2. What is land reform?
Land Reforms usually refer to the redistribution of Land from rich to poor.
Land reforms include Regulation of Ownership, Operation, Leasing, sale and
Inheritance of Land.
In an agrarian economy like India with massive inequalities of wealth and
income, great scarcity and unequal distribution of land, coupled with a large
mass of people living below the poverty line, there are strong economic and
political arguments for land reforms.
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 an excess of land
to those who do not possess it with the objective of increasing the income
and bargaining power of the rural poor.
3. The purpose of land reform is to help the weaker section of
society and do justice in land distribution.
The Indian Government was committed to land reforms and to
ensuring distributive justice as was promised during the freedom
struggle.
Consequently, laws were passed by all the State Governments
during the Fifties with the avowed aim of abolishing
landlordism, distributing land through the imposition of
protecting tenants and consolidating land- holdings.
Government land policies are implemented to make more rational
use of the scarce land resources by affecting the conditions of
holdings and imposing ceilings and grounds on holdings so
cultivation can be done in the most economical manner.
4. Land ownership system under the British
Permanent Settlement/Zamindari system
Ryotwari system
Mahalwari system
Impact of colonial land-owning system
• Extreme peasant indebtedness due to sky-high tax rates.
• Creation of a class of a rich few who mostly exploited the poor
peasant.
• Peasants lived in constant fear of eviction.
• Poverty was entrenched in the farming class.
5. Objectives of land reform
• Redistribution of land across society so that land is not held in the hands of a few
people.
• Land ceiling to disburse surplus land amongst small and marginal farmers.
• Removal of rural poverty.
• Abolition of intermediaries.
• Tenancy reforms.
• Increasing agricultural productivity.
• Consolidation of land holdings and prevention of land fragmentation.
• Developing cooperative farming.
• To ensure social equality through economic parity.
• Tribal protection by ensuring their traditional land is not taken over by outsiders.
• Land reforms were also for non-agricultural purposes like development and
manufacturing.
6. Experiment with land reforms
India has seen four ‘experiments’ since independence to redistribute the
landholdings. They are:
1. Reform from ‘above’, i.e., through legislation.
2. Reforms from above from the government coupled with peasant
mobilization; like in Kerala and West Bengal where land was seized and
redistributed; and also to improve the conditions of peasants.
3. Naxalite movement and also the ‘land grab’ movement.
4. Reforms from ‘below’ through voluntary donations by landlords and
peaceful processions by farmers like the Bhoodan movement and the
Gram Dan.
7. • A committee, under the Chairmanship of J. C. Kumarappan was
appointed to look into the problem of land.
• The Kumarappa Committee's report recommended comprehensive
agrarian reform measures.
• The Land Reforms of independent India had four components:
• The Abolition of the Intermediaries
• Tenancy Reforms
• Fixing Ceilings on Landholdings
• Consolidation of Landholdings.
• These were taken in phases because of the need to establish a
political will for their wider acceptance of these reforms.
8. Abolition of Zamindari
•The first important legislation was the abolition of the zamindari system, which removed the layer of
intermediaries who stood between the cultivators and the state.
•The reform was relatively the most effective than the other reforms, for in most areas it succeeded in
taking away the superior rights of the zamindars over the land and weakening their economic and
political power.
•The reform was made to strengthen the actual landholders, the cultivators.
•Initially, when these acts were passed in various states, they were challenged in the courts as being
against the right to property enshrined in the Indian Constitution. So, amendments were passed in
Parliament to legalise the abolition of landlordism.
•By 1956, Zamindari abolition acts were passed in many states. As a result of this, about 30 lakh
tenants and sharecroppers acquired ownership rights over a total of 62 lakh acres of land all over the
country.
9. Tenancy Reforms
• Why?:
• After passing the Zamindari Abolition Acts, the next major problem was
tenancy regulation.
• The rent paid by the tenants during the pre-independence period was
exorbitant; between 35% and 75% of gross produce throughout India.
• Tenancy reforms were introduced to regulate rent, provide security of tenure
and confer ownership to tenants.
• With the enactment of legislation (the early 1950s) for regulating the rent
payable by the cultivators, fair rent was fixed at 20% to 25% of the gross
produce level in all the states except Punjab, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir,
Tamil Nadu, and some parts of Andhra Pradesh.
10. • In West Bengal and Kerala, there was a radical restructuring of the
agrarian structure that gave land rights to the tenants.
• Issues:
• In most states, these laws were never implemented very effectively.
Despite the repeated emphasis in the plan documents, some states
could not pass legislation to confer rights of ownership to tenants.
• Few states in India have completely abolished tenancy while other
states have given clearly spelt-out rights to recognized tenants and
sharecroppers.
• Although the reforms reduced the areas under tenancy, they led to
only a small percentage of tenants acquiring ownership rights.
11. Consolidation of Landholding
•Consolidation referred to the reorganization/redistribution of fragmented lands into one plot.
•The growing population and fewer work opportunities in non-agricultural sectors, increased
pressure on the land, leading to an increasing trend of fragmentation of the landholdings.
•This fragmentation of land made the irrigation management tasks and personal supervision of the
land plots very difficult.
•This led to the introduction of landholdings consolidation.
•Under this act, If a farmer had a few plots of land in the village, those lands were consolidated into
one bigger piece of land which was done by either purchasing or exchanging the land.
•Almost all states except Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Manipur, Nagaland, Tripura and parts of Andhra
Pradesh enacted laws for the consolidation of Holdings.
12. •In Punjab and Haryana, there was compulsory consolidation of the
lands, whereas in other states law provided for consolidation on a
voluntary basis; if the majority of the landowners agreed.
•Advantages:
•It prevented the endless subdivision and fragmentation of land
Holdings.
•It saved the time and labour the farmers spent irrigating and
cultivating lands at different places.
•The reform also brought down the cost of cultivation and reduced
litigation among farmers as well.
•Result:
•Due to a lack of adequate political and administrative support the
progress made in terms of consolidation of holding was not very
satisfactory except in Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh
where the task of consolidation was accomplished.
13. New generation land reforms
• It has now been argued by the NITI Aayog and some sections of the industry
that land leasing should be adopted on a large scale to enable landholders
with unviable holdings to lease out land for investment, thereby enabling
greater income and employment generation in rural areas.
• This cause would be facilitated by the consolidation of landholdings.
• Modern land reform measures such as land record digitization must be
accomplished at the earliest.
• PM SVAMITVA Scheme:
•SVAMITVA (Survey of Villages and Mapping with Improvised Technology in Village
Areas) scheme is a collaborative effort of the Ministry of Panchayati Raj, State
Panchayati Raj Departments, State Revenue Departments and Survey of India.
14. •Aim: To provide an integrated property validation solution for rural India.
•It is a scheme for mapping the land parcels in rural inhabited areas using drone technology and a
Continuously Operating Reference Station (CORS).
•The mapping will be done across the country in a phase-wise manner over a period of four years –
from 2020 to 2024.
•Benefits:
•The scheme will help in streamlining planning and revenue collection in rural areas and ensuring
clarity on property rights.
•The scheme will enable the creation of better-quality Gram Panchayat Development Plans (GPDPs),
using the maps created under this programme.
•The Gram Panchayats are constitutionally mandated to prepare Gram Panchayat
Development Plans (GPDP) for economic development and social justice.
•Present Coverage Area: The program is currently being implemented in six states - Haryana,
Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.
