Consequences of the State Land Alienation Programme in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Land alienation programmes are famous worldwide as a strategy to distribute land among the landless people in a country. Sri Lanka also introduced this programme in history with the same objective. Since the programme now has come to the third generation of the inhabitants, negative consequences are arising. There is meager evidence of formal research findings covering the most important consequences of Sri Lanka's State Land Alienation Programme to date. Hence, the main intention of this research is to analyze the significant consequences of the State Land Alienation Programme in Sri Lanka from the perspectives of both professionals and inhabitants. Other than the social, economic, and environmental variables identified from scholarly research a new variable is also introduced as ‘political concerns.’ The research strategy incorporates both qualitative and quantitative approaches. Data was collected from 100 inhabitants and was used for the quantitative analysis, including descriptive analysis, correlation, and regression whereas the data collected through in depth interviews from five (05) officials involved in the land alienation programme was used for the qualitative analysis under the content analysis. The results demonstrate that among the consequences, social issues are significant both in the quantitative and qualitative outcomes. The findings of this study will be useful to all key stakeholders and policymakers involved in land administration in the country, particularly in revisiting the land alienation process and revising some regulations to mitigate negative consequences.