The movement gained impetus in the 1990s with the support of several civil society organisations and social activists, forcing the government to regularise encroachments on gairan land. Several other such orders have followed, but most remain only on paper.

The Jamin Adhikar Andolan (JAA), a network of CSOs working on the gairan land issue, faces several major challenges:

• It has to fight for uniform implementation of regularising gairan land possession.
• It has to combat upper caste violence against dalits in general.
• It has to help gairan land occupiers get the necessary inputs and training to ensure a secure livelihood from agriculture.

The last challenge has been taken up, under the PACS Programme, by Action for Agricultural Renewal in Maharashtra ( AFARM), a large network of voluntary organisations.

In association with three network partners (Rural Development Centre, Beed; Paryay, Osmanabad; and Jan Vikas Samajik Sanstha, Beed), which are key members of the JAA, AFARM is helping gairan land owners develop their land and earn a sustainable livelihood.

The project is being implemented in the districts of Beed, Osmanabad, Nanded, Latur and Aurangabad, and covers 6,000 dalit families in 240 villages.

Among the people covered are 60 dalit families that have occupied barren government land in Nithur village in Nilanga taluka, Latur district, since 1975.

While the land has not yet been officially transferred in their names, despite several agitations, these families have managed to turn the barren land into fertile and productive assets, against several odds.

Like most gairan land occupiers, the dalits of Nithur:

• Did not possess any agricultural equipment and had little knowledge of agricultural practices.
• Did not receive any help from the government or people belonging to other castes in the village.
• Were entirely dependent on the rains.
• Were not eligible for government schemes.

The PACS Programme project in Nithur began in January 2006, with 28 acres of land out of a total of 74 hectares of encroached land selected for development. The land was so selected that one acre per landholder was covered.

The development activities undertaken were multifaceted and integrated. They included:

• Soil conservation efforts.
• Low-cost manufacturing of bio-organic fertiliser.
• Adoption of scientific cropping patterns.
• Use of dryland plantation techniques.

Training and demonstrations in the above areas was provided by AFARM partner Jan Vikas Samajik Sanstha (JVSS). AFARM provided the initial training to JVSS, and the latter, in turn, helped build the capacities of the landholders. Twenty-five landholders in Nithur have been trained in methods to protect the soil, and organic farming.

There has been a lot of improvement in soil quality due to training inputs, says one of the trainees, Sakharabai Shinde. As a result, for the first time, the land owners cultivated a variety of crops like moong, tur, jowar and soybean in 2006. The once-barren land is now green and full of crops.

People have also planted fruit trees around their cropped land, and training in proper plantation techniques has been imparted.

(This story is based on inputs provided by Sampark, the PACS Programme’s communications agency for Maharashtra)