Laugh, and then think

You get the general idea. Mritak Sangh’s members are those who have been officially declared dead by relatives, acquisition of the dead person’s land being the objective. Once you are declared dead, it is difficult to prove you are alive. Forming an association helps. Several such instances were reported in 1999 and 2000, especially from Azamgarh district in UP, and Mritak Sangh was formed, with Lal Bihari as the founder. Depending on whom you believe, it has between 25 and 10,000 members. Don’t misunderstand. This is not the number of living dead, it is of Mritak Sangh members.

In 1975, Lal Bihari discovered he had been declared dead by his uncle. Had he not applied for a bank loan, he might not have discovered it until much later. It doesn’t require much to get a death certificate issued under the Registration of Births and Deaths Act of 1969. An application, a medical certificate confirming death, an affidavit and a copy of a ration card (or other proof of identity) of the applicant will do. Technically, the police station is supposed to check before a death certificate is issued. But presumably, corruption takes care of that. Now you need to apply to the land registry office to get land transferred and corruption takes care of that as well. As far as I can make out, the Registration Act of 1908 and accompanying rules cover registration of agricultural land and these also provide for penalties for fraudulent registration by registration officers. But when are such penalties ever enforced?

How do you prove you are alive, especially if a case is stuck in court for 25 years? Lal Bihari tried publicity — get arrested, stand for Parliament, attract contempt charges by courts, write pamphlets, organise your own funeral, demand a widow’s pension for your wife, add the word Mritak to your name. All these would have publicly acknowledged that he existed. It took 19 years, from 1975 to 1994, for him to prove he was alive, thanks to help from the district magistrate. Having been reincarnated, Lal Bihari became the champion of other living dead, through Mritak Sangh.

Nothing much might have happened, had it not been for a report in Time magazine in 1999, picked up by newspapers from Australia to Zimbabwe. Allahabad high court took suo motu notice of the report and Justices Dhawan and Dikshit directed the district administration to pool information on such dead people walking and place it before the district chief judicial magistrate. How do you collect such information? Make announcements through local newspapers and radio so that people declared dead in revenue records approach the gram pradhan. This exercise had a timeframe of September 1999. In this limited exercise conducted in Azamgarh district, 80 such dead cases were identified. Thirty dead people were rehabilitated, that is, declared alive. But only around four got their land back. Sixteen guilty revenue record officials were identified. The court wanted them to be criminally prosecuted. How many have been prosecuted and, if prosecuted, how many have been punished? I don’t know and the answer probably is, none at all.

This doesn’t solve the systemic problem. In Azamgarh, under instructions from the high court, the district magistrate was given 10 computers to computerise land records. Computerisation of land records is high on the e-governance initiatives of many states. Bhoomi in Karnataka is not the only one. There is AP and now there is Rajasthan. Since 1988-89, there has also been a centrally-sponsored scheme for computerising land records. Computerisation has its uses and makes the search function easier. Getting certificates of titles becomes faster. And some corruption is eliminated. But if the original data are wrong, it doesn’t help. The word cadastral means a survey, for example, of land ownership and can be used for revenue collection. When was the last cadastral survey in India undertaken? I have asked several knowledgeable people and everyone agrees no surveys have been done since Independence. The only precise date I have is the 1920s, presumably, for some states. To recheck, I have gone through all the 10 Plan documents and find each one made this point about cadastral surveys being necessary. For example, the Sixth Plan said, “Systematic programmes would be taken up for compilation/updating of land records for completion within a period of five years, i.e., 1980-1985… Each cultivator would be given a passbook indicating his status/title to description of the land — viz., area, cess, etc — along with a copy of khasra/map and other details considered necessary. Appropriate provision will be made in revenue laws to confer legal status on these documents as proof of title and rights in land.”

This hasn’t happened. And Lal Biharis will continue to receive Ig Nobel prizes. The Ig Nobel prizes state, ‘‘The winners have all done things that first make people laugh, then make them think.’’ I find it especially poignant that these prizes were awarded on October 2. Should make us think.