14 Land Reform Legislations: A Sociological Assessment I

Dr.Shoma Lahiri

Introduction

In the wake of Independence, ‘the land question posed a challenge and an invitation to the early nationalists’ (Jeffrey, 2012). Political freedom had been won on the basis of a wider coalition of the ruling elites, the peasants and the various subaltern classes. This nationalist coalition could be forged on the basis of solid support emanating from the Indian peasantry to the freedom movement. Among other things, this coalition entailed a commitment on the part of the ruling elites towards a progressive land reforms agenda. An agenda of agrarian change was the essential glue that secured the support of the peasant classes prior to independence. The same was also the source of political legitimacy for the new regime after Independence which could embark upon a massive enterprise of nation-building amidst political stability and the continuing support of the masses.

Besides, there were several landlord-tenant conflicts in different parts of undivided India which, in a way, created enormous pressure for agrarian reconstruction. According to P.C Joshi (1970), another motivating factor which created a critical situation was the stagnation of agriculture in the face of a growing population. ‘The ruling elites were forced to recognize the close interdependence of agricultural regeneration and agrarian renovation. The replacement of the unproductive landed gentry by a land-owning class actively interested in farming appeared to be one of the most important pre-conditions of agricultural progress’ (pp. A147). Land was not in the hands of those who cultivated it and therefore needed to be transferred therein. Thus, land reform became a burning need and emerged as an important agenda during the first few decades after independence.

Land reforms entailed multiple things. It referred to a planned and institutional reorganisation of the relation between man and land. It implied such institutional changes which turn over ownership of farms to those who actually till the soil. This meant a deliberate change introduced into the system of land tenure and the farming structure. Land Reforms would also mean improving land tenure and institutions related to agriculture, redistribution of property rights for the benefit of the landless poor. It was also envisaged as an integrated program to remove the barriers for economic and social development caused by deficiencies in the existing land tenure system. In other words, the Land Reforms Policy in their totality envisaged a thorough restructuring of agrarian relations. At its best, it was intended to achieve an egalitarian social structure by changing old land relations, realizing the age-old promise of ‘the land to the tiller’, and, ultimately increasing agricultural productivity.

Land Tenure under the British

In the colonial period three types of land revenue systems were institutionalized by the British in India, namely, the zamindari, ryotwari, and mahalwari systems. These three systems broadly defined the relationships between landlords, tenants, and labourers among the layers of land rights and the nature of control exercised by the state, and also established obligations of taxation.

The zamindari system that governed most of eastern and northern India gave feudal lords and tax collectors permanent rights to and control of the land in exchange for collecting tax from peasant tenant farmers. In contrast, under the ryotwari system of southern India, farmers were considered proprietors of the land they cultivated, paid tax directly to the state, and had rights to transfer and mortgage their land. These two systems together accounted for 95 percent of the country. Under the mahalwari or mauzawari system all residents contributed to a collective tax payment by the village to the state. This system applied in the remaining five percent of the country. As time passed, all three systems gave numerous individuals intermediate rights to control land and land revenue, creating enormous pressure on those cultivating the land at the bottom of the pyramid.

History and Context of Land Reforms

Bandyopadhyay (2008) says that the concept of land reforms was a part and parcel of our freedom struggle. The British were concerned with taxing the land efficiently and thoroughly as revenues were required to sustain the Empire. ‘Land therefore was a challenge and an invitation to the early nationalists’ (Jeffrey, 2012). The national movement saw a large number of peasant uprisings as well as the participation of a large number of small and middle peasants and agricultural workers in the Civil Disobedience and Non-Cooperation Movements. These peasants fought against the oppressions and atrocities in the hope that political freedom would eventually lead to economic freedom from the clutches of the landowning classes.

After independence, the Congress had the task of balancing the interests of the substantial tenants and the old landowning class interests as part of creating a broad social coalition. Though there were not too many voices in favour of land reforms in Nehru’s cabinet, land reforms were eventually adopted and accepted as an agenda in the post- independence period by a large section of the Congress, particularly by those who called themselves “Congress Socialists Group.” Soon after Independence, the All India Congress Committee (AICC) set up the Agrarian Reforms Committee also known as the Kumarappa Committee which suggested comprehensive land reform measures including a radical ceiling on land. The First Five Year Plan (1952-57) endorsed the recommendation of the Kumarappa Committee but it was left to the States to implement the ceiling provisions depending on the realities of each state. Since then land reforms have been an item for action in each of the Five Year Plans.

