Discuss the Agrarian Reforms in post Independent India.

After independence, the Congress government appointed the Agrarian Reforms Committee under the chairmanship of J.C. Kumarappa, based on the recommendations of which the following land reforms were introduced in the post independent India that were crucial for challenging rural economic inequalities:

• i)        The Zamindari Abolition Act, 1950 was the foremost post independence agrarian reform. However, this Act could be implemented in its true spirit only after the government issued First Amendment Act in 1951, added articles 31(a), 31 (b) and Ninth Schedule to the Constitution, which led to dropping of the right to property from the list of fundamental rights. The amendment and additions empowered the state to acquire any land or estate.
• ii)      The Zamindari Abolition Act also declared begari/ bonded labour as a punishable offence.
• iii)     The legislation for the abolition of intermediary tenures between the state and the tiller laying out land to the actual tillers of the soil was enacted in 1950 and reinforced by the second Five Year Plan. The legislation prohibited subletting/leasing of land except by widows, minors and other disabled persons. Provisions were made for protection of the sharecroppers and other tenants from forcible and illegal eviction by landowner.
• iv)     The land ceiling act was enacted in 1960s to legally stipulate maximum size beyond which no individual farmer or farm household could hold any land for ensuring equitable distribution of income and property.
• v)      The idea of collective farming for the development of reclaimed waste lands on which landless labourers could be employed was encouraged.

 

The land reforms introduced after independence however, further led to the concentration of land in the hands of the large landowners. The fundamental provision, “land to the tiller” was subverted by large landowners who to a large extent got evicted long-term tenants prior to the enactment of the legislation. Further, the basic objectives of the Land Ceiling Act were largely defeated by the big landlords and other vested interests through fictitious divisions of land, mere paper entries in the records through the benami transaction or fake ownership of holdings, fraudulent means adopted in the distribution of land to the landless and poor peasants, conflict with the law of inheritance and illiteracy of the peasants.

Also, ideas like joint-farming met with little success as were practised as a convenient method to by-pass land reforms by the privileged classes and garnering facilities as loans from government agencies.

 

Mencher (2002: 216-17) points out that the state has shifted its focus from land redistribution to increasing ‘efficiency’ of agriculture. The growing corporatisation and commercialisation of agriculture led to land consolidation, introduction of capital intensive farming techniques, mono-cropping and export crop production. This has made medium and small farmers and landless agricultural labours unemployed and driven them to a state of abjection. The capital intensive agriculture and its implications in heightening of rural inequalities first became visible with the introduction of Green Revolution by the Indian state in 1960s. The Green Revolution entailed introducing modern methods and technology such as high-yielding variety (HYV) seeds, tractors, irrigation facilities, pesticides and fertilizers. This required heavy investments and could be afforded only by the large landholders and rich farmers. According to P.C. Joshi (1974), in Punjab and Haryana the trend that emerged was that small landowners rented their land to big farmers who needed a larger land spread to use their machinery profitably. This while enriched the large landowners; it pushed the landless workers into misery and unemployment.

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