If the tiller is not empowered, employment opportunities in agriculture will go on shrinking, or at least would not go up. If there is no empowerment of workers and the small entrepreneur, employment in industries will go down rather than up. Without the masses being empowered in the segments of health and education, there cannot be any increase in the productivity and employment at all. Employment can never be seen in isolation without the dynamics of empowerment added. A series of waves must be created through wider ranges of mass movements to make the politico-economic empowerment of the masses a reality.
The greatest strategy of empowerment of the rural poor in the villages is land reforms. The budget has increased the allotment in this segment from Rs 30 crore to Rs 70 crore this year. The overall allocation in agriculture has been doubled to Rs 100 crore. The state government shall step up the process of purchasing land from the open market and hand them over to small peasants at no cost at all. Upto 15 per cent premium is paid on the land prices to make the sellers find it attractively profitable to sell land to the state government.
Once the land is vested and then transferred, the government shall provide the ancillaries for agriculture and farming, with allocation made for creating a fund for setting up shelter for the poor peasants. There is already in existence a provident fund scheme run by the state Left Front government for the landless agricultural lab
