Inheritance Or Loss
Some conflicts that you enjoy watching from the sidelines, may affect you in ways you can’t even imagine. I realized this the other day, watching news with my Nana.
It was not anything outside the sensationalized prime time debate, if you may call it that, that we are now so accustomed to having shoved down our throat. This one was about the political standoff regarding the Land Bill in the Indian Parliament. The senseless dirt slinging from less than eloquent spokespersons and an over enthusiastic anchor was getting to me, when my grandfather muted the television and broke into one of his ‘blast from the past’ stories that I love so much.
His father was a landlord in a prosperous village in Haryana. He died a pre-mature death, leaving behind all the lush agricultural land and the resulting produce trade to his only legitimate son, my grandfather. Nana left the village to join the defence forces, leaving the land to be managed by the Panchayat. In due course of time, he found out that his father had also left him three half-brothers and a step-mother, who turned up to claim their share of the land after the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 was passed. Without any sort of a Will, a conflict began in different district courts regarding the inheritance of the priced land. Due to lack of resources for a legal battle and poor understanding of laws, the matter remains unresolved till date.
That land lies encroached by hundreds of families today, who have assumed it to be a public space available for anyone to pocket. If the proposed Land Bill were to pass, the landowners in the area could be compensated with around 5-6 times the actual value of their agricultural land’s valuation.
My Nana is living a comfortable retired life, and has no plan of going to the village and fighting for that land. But had his father left behind a real Will instead of a last spoken word declaring him as the sole heir, Nana today might have had a little piece of fortune to call his own, and pass down his generations. My great-grandfather met with a fatal accident while riding his horse, at the age of 42. You might not ride horses, but surely it’s not too early to write a Will? Read more
