Gramdan Village Gift Movement

Description

Occupy Secession:

"One important model for this (land) reform is the work of Vinoba Bhave, the trusted associate of Gandhi. In the 1950s Vinoba walked from village to village in India seeking a way to alleviate the widening social disparities he saw. Wherever he went, crowds gathered to listen to their beloved spiritual leader. Vinoba asked boldly, “Those of you with more land than you need, would you not give your excess to my brothers and sisters who have no land to build their homes or cultivate their crops?” Moved by the man and his appeal, wealthy villagers deeded their land to Vinoba so that he could reconvey it to the landless.

In this way the Bhoodan, or Land Gift, movement was born. But soon Vinoba saw that the poor, who did not have the money to buy tools to work the land and seeds to sow it, simply sold the land back to the wealthy. They then wandered into the even greater poverty of the cities; therefore, Vinoba changed the Bhoodan movement to the Gramdan, or Village Gift, movement. The land was given to the village, and villagers were given use rights. They were not tempted to trade the land for quick money. If they left the land, it was redistributed to those who could use it.

The Gramdan movement was introduced to this country by Robert Swann, founding President of the E. F. Schumacher Society. A carpenter by trade, he used his skills during the civil rights movement of the 1960s to help rebuild bombed churches in the rural South. There he met Slater King, the cousin of Martin Luther King, and other civil rights leaders. From them he learned that African-Americans were being prevented from gaining access to land. It was a pressing problem that fueled the civil unrest.

Bob worked with Slater King to adopt Vinoba’s model. New Communities in rural Georgia was the first community land trust in North America, formed to provide access to land for African-American farmers. There are now more than one hundred community land trusts around the United States in both urban and rural communities—started by church groups, community development corporations, concerned citizens, conservation groups, and state agencies. As each new initiative breaks ground in its region, develops a land use plan, provides a lease, and secures a mortgage, the understanding that there are alternatives to private land tenure grows." (http://occupysecession.com/2012/07/18/new-agrarians-local-innovators/)