Land Reforms in India after Independence: History and Status

Land reform usually refers to the redistribution of land from the rich to the poor. More broadly, it includes regulation of ownership, operation, leasing, sales, and inheritance of land. The land is precious for any country and used by people for productivity and as a source of food, for a place to live, for wood, for a place to work. Not surprisingly, it received top priority on the policy agenda at the time of Independence. In the decades following independence, India passed a significant body of land reform legislation. 

At the time of independence ownership of land was concentrated in the hands of a few. This led to the exploitation of the farmers and was a major barrier towards the socio-economic development of the rural population. Equal distribution of land was therefore an area of focus of Independent India's government. Laws for the land ceiling were enacted in various states during the 50s & 60s which were modified on the directives of the central government in 1972.

In this article, we will briefly discuss the economic and political arguments in favor of land reform and review the Indian evidence on the effects of land reform on agricultural productivity and poverty.

LAND REFORMS MEASURES AFTER INDEPENDENCE: 

After Independence, the Agrarian Reforms Committee under the Chairmanship of J.C. Kumarappa was appointed by Indian National Congress. The committee recommended that all intermediaries between the state and the tiller should be eliminated. Some of the steps taken based on the recommendation of the committee:

> Intermediaries abolition

> Surplus land redistribution among landless or semi-landless peasants.

> Fixation of ceilings on land holdings

=> Land reforms & Land Distribution:

In India, there was a practice of land holdings from historic times and it was distributed in a highly unequal manner and has always been used as a source of social power. To get secure access to land for the poor and landless, policies of land reform were implemented to benefit poorer sections of society since independence. After that a number of land reforms have been done by the government such as the abolition of 'Zamindari' or middlemen as revenue collectors, imposing a ceiling on landholdings and awarding of the surplus land's rights to landless, and tenancy reforms. The purpose of land reforms is the efficient use of scarce land resources, redistributing agricultural land in favor of the less privileged class in general & cultivating class in particular.

Under the 1949 Indian constitution, states were granted the powers to enact (and implement) land reforms. This autonomy ensures that there has been significant variation across states and time in terms of the number and types of land reforms that have been enacted. We classify land reform acts into four main categories according to their main purpose.

> The first category is acts related to tenancy reform(किरायेदारों). These include attempts to regulate tenancy contracts both via registration and stipulation of contractual terms, such as shares in share tenancy contracts, as well as attempts to abolish tenancy and transfer ownership to tenants.

> The second category of land reform acts attempts to abolish intermediaries. These intermediaries who worked under feudal lords (Zamandari) to collect rent for the British were reputed to allow a larger share of the surplus from the land to be extracted from tenants. Most states had passed legislation to abolish intermediaries prior to 1958.

> The third category of land reform concerns efforts to implement ceilings on landholdings, with a view to redistributing surplus land to the landless.

> Finally, we have acts which attempted to allow consolidation of disparate land-holdings.' Though these reforms and in particular the latter was justified partly in terms of achieving efficiency gains in agriculture it is clear from the acts themselves and from the political manifestos supporting the acts that the main impetus driving the first three reforms was poverty reduction. 

Despite the considerable publicity attached to their enactment, political failure to implement was most complete in the case of land ceiling legislation. As a result of these problems, the implementation of both tenancy reform and land ceiling legislation tended to lag well behind the targets set in the Five Year Plans. There is a considerable variation in overall land reform activity across states with states such as Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu having a lot of activity while Punjab and Rajasthan have very little.

Variations in Tenancy:

> Cash Tenants: They pay a fixed tax for the use and occupation of the land.

> Share - cash Tenants: They pay part of their rent in cash and other parts as a share of the crop.

> Crop - share Tenants: They pay a share of crops only.

> Croppers: They pay a crop of the share. But they were not independent and worked under the landlord.

The main objectives of the Land Reforms:

These are as follows:

> To make redistribution of Land to make a socialistic pattern of society. Such an effort will reduce the inequalities in ownership of land.

> To ensure the land ceiling and take away the surplus land to be distributed among the small and marginal farmers.

> To legitimize tenancy with the ceiling limit.

> To register all the tenancy with the village Panchayats.

> To establish a relation between tenancy and ceiling.

> To remove rural poverty.

> Proliferating socialist development to lessen social inequality

> Empowerment of women in the traditionally male-driven society.

> To increase the productivity of agriculture.

> To see that everyone can have a right on a piece of land.

> Protection of tribals by not allowing outsiders to take their land. 

Economic Arguments:

The most obvious argument in favor of land reform is equity. In a land-scarce country with a significant section of the rural population below the poverty line, the case for ensuring that everyone has access to some minimum amount of land seems compelling from this point of view. We begin with two empirical observations. 

> First, small farms tend to be more productive than large farms. 

> Another empirical regularity is that owner-cultivated plots of land tend to be more productive than those under sharecropping tenancy. 

Given these observations, one could make an argument in favor of land reform based not only on equity considerations but also on efficiency considerations. For example, the inverse relationship between farm size and productivity suggests that land reform could raise productivity by breaking large farms into several small farms. Also, lower productivity under sharecropping suggests that land reform could raise productivity by converting sharecroppers into owner-cultivators.