There have been several attempts to chart the growth of land reform in phases, after independence. (Jeffrey, 2012 Deshpande, 2003). The first phase consisting of ‘the long 50s’ saw many legis lations towards the enactment of land reforms, but none that would transfer ‘land to the tiller’.

In the second phase, which began during 1960s to about the mid-1970s, the land reforms lost their importance when India faced a major food crisis. The focus shifted from land reform to enhancement of food grain production to redeem the country from food insecurity and the humiliation of importing wheat from the US. Land reform receded from public imagination but only temporarily. In the late 60s and the early 70s, Naxalbari and the widespread rural unrest again brought back the need for land reform vociferously. The government had to think of increasing agricultural production, and battle peasant insurgencies alongside. This was also the time when a majority of the states passed the Land Reforms Act.

The third phase till the early 1980s consisted of Mrs. Gandhi’s brief flirtation with ‘the socialist phase’ when she brought in legislations to mitigate inequalities in the countryside. According to Jeffrey (2012), ‘the attempt to end bonded labour during the ‘emergency’ though part of such measures, were rarely implemented with persistence’. Area development as an approach was undertaken. Intensive area development programmes like drought-prone area development, desert area development programmes and soil conservation started and further enhanced. New impetus to dry land farming was given. Emphasis on food security continued and there were attempts to divert land towards cultivation of food crops to improve crop diversity, second phase of land reforms with land ceiling acts and consolidation of holdings was brought in.

The fourth period begins in the early 1980s with Mrs Gandhi’s return to power, the rise of a post-freedom struggle middle class which came to believe that the ‘socialist experiment’ had not yielded fruit. Tentative steps towards deregulating the economy began in the 1980s and accelerated with the financial crisis of 1991. ‘Productivity’, ‘urbanisation’ and ‘land acquisition policy’ replaced ‘land to the tiller’ as topics of discussion in policy- making conclaves. The Seventh Five Year Plan (1985-90) made an attempt to link land reforms to other major programs of the Plan by recognizing its centrality in the whole process of rural development and poverty alleviation. But, the onset of liberalization changed the focus of the State towards those dependent on land for their livelihoods. Though land-reform legislation remained active, ‘land policies in more recent decades have focused less on land reform and more on land development and administration’ (Deshpande, 2003)

Land Reform Legislations

When India became independent, several important issues confronted the policy makers,

i)Land was concentrated in the hands of a few and there was a proliferation of intermediaries who were not interested in cultivation themselves. They were only interested in leasing out land.

ii)The tenancy contracts were ex-propriative in nature and tenant exploitation was ubiquitous.

iii)The revenue records were in an extremely bad shape giving rise to a mass of litigation.

Land policies in our country were shaped in the context of these anxieties. The newly independent State had to address land policy because India is a densely populated agrarian economy, and almost all developmental initiatives also involved land as a central issue. Moreover land also clearly represented social status and was not just a means of production.

Land Reform legislation consisted of five important components. The enacted legislation aimed at,a) regulating tenancy b) abolition of intermediate interests in land c) limiting the size of land holdings and re-distributing the surplus land d) distributing government wasteland to those without agricultural land and houses e) land consolidation etc.

a) Tenancy Reform: In India tenancy was a widespread phenomenon in the period after independence. The system was favourable to the landlords as most tenancies were oral and the landlords could terminate them at will. Recognizing the exploitative nature of tenancy relationships, in the 1960s and 1970s, every Indian state passed tenancy reform legislation.These laws affected both existing and future tenancies and were intended to give tenants greater security.The major planks of tenancy reform included security of tenure, termination of tenancy, resumption for personal cultivation by the landlord, regulation of rent and confirmation of ownership rights (Deshpande, 2003). But the agrarian structure was quite diverse and, therefore, no uniform guidelines could be formulated for the whole country. Only some broad guidelines could be given in the successive plan documents. The consensus on the policy of tenancy reforms favoured neither complete expropriation of landlordism nor the interests of the tenants. In the nat ional guidelines, the following measures were communicated to the state governments for incorporation in the state legislation:

