Xferring Farmland From Punjab --> Usa

[Guest OzzySingh]

To WLS and KSS,

Just as you have said one cannot be certain that prices will stop going up one should also not assume prices will keep shooting up. Yeh the fact is land will always rise up in value but the question is, is it always gonna keep Shooting up the way it has been in Punjab and the sensible guess is no it seems unlikely that if the land has multiplied 5 times from 5 lakh per acre to 25 lakh per acre in the past 7 years, that it will then multiply 5 times again in 7 years to an average of 1.25 crore.

Note I'm referring to your average piece of land in the countryside. Land near towns and cities are of course much more likely to shoot up but not everyone has zameen near a city.

Yes the general rule of thumb is that the number of people will keep rising up but land wont suddenly appear out of thin air hence why land is becoming more valuable.

But you need assess the numerous and endless factors that can impact things such as growth of land value in the Punjab.

At the end of the day only God knows what will happen 10 years from now, we can only predict what may or may not happen.

[ks55]

Ozzysingh jeeo point taken and many thanks for the write up very very informative -.

I do love punjab and go there every year but i can't help seeing what the pendoo jatt boot is doing -

I have land near phagwara and i am selling and trying to sell - i would invest a single dime over in this land ever - as it's just not SAFE any more. Our fathers thougt it wouldbe safe and things will change but the brahmin hindu governement has created a BHYIAAASTANN of panjab over the last 20 years - its very very sad and I can't see it getting better especially as have the sixth river of NASHA/DRUGS in punjab and that one is the biggest killer -.

May God help panjab

[West London Singh]

Hi WLS and Kss

I understand your skepticism on the matter and that's fine. I dot expect anyone to believe me, especially because it seems impossible to own so much land in today's time.

As for how come we have land in all 3 areas of Punjab well it's not exactly hard is it? Our ancestral home is in Jalandhar Dist, Nakodar Teh. If you know your geography Nakodar is on the edge of Jalandhar and Ludhiana Dist. We live 15kms away from a bridge that goes over the Sutlej. Once your over, guess what? Your in Ludhiana.

In sorry but what you seem to be saying is 'wow omg you have land in all 3 different areas of Punjab!?!? Impossible!'

No don't get me wrong Ozzy Singh, I don't doubt you, and frankly applaud you and your family for making those investments in land. I too come from an old skool family with much love for land, but we're not as rich as you so have only accumulated a small and modest portfolio of acreage, but we do, whenever possible, keep our eyes and ears open for more land.

I know the area around Nakodar you mention, as our own land is in the same area, but I have to say you are wrong when you equate the difference between doaba and malwa purely in terms of distance in miles and a small bridge. I mean there are parts of the sutlej, especially around the vicinity of the historic Anglo-Sikh battle at Aliwal, where the water is sometimes non-existence so one can practically walk across from doaba to malwa in 5 seconds. But like I said, the difference is not measured in distance. Psycologicaly and historicaly, they are 10,000 miles apart. Up until fairly recently, when the malwais also started being part of the diaspora and thus mixing with the doaba sikhs abroad, there was virtually no inter-marriages between the areas. Thus, it was unheard of for a malwai to own agricultural land in doaba and vice versa. I accept, that with the recent mixing this has now become a common thing. But I still find it difficult to grasp how a Sikh can go into villages where he has no family or clan ties, in areas where he has no family or clan ties and become a zamindar there. I presume in each of your landholdings you have relations sitting as tenants farmimg the land. Seeing as both your paternal and maternal family are doaba based would I be correct in assuming that in each case a family of relatives of yours from doaba has upped sticks and moved to both malwa and majha, into areas where they are strangers, in order to farm the land ?

How does this work ? I'm asking because I have vast experience of rural life and although it is quite common to find people that don't historicaly belong to the village to be there......through either maternal ties or jathera ties.....I have never come across people from differnt regions with no ties there doing the same. Just saying its unusual, thats all.

[Guest OzzySingh]

Well It's been quite good having this discussion and we are only benefitting from sharing ideas and knowledge with one another. You make a very strong point in explaining the cultural differences between the different areas of the Punjab.

