PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 355
I feel very aghast as to what is going to happen to this country and its national production of food, if this kind of agricultural system continues. I would have very much liked if the State had acquired all these properties and kept the land as State land and given it on permanent tenancy to cultivators so that the State would have had the right to create collective farming and co-operative farming on the basis of supplying the materials and so on and so forth. But now we have a large ‘number of landless labourers in this country, and I think their number will exceed even five crores. But when you make these laws, making the tiller of the soil the owner of it, what provision can you make for the welfare of these landless labourers ? They will remain where they are—high and dry— notwithstanding the abolition of the zamindars. I am, therefore, not very happy at what is being done. But that is a different question altogether. The question we are considering now is whether the intermediaries should be allowed to continue. That is the point, and on the point, I think there can be no dispute that the intermediaries should be liquidated, without any kind of interference from the Fundamental Rights either on the ground that there is no adequate compensation or that a discrimination has been made. I have got with me a very interesting paper which I secured from the Government of West Bengal. Hon Members will remember that there was a Commission called the Floud Commission, appointed for the purpose of liquidating the zamindars in Bengal. After that Commission had reported, the Government of Bengal appointed a special officer in order to find out how effect could be given to the recommendations of the Floud Commission and that officer has made a very interesting report. I have got a copy, but as I said, I have not got the time now to go through the whole of it. But that officer himself recommended that equality of compensation would be wrong. It would be neither just nor equitable, though it may be administratively smooth. He has worked out a scheme of compensation which is very interesting, and the scheme is one of graded compensation. In the case of profits up to Rs. 2,000 the compensation should be fifteen times the net profit. From Rs. 2,000 up to Rs. 5,000 it should be twelve times but not less than the maximum