Kaumudi Amma, the wife of the late G. Aravindan, is happy to return with a favorable decision after waiting for 25 years, thanks to Kerala government's 'Santwana Sparsham' Adalat held at Kunnamkulam on Tuesday.

The unprecedented crowd at the Adalats now taking place at various centers shows how lazily the government procedures are moving, given the normal circumstances. Take the case of the late film director Aravindan's wife Kaumudi Amma. The land that her husband bought during his lifetime is still lying in the revenue record as paddy field and nothing can be done about it. The law does not allow anything other than cultivation, even if the land registered as land under the Land Registration Act has been converted into land. The property owner can only exchange five or ten cents for residential purposes. There are many steps to be taken for that. In short, the condition of those who own such land is deplorable. When Aravindan bought land in Cheruthuruthy in 1987, the current strict law was not in vogue at that time.

Yet his wife had to wait for a quarter of a century to get the classification of the land changed. Although the Santwana Sparsam was organized at the end of the tenure of the government, it was good that a favorable decision was taken on her application. The Minister of Education Raveendranath, who was in charge of the Adalat in Thrissur, asked the RDO to register the land as land.

Tens of thousands of people seek the mercy at the adalat through various departments. If so many people want to go to court, neglecting the possibility of contracting the disease as the spread of covid continues to be severe, it shows the helplessness of the common man. There is unpardonable delay in getting government services. One can only imagine the plight of a citizen who has to wait for years, not months, after giving the application. If you look at the Adalats that are organized once in a while, one can guess the amount of hardships the comman man has to undergo to get justice.

Many ordinary families in the state are caught in the red-tapeism of land conservation regulations. It is always the common people who are most adversely affected by any kind of regulation. Only a small section of the people who seek redressal in the courts get relief. Those who return disappointed will have to wait indefinitely again.

Kerala Conservation of Paddy Land and Wetland Act, 2008 has helped to extend the life of paddy fields. But the issue of paddy fields that were converted to land years before the law came into force remains a big question mark.

In the seventies, there were five million hectares of fields in the state. Now it is only two lakh hectares. In a state where a piece of land is more precious than gold, every square foot of land is precious. It is of no use to anyone in the State if such land remains useless just because it is written as wet land or paddy land in the property document.

The government has a responsibility to open its eyes and see the suffering of the common man on this issue. This problem cannot be resolved in the adalats alone.