Land reforms & agriculture

Agricultural Productivity can be increased by:

1. Technological reforms : improved seeds, equipments, proper irrigation, etc.
2. Institutional reforms : Land Reforms like redistribution of land ownership in favor of cultivating class.

PURPOSE OF LAND REFORMS

1. Efficient use of scarce land resource
2. Redistributing agricultural land in favor of the less privileged class in general & cultivating class in particular.

SCOPE OF LAND REFORM

• Land reforms can encompass laws & regulations concerned with the following areas:
• Tenancy reforms (like security of tenure, rent regulation)
• Intermediaries removal
• Agrarian reorganization (like consolidation of existing land & prevent fragmentation
• Land ceiling
• Cooperative farms

OBJECTIVE OF LAND REFORMS

• To remove rural poverty
• Propagating socialist development to reduce social inequality
• Empowerment of women in the traditionally male driven society
• To increase productivity of agriculture
• To see that everyone can have a right on a piece of land
• Protection of tribal’s by not allowing outsiders to take their land.

INTERMEDIARIES

• A lot of intermediaries had developed during British times including landlords, absentee-landlords, wage-workers and moneylenders which even continued after independence.
• A need was felt to remove them so that a direct relation can be established between the “tiller and the state”.
• Communist Countries Model: Countries like China, Russia, Yugoslavia, etc., abolished intermediaries without giving them compensation.
• Indian Model: We gave compensation to intermediaries.
• “Just and equitable compensation” of makers of constitution was not clearly defined which was challenged in Supreme Court (SC).
• SC in its decision upheld the right of legislatures to acquire lands for public purpose & ruled that compensation is a justifiable issue.
• Intermediaries were able to get equitable and more than that as a part of compensation.
• Rate of compensation varied from state to state but was basically a multiple of net income of the proprietor at the time of expropriation.
• Big proprietors were paid in bonds and small proprietors were paid in cash.

TENANCY REFORMS 

PROBLEM OF TENANCY CULTIVATION

Tenant Type	Properties
Occupancy or permanent tenant	Rights permanent and heritable; Were treated as land owners; Security of tenure
Tenants-at-will or temporary tenants	Position weak ; Extreme exploitation; No security of tenure; High taxes to be paid  by them
Sub-tenants	"

MEASURES OF TENANCY REFORMS

1. Regulation of rents
2. Security of tenure
3. Ownership rights

LAND CEILINGS

REASONS FOR LAND CEILINGS

1. Land as the main income source: Land is the principle source for income in rural areas. Poverty can be removed among rural areas through effective land redistribution.

2. Employment generation i.e. achieving goal of social justice: Big land holders use capital intensive techniques leading to decrease in employment. Government wants to create large number of small land holders so that employment increases. (Critics say that such a move will transfer land from resource full landlords to resource less peasants or tenants. But farm management studies have shown that gross output per acre in greater on small farms than on large farms. So previous critic is only theoretical).

PHASES OF LAND CEILING LEGISLATIONS:

1. First Phase (post-independence to 1972): considered individual as the unit of application

2. Second Phase (After 1972): family as the unit of application.

PROBLEMS OF LAND CEILING

1. Compensation and allotment of Surplus lands

• Land ceiling is done to take away excess land with some individuals and distribute it amongst small holders or landless persons.
• It involves two problems:
  a. Compensation amount to be paid
  b. Price to be recovered from allottees

2. Mala fide transfers

• Land ceiling legislations led to many mala fide transfers.
• Prominent among them were:
  a. Transfers among family members
  b. benami transfers
  c. transfers made for valuable consideration through a registered document.
• First and second has been already dealt post-1972 due to change of definition from individual to family
• Third has to be dealt with separately.

PROGRESS OF CEILING LEGISLATION

• Huge criticism was made in the way it was being implemented.
• Compensation given was high.
• Value of land was purposely kept below market value so that poor allottees can buy them whose loss was incurred by government.
• Defined a family unit as man, his wife & three minor children. Additional land can be taken if number of family increases beyond five.
• Industrial (non-agriculture) holding & educational, religious and charitable trusts of public nature were exempted.

LAND CEILING: SUCCESS OR FAILURE

• Basic goal of taking additional land from big landlords and passing it to actual tillers and landless persons was not met.
• A large number of loopholes were left in ceiling legislation. So evasion was possible within legal provision.
• So little surplus was acquired post-legislations.
• Number of exemptions were made which were used to evade ceiling on holdings.
• SC judgment to give compensation at market value added more problem. (So parliament enacted, 34th Amendment to 9th schedule of the constitution to take land ceiling away from the purview of judicial review)
• Basic definition of family as a unit was wrong. It included 5 members (man, his wife & three minor children). So if there are major children then they can have twice land holding what they could not have possessed as a minor children.
• Computerization of land records has minimized malpractices.
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REVIEW OF LAND REFORMS

Poor implementation of land reforms in India was due to following reasons:

• Mere inclusion of a law in the 9th Schedule doesn’t guarantee to complete immunity to judicial review. It was still possible to challenge it on the grounds of Violation of Articles 14, 19 and 31, discrimination among major and minor sons, the basis of classification of lands, rates of compensation, etc.,
• Lack of political will
• Absence of political pressure group of the poor peasants and agricultural workers
• Cold response from bureaucracy
• Absence of updated land reforms
• No computerization of land records when land reforms were in progress.
• Legal hurdles like delay due to court stay orders, etc.
•  

Land reforms should be understood in perspective of both the pre and post independence era with respect to:

1.     High rate of taxation and rent
2. Ownership of Land
3. Indebtedness in rural areas- Large number of people had to borrow money from the     traditional money lenders.

