Dhenkanal Diary: The Wall On My Land

Land is a precious commodity in Dhenkanal and there’s no escaping wheeler-dealers if you have an ancestral or a self-owned patch here. A mini industry of sorts with an assortment of dubious characters has flourished around land and don’t be shocked if you get into their clutches while trying to sort property matters. The problem is particularly acute if you have been away for a long and unmindful of your real estate and left it unused.

Here’s the experience of a gentleman with plans to settle down in Dhenkanal after retirement. His plans included scientific farming on a stretch of ancestral land for recreational as well as commercial purpose. His first visit threw a nasty surprise. Sturdy walls had come up in two places, blocking off his access to the rest of the land. Evidence of encroachment was clear. Then began the whole rigmarole of reclamation – informing the encroacher, calling amins to take fresh measurements, involving a lawyer, summoning local support, bringing in a JCB to demolish the walls and so on.

“Trust me,” he confided later, “It’s not an easy job. It consumes your time, energy and money. The onus is on the owner to clear the mess. First, the encroacher plays hard to get, then you need to track down reliable surveyors between all this there are thinly veiled threats to back off and suggestions to sell off the said land cheaply to the guilty party. If you don’t display official muscle or work your local networks, chances are you would end up on the losing side. I was fortunate. Think of landowners who have lost the local connect.”

Upon discreet inquiry, you discover that walls are just one way the skullduggery plays out. If your land is away from the road, you have to either pay a hefty amount for access or sell it way below market price to the owners of land closer to the road. They call it ‘fine’ here. The price quoted is random, and usually exorbitant. Also, natural water sources of farmland are choked deliberately to render the targetted land uncultivable. The owner then would abandon farming plans and try to dispose of his property. Plotting is big business now, particularly on both sides of the bypass road. All kinds of dirty games come into play in acquiring more saleable land.

The district administration needs to intervene forcefully to curb the trend. Land is precious. It should be so for the rightful owners, not sharks seeking to profiteer through chicanery.