Expresswala Academy Mathematics Tuition
Search Book a free demo

Managerial Economics

Land Reform in India: Aims and Outcomes

The aims of land reform in independent India, what zamindari abolition, land ceilings and tenancy reform achieved, where they fell short, and how land policy changed plan by plan.

By 6 min read

The aims of land reform in inde­pen­dent India were:

  • 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.

Out of these the major objec­tives post-inde­pen­dence were abo­li­tion of inter­me­di­aries, reg­u­la­tion of ten­ancy, land ceil­ing, con­sol­i­da­tion of frag­mented hold­ings.

In India, the abo­li­tion of inter­me­di­aries who existed under the var­i­ous British sys­tems has largely been suc­cess­ful. The other objec­tives have yielded mixed results and vary across states and over time. Land reforms come under the State List and so, the suc­cess of land reforms varies from state to state. The most com­pre­hen­sive and suc­cess­ful reforms took place in the com­mu­nist strong­holds of Ker­ala and West Ben­gal. Andhra Pradesh, Mad­hya Pradesh and Bihar saw inter-com­mu­nity clashes as a result of land reforms.

India has seen four ‘exper­i­ments’ since inde­pen­dence to redis­trib­ute the land­hold­ings. They are:

  1. Reforms from ‘above’, i.e., through leg­is­la­tion.
  2. Reforms from above from the gov­ern­ment cou­pled with peas­ant mobil­i­sa­tion; 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.

Zamin­dari Abo­li­tion Acts

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 the 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 share-crop­pers acquired own­er­ship rights over a total of 62 lakh acres of land all over the coun­try.

Land Ceil­ings Act

Land ceil­ing refers to fix­ing a cap on the size of land­hold­ing a fam­ily or indi­vid­ual can own. Any sur­plus land is dis­trib­uted among land­less peo­ple like ten­ants, farm­ers, or agri­cul­tural labour­ers.

Ten­ancy reforms

This focused on three areas:

  1. Rent reg­u­la­tion
  2. Tenure secu­rity
  3. Con­fer­ring own­er­ship to ten­ants

Land pol­icy through the Five Year Plans

Plan PeriodChief IssuePol­icy Thrust
First Plan 1951 – 56Increase area under cul­ti­va­tion. Com­mu­nity Devel­op­ment net­works to take care of vil­lage com­mons.Increase land under cul­ti­va­tion. Rights to ten­ants to cul­ti­vate land. Abo­li­tion of inter­me­di­aries.
Sec­ond Plan 1956 – 61Agri­cul­ture mostly depen­dent on rains alone. Low land pro­duc­tiv­ity.Soil con­ser­va­tion. First phase of land reform imple­men­ta­tion. Irri­ga­tion devel­op­ment.
Third Plan 1961 – 66Food secu­rity con­cern. Cul­tivable waste­land to be cul­ti­vated. Includ­ing all regions into growth.Inten­sive area devel­op­ment pro­gramme adopted for selected dis­tricts. Soil sur­veys.
Fourth Plan 1969 – 74Food secu­rity con­cern. Min­i­mum dietary require­ments to be met. Incen­tives for cul­ti­vat­ing food crops. Tech­ni­cal effi­ciency.Irri­ga­tion and soil con­ser­va­tion in dry­land regions. Tech­no­log­i­cal changes. Sec­ond phase of land reforms with land ceil­ing acts and con­sol­i­da­tion of hold­ing.
Fifth Plan 1974 – 79Prob­lems of degra­da­tion. Drought-prone areas.Drought-prone area devel­op­ment. Desert area devel­op­ment pro­grammes. Soil con­ser­va­tion. Dry farm­ing.
Sixth Plan 1980 – 85Under­uti­liza­tion of land resources. Drought-prone areas.Land and water man­age­ment pro­gramme under drought-prone area pro­gramme in select areas.
Sev­enth Plan 1985 – 90Soil ero­sion. Land degra­da­tion. Defor­esta­tion. Degra­da­tion of for­est lands.Soil and water con­ser­va­tion. Pre­ven­tion of land degra­da­tion. Waste­lands Devel­op­ment pro­grammes.
Eighth Plan 1992 – 97Dry­land and rain-fed areas need­ing atten­tion. Degra­da­tion of land in irri­gated com­mand areas.Water­shed approach. Soil con­ser­va­tion com­bined with water­shed pro­grammes. Agro-cli­matic regional plan­ning approach incor­po­rated.
Ninth Plan 1997 – 2002Land degra­da­tion. Inte­grat­ing Water­shed Devel­op­ment Pro­gramme across var­i­ous com­po­nents. Gap between poten­tials and actual crop yields need to be bridged. Need for a long-term pol­icy doc­u­ment.Bring­ing under­uti­lized land under cul­ti­va­tion. Man­age­ment of waste­lands. Main­te­nance of vil­lage com­mons. Decen­tral­ized land man­age­ment sys­tem. Pan­chay­ati Raj insti­tu­tions to man­age the vil­lage lands. Rethink­ing on land leg­is­la­tion.

