordpress.com. With that, I have met my SLA, and my way2sms mail account is exclusively used for sending this alerts only.