A crisis exploited

The new land-related ordinance is problematic. To solve one problem, it will create many others.

The right to dignified life guaranteed by the new constitution indisputably includes the right to have a roof over your head. But to build a home, you first need a piece of land. Yet tens (perhaps hundreds) of thousands of Nepali citizens own no land. The Land Related Problems Resolution Commission, formed by the current government last October, is in the process of evaluating over a million applications for land. Any way you look at it, landlessness is a big—and growing—problem in Nepal. Yet, instead of looking to solve the problem, the political parties have time and again sought to use the issue to extract political benefits. This is the reason successive governments have formed their own commissions to look into the issue; the current one is the 16th such commission formed since the restoration of democracy in 1990. The malafide intent of the current Oli government is evident in the Ordinance to Amend Some Nepal Acts Related to Land that it is in the process of being tabled in Parliament for final approval. Among its other problematic provisions, first, the ordinance allows lands provided by the state for certain purposes to be sold as normal land if they exceed the new land ceiling.