Intact it's been quite refreshing meeting someone like myself has been born and brought up outside India yet their family still maintains ties back home.

As for the relative ease in buying and manging our holdings outside Doaba I probably should of mentioned this earlier I have 3 older siblings who like myself were born and brought up in the UK (B4 moving to Oz). The thing is they are all married to partners from respectable families from the Punjab.

My older brother married a girl from a respectable family in Tarn Taran (my bhabi's father farms it for us to this date on rent)

My oldest sister married a well settled family from Samrala, Ludhiana and although they keep on an eye in our land it is rented out to a biofuel company. (my jijaji has a 50% stake in our holdings there)

The other sister married into a family from Doaba.

Basically having family nearby certainly influenced our decision to buy in Malwa and Majha but we are trying to find customers for those areas, in order to buy closer to Jalandhar Dist. it's a shame that property dealings as of now have slowed down quite a bit recently.

Also although I warned in my earlier post of family screwing over family and how one shouldn't disclose too much information, we arent too worried about dumb illiterate punjabi 'thugs' trying to scare us because my father knows a few men high up in the pecking order of Punjabi politics.

Lastly to kindly correct one of your assumptions we are not renting most of our land to relatives or strangers but rather to a large established farming family called the Sangha family who currently farm on rent over 2000 acres all over the Punjab. We have been renting most of our land to them for donkeys years on long term leases and haven't had a single problem.

But yeah that should clear things up.

By the way, which area of west London do you come from?

( we used to live in slough at one point before moving elsewhere in the UK.

[West London Singh]

So I was right then wasn't I Ozzy Singh ! It was only through marriage ties that one could become a zamindar in Doaba, Malwa AND Majha. With my family's ties well and truly doaba I know that although we might (if we had the money) be able to buy commercial and residential property in urban areas of other regions, we could never become rural zamindars in those other regions simply because they are so different and we are so different to them. Apart from when we visit Amritsar, I feel like I'm stepping back a century every time we go through rural majha. And malwa also feels so weird because of the way the wives of the rural sikh zamindars have stupid nose-rings in their noses like gypsies (in rural doaba you distinguish Sikh women from Hindu / Ravidassia women from the fact that the rural Sikh women NEVER EVER wear nose-rings). There are so many differences it is unreal, so lets not even go to the massive dialect differences.

But.....if I were motivated by money.....and were looking to buy jameen not for the honour but for the potential money to be made.....I would probably invest in rural Malwa these days. They're a hundred years behind doaba in the sense of the diaspora creating a seller's market but they are playing catch-up so fast it's unreal. Everything thats happened in doaba of the last 60-70 years is now happening there, now that they have joined the diaspora in large numbers, so I can see huge growths in the price of land there.

btw...I'm from the Hounslow territory of London. For the last 100 years Hounslow has been the traditional home of the Chelsea fan base. (Southall's traditional team was and is either Brentford or QPR). So....no glory hunting here. 'Championes.....Championes...Ole ole ole......Championes...championes...ole ole ole

[gurdssingh]

If you were born outside of India or you were born there but no longer are an indian citizen you can not buy agricultural land. You are allowed to inherited it though. You can buy commercial land or plots in the city are a good way of making a decent profit in just a couple of years.

[ks55]

If you were born outside of India or you were born there but no longer are an indian citizen you can not buy agricultural land. You are allowed to inherited it though. You can buy commercial land or plots in the city are a good way of making a decent profit in just a couple of years.

you're correct but you can get your mum or dad to buy it if they have the indian passports - then you get them to commit a will over to you - which will ensure you will inherit it.

[gurdssingh]

you're correct but you can get your mum or dad to buy it if they have the indian passports - then you get them to commit a will over to you - which will ensure you will inherit it.

I know this because my parents were born in UK btw I'm in my 30's and have kids so we were looking at investing over there to keep links. As only I have adopted an interest in Sikhism than my siblings. Don't get me wrong we used to go to Punjab like nearly every year but only in the last ten years or so did my parents get into sikhi and a few years ago I went on Yatra to hazur sahib with my own family and parents which spurred my own inerrant in to sikhi