A BIT of information provided by the Punjab law minister on Friday has provided a revealing peep into a very complicated affair. The minister was responding to a question when he said the army controls a total of 395,576 acres of land in Punjab. The army is using this land for cultivation and dairy farming and maintaining the income and expenditure records associated with these lands. The use of the word 'control' was significant because a large number of tenants in the province have pinned their hopes for ownership on this point. Tenants on military farms in Punjab have been fighting for ownership rights and, short of that, a fair agreement that allows them just rewards for their labour. Their case is based on the argument that the land they have been tilling for a few generations actually belongs to the state, which had leased it out to the army among many lessees. They have been protesting the defence ministry's decision of the year 2000 which requires them to pay rent for the land they cultivate, instead of the old arrangement under which they paid their dues to the authorities in the form of a share of the harvest.

There are actually two systems in place; one overseen by the Punjab government, the other by the army. But while the demands for uniformity have been getting louder, the stakeholders have yet to gather around one table to sort out the matter. Attempts made at addressing the tenancy issue as a whole have been at best half-hearted, such as the unclear Punjab Conferment of Proprietary Rights on Occupancy Tenants Muqarraaridars Bill 2011, which was withdrawn last month in the face of joint opposition by the treasury and the opposition. This aloofness leaves the ground even more fertile for discomfiture and dissent.