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Post Independence Land Reforms in India
Post Independence Land Reforms in India
Post Independence Land Reforms in India
Tenancy reforms
Even after the abolition of zamindari in large parts, problems persisted because
of bad land records, because zamindars were allowed to retain ‘personally
cultivated’ lands, and also because upper tenants who now became landlords still
had lower ‘tenants at will’ under them. The next phase of reforms, thus, focused
on tenancy legislation, which had three objectives:
Guarantee security of tenure to peasants who had cultivated a piece of
land for a certain number of years
Reduction of rents
Tenants were to be given ownership rights subject to certain conditions
Tenancy legislation by and large sought to strike a balance between the rights
of landowners and tenants:
Ceilings were introduced on land that could be retained for ‘personal
cultivation’, as this was being used for mass evictions, generally by
threatening the peasants into ‘voluntarily’ giving up their lands. The
‘surplus’ land beyond the ceiling was redistributed amongst landless
laborers
Tenants’ right to acquire the landowner’s land was restricted by the
condition that the landowner was not to be deprived of his entire land
(floors), and land ceilings applied to the new landowners (erstwhile
tenants) as well
Weaknesses:
In many places, tenancy was cleverly hidden; tenants were now called
‘farm servants’
Tenants were often converted to sharecroppers (the distinction being
that tenants paid in cash, while sharecroppers paid a part of the produce,
either fixed or a %)
The system couldn’t find ways to get around the fact that most tenancies
were oral and unrecorded
Thus, the aim of providing security of tenure to all tenants met with only
limited success. This made the achievement of second objective, that of
reducing rents to a fair level, largely impossible.
Land Ceilings
The issue of coming up with land ceilings was constantly in public discourse
since independence. However, not much progress was made till the INC Nagpur
resolution of January 1959, which stated that ceilings should be fixed and
associated legislations passed in the states by the end of 1959. This contributed
considerably to the consolidation of right-wing forces.
The ceiling laws that were subsequently enacted in most states by 1961
suffered from a number of weaknesses:
Ceilings fixed by states were very high
Initially, in most states, the ceilings were imposed on individuals, and not
on families
Many states made provisions to raise the announced ceilings in case the
landowner’s family had more than five people
A large number of exceptions were permitted, usually for lands that could
be demonstrated to be under capitalist farming (tea, coffee, rubber
plantations, specialized farms for cattle breeding dairying etc.). This
sometimes led to landlords creating bogus farming cooperatives in
order to shield themselves from the ceilings
The long delay since independence in introducing ceiling legislations had
anyway given much time to the landlords to sell their excess lands, make
malafide benami transfers etc. Thus, by the time legislations came into
place, there was very little land left that was above the ceilings
The overall result was that even though most states introduced legislations in
1961, as late as 1970 the total area redistributed was a mere 0.3% of the
total cultivated area in India. (Only kerala and West Bengal enacted it
properly)
Following these guidelines, most states revised their ceiling legislations. Even
now, landlords tried evading the new legislation by seeking judicial review on
various grounds. In an attempt to stop this, the government passed the 34th
amendment to the constitution, getting most of the revised ceiling laws
included in the 9th schedule of the constitution, so that they could not be
challenged on constitutional grounds.
These revised legislations did lead to some surplus land being redistributed, but
the results were still not much to speak of. While there was some improvement,
land amounting to only about 2% of the cultivated area was distributed.
The most important effect of the land ceiling legislations in India was that they
killed the land market and prevented an increasing concentration in
landholdings through de-peasantization.
Current situation:
Over time, the high population growth and subdivision of land over many
generations has automatically left little land above the land ceiling limits.
Except in certain small pockets of the country, very large landholdings of
the feudal type are a thing of the past
Landowners have only consolidated their political power
In any case, further reduction of ceilings to provide land for landless
laborers would vastly increase the number of uneconomic and unviable
holdings
Thus, other answers are to be found in off-farm employment, increase in
animal husbandry, and other activities that do not require land
In its initial years, the movement achieved considerable success, receiving over 4
million acres of land by 1956. After this, it lost steam, and very little new land
was received as donations. Also, a substantial part of the donated land was
either unfit for cultivation or under litigation.
Towards the end of 1955, the movement changed tack, and initiated ‘Gramdan’,
(where village was donated to society and everyone work together according to
their best ability and receive whatever is necessary for them.)
Started in Orissa, and was most successful there
The movement was successful mainly in villages where class
differentiation had not yet emerged, and there was little disparity in
ownership of land or other property, such as in some tribal community
villages
By the end of the 1960s, the movements had lost their élan, despite considerable
initial promise. However, some successes:
Bhoodan/ Gramdan was one of the very first attempts to bring about land
reform via social movement and not via legislation
It stimulated political activity by peasant masses and created a favorable
atmosphere for political propaganda and agitation for redistribution of
the land
Whatever cooperatives were set up largely fell under one of two categories:
- Cooperatives that were made by declaring tenants as bogus members to
evade land reforms, and
- State-sponsored pilot projects (z from poor quality of land, lack of proper
irrigation facility, and bureaucratization)
However, one other type of cooperatives were generally looked favorably upon,
and these contributed significantly to agricultural growth: these were service
cooperatives, that provided institutional credit, subsidized fertilizers and
modern implements, farmers education etc. Their successes are as follows:
In 1951, about 93% of all farm credit came from informal sources; in
1981, 63% was institutional, with about 30% from credit cooperatives
Increased accessibility to new techniques and tools to improve
productivity
The major drawback of credit cooperatives was their failure to repay loans in
many cases.