=> Land Ceiling:

The land is a source of income in rural India land and it provides employment opportunities. Therefore it is important for the marginal farmers, agricultural laborers, and small farmers. The concept 'ceiling on land holdings' denotes the legally stipulated maximum size beyond which no individual farmer can hold any land. The objective of such a ceiling is to promote economic growth with social justice.

=> Land possession and social power:

It is observed that the land is not only the source of production but also for generating power in the community. In the Indian system, the land is often transferred from one generation to another generation. However, all this lack the documentation of possession of the land. In this framework, the government had made it mandatory to register all tenancy arrangements.

Indian Evidence on the Causes and Effects of Land Reform:

The two key empirical questions are: what is the effect of land reform on productivity and poverty, and what are the factors that drive its success? These are clearly interdependent: factors that affect the success of land reform are also likely to affect productivity and poverty. For example, if a left-wing administration comes to power, as it did in Kerala and West Bengal, it will implement land reforms more actively and also implement other reforms that might have a direct effect on productivity and poverty. The challenge is to isolate the effect of land reforms.

The abolition of intermediaries is generally established to be effective land reforms that have been relatively successful. The record in terms of the other components is mixed and varies across states and over time. Landowners naturally resisted the implementation of these reforms by directly using their political influence and also by using various methods of evasion and coercion(चोरी और जबरदस्ती), which included registering their own land under names of different relatives to bypass the ceiling, and shuffling tenants around different plots of land, so that they would not acquire incumbency rights as stipulated in the tenancy law. The success of land reform was driven by the political will of particular state administrations, the prominent achievers being the left-wing administrations in Kerala and West Bengal.

Tenancy Systems of Land:

At the time of independence, there existed many types of proprietary land tenures in the country.

=> Ryotwari: 

It was started in Madras in 1772 and was later extended to other states. Under this system, the responsibility of paying land revenue to the Government was of the cultivator himself and there was no intermediary between him and the state. The Ryot had full right regarding sale, transfer, and leasing of land and could not be evicted(निष्कासित) from the land as long as he paid the land revenue. 

=> Mahalwari: 

This system was initiated by William Bentinck in Agra and was later extended to Madhya Pradesh and Punjab. Under this system, the village communities held the village lands commonly and it was the joint responsibility of these communities to make payments of the land revenue. The land ownership is held as joint ownership with the village body.

=> Zamindari: 

Lord Cornwallis gave birth to the Zamindari system in India. He introduced this system for the first time in 1793 in West Bengal and was later adopted in other states as well. Under this system, the land was held by a person who was responsible for the payment of land revenue. Under this system, the whole village was under one landlord. The persons interested can work in the Jamindar's land as laborers based on the agreement with the zamindar. The zamindari system was known to be more exploitive, as the zamindar used to fix/hike the prices of land according to his desire.

=> Jagirdari: 

It is similar to the Zamindari system. The Jagirdar is powered to control the unproductive masses of the village by engaging them in agricultural activities. Because land is controlled by the state in India and the relationship between production and land tenure varies from state to state, the national policy recommendations resulted in differing tenancy reform laws in each state.

Impact of Land Reform in India:

The following were the outcomes of Land Reforms in India.

> Abolition of Zamindars and Jagirdars:

> The powerful Zamindars and Jagirdars have become inexistent.

> The abolition of intermediaries has stopped exploitation.

> Transfer of land to peasants from intermediaries has reduced disparities.

> The abolishment of these systems has increased to the new landowners thus adding revenue to the state governments.

Arguments Against Land Reforms:

> If a centrally managed large agricultural land is divided among individual private owners, the peasants who take it up may not be efficient enough to individually carry out the cultivation.

> Results in Fragmentation of land and pockets of inefficiency. For large scale cultivation, the fragmentation of land normally won’t help.

> Evidence suggests that land reforms had a negative effect on poverty.

> Land reforms had led to economic decline and food insecurity in countries like Zimbabwe.

Why the Program Failed?

> The program failed to achieve its desired objective because the farmers are reluctant to exchange their lands for the new one. The arguments given by the farmers is that their existing land is much more fertile and productive than the new land provided under land consolidation.

> The farmers also complained about nepotism and corruption in the process of consolidation. The farmers complained that the rich and influential often bribes and manages to get fertile and well-situated land, whereas the poor farmers get unfertile land.

New Agency for Land reforms:

The government is planning to establish a separate agency for land reforms & up-gradation of the wasteland. A new agency named; “Jai Prakash Narayan Mission for Land Reforms & Wasteland Management” will work under the ministry of rural development. This body will be authorized for making policies and implementing them for land reforms & wasteland up-gradation.

    To summarize, Land reform is the major step of the government to assist people living under adverse conditions. It is basically a redistribution of land from those who have excess land to those who do not possess the objective of increasing the income and bargaining power of the rural poor. The evidence suggests that land reforms had a negative effect on poverty, while the effect on productivity is mixed. In states where these measures were strongly implemented, the effect of land reform on productivity seems positive. The purpose of land reform is to help weaker sections of society and do justice inland distribution. Government land policies are implemented to make more rational use of the scarce land resources by affecting conditions of holdings, imposing ceilings and grounds on holdings so that cultivation can be done in the most economical manner.