Emergence of the Land Reforms Policy in India

Emergence of the Land Reforms Policy in India

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The British rulers continued with existing land-revenue policies and procedures with a few but significant modifications. Perhaps most importantly, the British made the tax-collecting Zamindars into proprietors of the estates over which they had tax collection duties. This change was aimed at accomplishing two objectives: simplifying the land-revenue collection process and creating a rural elite with a vested interest in British rule. Unfortunately, it converted the erstwhile landowners into insecure tenants. Over time, many Zamindars assigned their land-revenue collection duties to one or more layers of intermediaries who were also given interests in the land. The historical emergence and perpetuation of intermediaries served the purpose of land revenue administration and political control of the successive rulers, but their numbers swelled. The large patches of land held by them were let to tenants at exorbitantly high rents. That created a disincentive among the tenant cultivators to develop the land, and consequently impacted upon production. Thus, the Colonial Government, out of its interest to administer the country effectively, did not make any substantial changes in the land-revenue system but promoted the class of non-cultivating intermediaries.

At the time of Independence, India faced a major challenge of setting right the agrarian structure as promised during the independence struggle. An analysis of the agrarian structure of India, vividly describe the pre-Independence structure as a complex of legal, economic and social relations - a multilayered structure that pulled down the production efficiency in the agricultural sector. A brief review of the literature also reveals a myriad of agrarian relations in India, varying from peasant proprietorship to a pure landlord - serf relationship. The first task placed before the first Indian parliament was to address land policy. Because India has a densely populated agrarian economy, almost all other developmental initiatives also involved land as a central and a complex issue, as it clearly represented social status and not just the means of production.

While recognizing the need to bring about land reforms in the country, the Constitution of India provided under Article 39 that: (1) the ownership and control of the material resources of the country should be so distributed as best to serve the common good; and (2) the operation of the economic system should not result in a concentration of wealth or a means to production to the common detriment. The Constitution of India also made land a state (provincial) subject. So, only state (provincial) legislatures have the power to enact and implement land-reform laws. However, the central government played a significant advisory and financial role in land policy based on its constitutional role in social and economic planning (a role held concurrently with the states). The Government of India established a National Planning Commission immediately after Independence to fulfill this role of social and economic planning. The Planning Commission has prepared a series of Five-Year Plans since 1951. Land policy has been one of the important components incorporated in all the plans. The policy statements are sometimes quite explicit in the plan documents, but are more often implicitly stated. The plans aimed to reduce disparities in income and wealth, to eliminate exploitation and to provide security to tenants, as well as to achieve social transformation through equality of status and an opportunity for different sections of the population to participate in development initiatives.

Land policy in post-Independence India has evolved through different phases. These include: two phases of land reforms, attention to issues pertaining to quality of land through the Drought-Prone Area and Desert Development Programmes, Wasteland Development and Watershed Development Programmes designed to reclaim environmentally degraded land. These policy interventions have had varying impacts on poverty and the overall development process. It is difficult empirically to segregate the influence of the changes in land policy on poverty, environmental management, sustainability and production, but available studies indicate that land-reform measures have had a significant impact on equity and poverty. The measures dealing with the quality of land have a partial to significant impact on environmental parameters. In addition to these, other land-policy instruments were used for the purpose of transforming development policy effectively. In the previous section we have indicated the key areas for the purpose of action and major policy interventions required. The key areas for future land policy action include legalizing the tenancy market, contract farming, and watershed and wasteland development to assume greater significance. Such interventions involve important implementation issues relating to the political economic aspects of the reform measures and reform of the institutions. Future research should be directed towards establishing the institutional framework to fit these issues into a broader policy-making process.