Out­comes of Land Reforms

  • Abo­li­tion of mid­dle­men like land­lords

The pow­er­ful class of Zamin­dars and Jagir­dars ceased to exist. This reduced the exploita­tion of peas­ants who now became own­ers of the land they tilled. This move was vehe­mently opposed by the Zamin­dars who employed many means to evade the law. They reg­is­tered their own land under their rel­a­tives’ names. They also shuf­fled ten­ants around dif­fer­ent plots of land so that they wouldn’t acquire incum­bency rights.

  • Land ceil­ing

With a cap on the size of land­hold­ing an indi­vid­ual or fam­ily could hold, a fairer dis­tri­b­u­tion of land became pos­si­ble to an extent. With­out land ceil­ings, abol­ish­ing land­lords alone would not have made the reforms even partly suc­cess­ful. Land ceil­ings ensured that the rich farm­ers or higher ten­ants did not become the new avatar Zamin­dars.

  • Land pos­ses­sion

Land is a source of not just eco­nomic income but also social stand­ing. Land reforms made it manda­tory to have records of hold­ings, which was not the case pre­vi­ously. It is also com­pul­sory to reg­is­ter all ten­ancy arrange­ments.

  • Increased pro­duc­tiv­ity

More land came under cul­ti­va­tion and since tillers them­selves became the landown­ers, pro­duc­tiv­ity increased.

Land reforms were largely suc­cess­ful in the states of West Ben­gal and Ker­ala because of the polit­i­cal will of the left-wing gov­ern­ments to imple­ment them effi­ciently. There was a sort of rev­o­lu­tion in these places in terms of land­hold­ing pat­terns and own­er­ship, and also the con­di­tion of peas­ants. The back­ing slo­gan was ‘land to the tiller’. In Jammu and Kash­mir also, there was par­tial suc­cess in the redis­tri­b­u­tion of land to land­less labour­ers.

Draw­backs of land reforms

  • There are still many small and mar­ginal farm­ers in India who are still in the clutches of money­len­ders and con­tinue to remain indebted.
  • Rural poverty still exists.
  • Land ceil­ing varies from state to state.
  • Many plan­ta­tions were exempt from land ceil­ing act.
  • Many peo­ple own huge tracts of land under ‘benami’ names.

Land reforms also include agrar­ian reforms which deal with mea­sures to improve the pro­duc­tiv­ity of land, espe­cially agri­cul­tural land. This includes the Green Rev­o­lu­tion.

To fix the var­i­ous loop­holes in the land reforms, in the late 60s and early 70s, the rec­om­men­da­tions of the Cen­tral Land Reforms Com­mit­tee were imple­mented.

  • The ceil­ing was low­ered accord­ing to the crop pat­tern. It was brought to 54 acres for infe­rior dry land.
  • For pur­poses of law, the fam­ily of five was made one unit.
  • Land dis­tri­b­u­tion was given pri­or­ity, par­tic­u­larly to the land­less peas­ants, SC and ST com­mu­ni­ties.

The gov­ern­ment was respon­si­ble for the acqui­si­tion of land which it did under the Land Acqui­si­tion Act of 1894. This law, being archaic and inad­e­quate to address farm­ers’ con­cerns was replaced by the Right to Fair Com­pen­sa­tion and Trans­parency in land Acqui­si­tion, Reha­bil­i­ta­tion and Reset­tle­ment Act of 2013. In 2015, the gov­ern­ment pro­posed a few amend­ments to the law and intro­duced the Right to Fair Com­pen­sa­tion and Trans­parency in land Acqui­si­tion, Reha­bil­i­ta­tion and Reset­tle­ment (Amend­ment) Bill of 2015, which was brought into force through an ordi­nance; the ordi­nance was allowed to lapse later that year.

Found this useful? Book a demo class Ask a question