How were these issues resolved? Also, what were the plans of the nationalists?

1.     The freedom fighters had some plan in the 1920’s and 1930’s.
2. We also find some peasant movements in various states – there were formations of  Kisan Sabhas like ‘Awadh Kisan Sabha’, ‘UP Kisan Sabha’, ‘Bihar Kisan Sabha’,    ‘Andhra Riyad Association’, ‘Punjab Kisan Sabha’, etc.
3. Karachi Session of 1931
4. Congress regime from 1937-39
5. National Planning Committee (1938)
6. Bombay Plan (1944-45)

It is also important to know about the efforts made by the Government of India and various state Governments- because law and order, and land is a state subject. The major issues were:
1. Abolition of Zamindari System and other intermediaries
2. Tenancy Reform:
   a) Security of tenure for tenants
   b) High rent
   c) Ownership of Land
3. Ceiling Act of 1959
4. Arrangements by State Government
5. Efforts by Gandhians (Cooperativization and Community Development Programmes)

The phase of agrarian reforms started post independence can also be called as the phase of institutional reforms.

When a peasant owned a certain piece of land, and paid tax to the Government, this was land revenue. But, when a tiller was tilling the fields of the owner, he paid rent to the landlord, and the landlord paid tax to the Government. A large percentage of Indian farmers, approximately, 60% of Indian farmers were tilling the land of others. These were the Big Zamindars, rich farmers who personally did not have to work on the field, thus, they would hire labourers, and give their land on lease. Gandhi decided that after India gained independence, tax from agriculture would be exempted however, a large number of peasants were still working on the fields of others. Hence, rent for the tillers was still an issue.  

Tenancy – There were three main issues relating to tenants.

(i)   How to ensure the security of tenancy?
(ii)  How to ensure ownership rights to tenants?
(iii) How to reduce the rent?

Post Independent India: Land Reform Movements

Bhudan Movement

• The Bhudan movement was started from Pochampali in Telangana.
• They did padyatras and asked rich peasants to give 1/6th of their land so as to collect 50 million acres of land, but despite their best efforts, they could only collect 8.7 lakh acres of land, which they distributed among the poor and the landless. The 8.7 lakh acres of land was less than 1 million acres.

Gram Dan Movement

1. This movement was started in Orissa in 1955.  This was also based on the same philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi.
2. This belief was that the villagers should collectively own the land, and not individually. This seemed to be very idealistic, but in reality, it did not happen, as most of the people who owned the land were not ready to either donate or distribute their land. Thus very little land could be collected and distributed.
3. It is important to note here that land reform movements were successful in 3 states in particular, in India. These include, West Bengal, Jammu and Kashmir, and Kerala. In J&K, the Sheikh Abdullah government distributed land among the people during the 1950’s.
4. The communists in the 1970’s and 1980’s were successful in distributing land in the states of West Bengal and Kerala. Operation Burga was very successful in West Bengal, and the success of land distribution in West Bengal can be attested by the fact that around 25% of the total land distributed in India, came from West Bengal alone.
5. This means that if 100 acres of land were distributed in the entire country, then 25 acres came from West Bengal alone. What is also interesting to note here is that West Bengal accounts for only 3% of the total agricultural land available in the country. That is, suppose, if the country has only 100 acres of agricultural land, then West Bengal accounts for 3 acres. Thus, keeping in mind this fact, land distribution in West Bengal was a major success.
6. But, states like Bihar, U.P., Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Gujarat, the narrative was different. The problems of dacoity in the Chambal valley, in U.P. and M.P, and that of naxalism in recent past in Jharkhand, Bihar, and Chattisgarh, and parts of Andhra Pradesh is basically linked with the failure of the implementation of land reforms in post-independent India in these states
7. We also find that apart from the structural efforts made by the Union Govt. of India and various state Governments, there was also an attempt to reform the productivity through various other technological and economical means.

For example, the Green Revolution which was initiated in the 1960’s from the western states of Northern India, and then in different phases percolated in different parts of India, was another great effort and was directly linked with land reforms. In this project, the Government tried to provide irrigational facilities, to areas where water was not available all throughout the year. Thus, the construction of various canals and dams were initiated, like the Bhakra Nangal Dam, Indira Gandhi Dam, etc.

The provision of High yielding variety (HYV) seeds went a long way in improving the agricultural output per unit acre of land. Also, our system of ploughing land was also outdated.  Only 3% of Indian farmers were using modern machines, such as tractors, etc. while the rest were still using the wooden plough that was pulled by oxen which was an ancient tradition. Providing institutionalized credit to the farmers was also important.  

RBI had conducted a survey in 1954, according to which, only 7% peasants in those days, were reaping the benefits of institutionalized credit through bank loans, etc. Whereas, the remaining 93% were still taking credit from traditional money lenders. The Mahajans were very influential and proved to be powerful tools of exploitation in the rural areas. Unfortunately, despite the best of efforts, these elements could not be removed from many villages of India. Today, various forms of subsidies are provided to the farmers (electricity, fertilizers, seeds).