Jagat Basnet

Jagat Basnet is pursuing land reform in Nepal by linking the issue to social justice and economic freedom. Empowering and enabling poor farmers to gain access to land rights, education rights, health and basic services for social dignity, and freedom out of poverty. Jagat is changing the political, cultural, and societal environment of land reform and land access in Nepal.

In a nation where land rights are tantamount to citizenship and landlessness begets poverty, Jagat is leading a movement that helps landless and tenant farmers to gain legal entitlement to the land they and their families have tilled for generations. 
While many development agencies work for rural poverty alleviation, Jagat works at the crux of the problem, supporting famers in their applications for land rights and empowering them to become not just skilled farmers, but skilled negotiators and leaders with landlords, government officials, and the general public. Through his organization, the Community Self-Reliance Center (CSRC), Jagat enables farmers to help themselves and each other as they learn how to file or fight for land rights, read, adopt new agricultural practices, and support one another as a unified group in society. 
As he partners with Nepali and international citizen organizations (COs) and facilitates the formation of tiller’s organizations or people's organizations, on a regional and national level, Jagat is helping farmers not only to negotiate their right to land access with their landlords, but with the larger society as well. In the process, Jagat and his organizations are changing the way the government and the people think about and support land reform in Nepal while also securing land rights for thousands of Nepali famers.

Over 85 percent of the Nepali population is solely dependent on farming for their food and livelihoods. Land not only provides food and income for farmers, but also access to the basic rights of citizenship, healthcare, and education. Without land rights, it is nearly impossible for farmers to purchase electricity, receive bank loans, or apply for agricultural subsidies. Societal recognition and respect depend dearly on land ownership and tilling rights, yet many farmers do not have ownership or access rights to the land they till. A majority of these farmers form the 31 percent of the Nepali population living in absolute poverty.

According to the Nepal Human Development Report in 2004, the top 5 percent of the population owns nearly 37 percent of the total land in Nepal. Politicians and bureaucrats, who do not directly engage in farming own most of the land, while poor tenants who have been tilling the land for decades, are landless and liable to be evicted from the land without warning. Despite legislation to end the categorization of population groups like the Kamaiyas and Haliyas or Haruwa (plougher) as indentured servants, many of these groups and other tenant farmers are still held in debt to their landlords and have been for generations. The little capital these farmers earn is barely enough to pay off rents, interests, and taxes to the landlords. In many cases, most of the agricultural produce also goes directly to the landlords.

While the first Land Reform Act in 1964 made provisions for these landless and tenant farmers to seek tenancy rights and provisional certificates, many farmers do not have the information or literacy they need to apply for tenancy rights. In many cases farmers also lack the negotiating skills and the bargaining power needed to come to new agreements with their landlords who may still evict them on a moment’s notice. Thus, despite the poverty and vulnerability associated with landlessness, it is estimated that there are still more than 1 million poor households tilling the land without the security of legal rights to their land resources.

Jagat believes that entitlement to land is the first step towards gaining rights to education, economic freedom, and a developed sense of dignity, security, and independence. With land rights encompassing an array of pressing issues, from popular education to changing cultural caste norms and exploitative practices, Jagat works towards solutions on three different levels. Jagat, and his organizations are creating a new land culture in Nepal by working with individual farmers through the process of claiming land rights, forming and strengthening tiller’s organizations to facilitate skill-building and negotiation, and working with nationally-organized groups of tillers, COs, and policy makers to change land norms and policy for the entire country of Nepal.

Since founding the CSRC in 1993 with a group of colleagues, Jagat has supported and educated individual tenant farmers in their struggle to obtain land rights. The CSRC supports tenants in the process of filling out the legal documents required to file for land rights and to obtain the necessary receipts for work or produce from their landlords to present in court. Jagat empowers the few literate farmers in each village to become facilitators and supporters for the non-literate tenant farmers of their communities, helping them fill out their applications and fulfill further legal procedures. Thus far, 523 facilitators have been trained from various communities with the goal being to have ten core facilitators in each district. With each successful land right recovery case, Jagat and his staff prepare a case study and context map and encourage farmers to discuss and share their experiences, focusing on both the pre and post recovery problems and issues.

