476 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
of consolidated holdings cannot be expected to bring real relief. Instead it will only serve to be a legal eyewash. This becomes easy of comprehension if we realize at the start what the one man rule of succession means in actual practice. For this we shall have to note the changes it will introduce in the survey records. At present according to the Bombay Land Revenue Code Chapter I, Section 3, clause (6).
“Survey Number” means a portion of land of which the area and other particulars are separately entered, under an indicative number in the survey records of the village, town or city in which it is situated, and includes a recognized share of a survey number. Again by clause (7).
“Recognized share of a survey number” means a sub-division of a survey number separately assessed and registered.
After the adoption of the one man rule of succession a survey number will be made to cover a piece of land which will be of the size fixed for an ideal economic holding. Secondly, it will be necessary to refuse separate registration to any sub-division of such a survey number ; i.e., in order that a piece of land should be registered with a separate and a distinct survey number it must not be below the economic limit. Then too this survey number covering a piece of land large enough to be styled economic will be registered in the name of one person. This is precisely what will happen if we put into practice the project of the Baroda Committee. Mr. Keatinge instead of having one survey number covering a large and compact holding will have in the name of one person many survey numbers covering a unit of land composed of small and scattered fields. Abandoning Mr. Keatinge’s scheme as serving no practical purpose the one man rule of succession to a consolidated holding means in practice refusal to recognize legally a piece of land if it were below a certain size. Now this refusal to recognize smaller pieces of land, it is claimed, will prevent the sub-division of a consolidated holding. Sub-division of land may be due to many causes the operation of which is rendered economic or uneconomic by the nature of the occasion which evokes it. Not to allow sub-division on any ground, as does Mr. Keatinge, is to cause a serious depreciation of the value of land. But if sub-division is needed as when the stock has depleted, not to grant it is to create an uneconomic situation—a result just opposite of what is intended to be achieved, apart from this to prevent sub-division legally is not to prevent it actually, if necessitated by the weight of economic circumstances. Granting the pressure of population on land and the scanty agricultural equipment—evils to which the authors of consolidation and enlargement have paid no attention—we must look forward to the sub-division of holdings. If we legislate in the face of this inevitable tendency and refuse to record on our survey roll holdings below a certain limit required for a separate survey number we will not only fail to cure what we must know