India, Oct. 27 -- The government's proposal last month to repeal the Maharashtra Gramdan Act, 1964, has triggered a debate over the future of 21 villages in the state that are governed by a collective land-management system inspired by Gandhian thinker Acharya Vinoba Bhave.

The Bhoodan movement rooted in the idea of trusteeship and Sarvodaya i.e. welfare of all, was an effort to appeal to the conscience of wealthy landlords to voluntarily give away one-sixth of their lands for landless peasants. This evolved in the late 1950s into the Gramdan movement under which entire villages were run on the trusteeship model rather than as agglomeration of individual landholdings.

At present there are 21 villages in Maharashtra-16 in Vidarbha, 1 in ...