While education and support for tenant farmers is crucial to ending poverty and gaining land rights among the landless, Jagat realizes land rights cannot be granted nor maintained fairly without fostering a community of respect among all of the key actors. Jagat believes that while academics, COs, and the media can play important supporting roles for landless farmers, it must be the landless themselves who are empowered and skilled enough to negotiate with their landlords and the broader society. Therefore, Jagat forms tillers’ organizations which focus on the capacity-building of tenants. He educates them about land-related conflicts and trains them to become leaders, campaigners, negotiators, and facilitators. These tillers’ organizations organize street theaters in village courtyards, depicting personal stories of the tillers and the landlords. Since illiteracy is often at the crux of land rights issues, Jagat integrates skills-building with adult literacy programs called popular education where land poor people gather and discuss issues/situations and also read and write as per their need and interest. For farmers who have successfully won land rights and those in the process of doing so, Jagat is helping farmers make their land more productive and diversify crops, linking them to local Agricultural Centers for maximum education and support. At the same time, Jagat initiates a market linkage strategy for the famers, providing access to irrigation and technology through financial assistance from international support organizations. He started this model in Sindhupalchok, replicated it in other twenty-two districts and continues to expand this work.

At a regional level, the CSRC facilitators and tillers’ organizations hold meetings and engage in negotiations with landlords, local government officials, and other COs. These discussions bring the key players to the table in a peaceful way to discuss the legitimacy of land rights and security of tenure for farmers. In many cases, these discussions are crucial to changing the mindset of landlords and officials who may turn from adversaries to supporters in the course of many conversations. To anchor the political and societal discussion of land rights on a national and international level, Jagat founded the National Land Rights Forum (NLRF) and the National Land Rights Concern Group. The NLRF brings together representatives from the tillers’ organizations and holds discussions on the issue of policy change, while the National Land Rights Concern Group is an alliance of twenty-seven COs and like-minded individuals who gather for national strategy conferences and discussions. The Forum attracts media attention and brings land and livelihood rights to the forefront of societal discussion. Through collaboration between these organizations, the tillers’ organizations, and other stakeholders’ organizations, Jagat lobbies for policy change to address the social and economic issues of land reform. Using pressure from the CSRC and the NLRF, Jagat successfully moved the government to include land reform in its five-year Interim plan of Nepal. (It was five years because of the political change and transitional phase. The Government of Nepal prepared three years’ strategic plan.) Jagat also lobbies the government for more transparency in its decision-making and encourages the dissemination of public information through mainstream media. This work has attracted recognition and financial support from many international organizations like Action Aid, CARE Nepal, and Danida-Human Rights.

As of 2007, over 53,000 landless farmers and 25,500 tenant farmers have petitioned for land rights with the help of the CSRC and its related organizations. Jagat and his organizations have reached over 1.6 million people, spreading awareness and education. Over 2,000 leaders have been trained from this group and over 13,400 land petitions have been settled. Now, 22,750 more people have citizenship certificates through CSRC’s efforts. Currently, Jagat and the CSRC work and support various local organizations in thirty-four districts of Nepal. Jagat’s focus is on the formation of tillers’ organizations in every district to continue supporting landless and tenant farmers as the drivers of the campaign for their rights to access and farm their land.

Born in a rural district of Sindhupalchok in central Nepal, Jagat faced poverty from an early age. His family was often forced to borrow food from relatives and suffered from diseases caused by a lack of proper hygiene and sanitation. In addition to their deep poverty, Jagat’s family endured the usurpation of their rightful land by their neighbor. Jagat realized that it was his father’s lack of education and understanding of his rights that allowed the neighbor to seize the land. He vowed to work for his family and all other peasants toiling and facing eviction from their land.

As a teenager, Jagat walked two hours each day to attend school, driven by his pledge to work towards alleviating poverty and injustice through rightful means. He became the first to graduate from high school in his village and remained committed to his fellow villagers, volunteering for years as a primary school teacher. While teaching “health science” to fifth graders, he encouraged many uneducated parents through his students to build pit latrines in their homes. With his dedication and persistent efforts, he upgraded the school to a secondary level institution in his VDC. He campaigned around his village to enroll girls in schools and, as a result, a majority of the villagers now send their daughters for primary education today. He raised funds for the school and later became involved in adult literacy and women’s issues, further gaining his village’s trust and respect.

In 1993, Jagat started CSRC with a group of teachers and like-minded villagers to widen his outreach initiatives. Once the organization was formally registered, he expanded its membership to nearby villages. He was awarded the Maja Koene Social Activist Award (2006) from India for his commitment in undertaking a nonviolent civil movement and struggling for land and livelihood rights of the poor. Today, his actions have benefited thousands of landless tillers all over Nepal.