security of the tenancy was to be conferred on the actual cultivator,
fair rent was to be fixed, ranging between 20 and 25 per cent of the gross produce,
landowners were permitted to cultivate land for their personal use,
the surrender of the tenancy rights was to be with mutual consent,
with respect to some areas the landlord – tenant relationship had to be brought to an end and the tenant cultivator was to be brought directly into contact with the state,
disabled persons, defence personnel and other such exemptions to be allowed to lease their land,
the term “personal cultivation” was to be clearly defined if landlords removed their tenants in order to resume cultivation,tenancy records were to be corrected. (Deshpande, 2003)

Since land was a subject under the jurisdiction of the State and the relationship between production and land tenure varied from state to state, the national policy recommendations resulted in differing tenancy reform laws in each state.

Another aspect in these tenancy reforms was the provision allowing the landlords to remove tenants in order to resume personal cultivation. This assumed greater importance as the dominant landlords took advantage of this clause. This clause was added with a view to induce the landlord to undertake personal cultivation and also to control absentee landlordism. Tenancy acts in almost all the states allowed the landlord to return land, if required, for personal cultivation, but the terms and definitions differed.

Most tenancy reform laws also contained provisions concerning the ability of tenants to surrender the land back to the landlord voluntarily. These provisions were used by landlords to weaken the impact of the laws. In most states the surrender of land falls under the jurisdiction of the revenue authorities. The authorities allowed such surrender after verification of the voluntary element in the process. It is said that the strong relationship between landlords and revenue officials often allowed the landlords to skirt the law’s intention. Tenants in some states were also given the right to purchase the land. For example, in Maharashtra, where tenancy is not prohibited, the tenant acquires the right to purchase the land after one year from the date of tenancy. Landowners resisted the implementation of these reforms by directly using their political clout and also by using various methods of evasion and coercion, which included registering their own land under names of different relatives to bypass the ceiling, shuffling tenants around different plots of land so that they would not acquire incumbency rights as stipulated in the tenancy law, and possibly even outright eviction (Ghatak and Roy, 2007)

b) Abolition of Intermediaries: Abolition of intermediate interests in land that had been created during the British period is considered as an aspect of land reform which was relatively successful. The British had created a set of intermediaries with vested interests in land, i.e. the zamindars who had the right to collect tributes in return for which they had to pay a land tax to the government. But these intermediaries gradually developed a stake in the land under them. Nearly half of the land was under this system at the time of Independence. This system was exploitative. The land reforms tried to abolish the intermediaries and curtail the power of these large landowners so that the cultivator of the land came into direct contact with the government. This was expected to minimize unjust extraction of surplus by the landowner.

Since land reforms was a state subject, almost every Indian state passed laws restructuring the systems of land holdings and land revenue to abolish intermediate interests. It is believed that these legislative efforts were effective, though the effect, expectedly, varied across states and over time. State laws eliminated the large population of intermediate interests in land, and 20 to 25 million tenants became landowners. However these achievements also were accompanied by a few costs. In a few areas in anticipation of the new legislation, landlords evicted sharecroppers and tenants at will in order to prevent them from gaining rights. Land was even registered under names of different relatives to bypass the ceiling limit. In addition, shortcomings in the laws itself prevented the state from protecting and empowering the poorest tenants. However, this phase of India’s land reforms was enacted more comprehensively than the other aspects like tenancy and land ceiling etc. As a result, despite the deficiencies in the legislation, this effort is judged among the most successful.

c) Land Ceiling: All Indian states adopted land ceiling legislation that limited the amount of agricultural land a person or family can own. The laws were designed to make land holdings equal by taking possession of the excess land which would then be redistributed to the poor, landless, and marginal farmers. Land ceiling laws were enacted for the first time during the 1950s and 60s. They were revised after the national guidelines were issued in 1972.

With some exceptions, the laws have not been effective. Some of the reasons were a) inadequate compensation by the governments for the land that they took which made the program unpopular among landlords b) existence of loopholes and gaps in laws that landowners used to their advantage c) the distribution of relatively large parcels of land by the state which ultimately benefits a small percentage of landless families benefited d) out-dated and incomplete land records which made implementation of the ceiling legislation difficult.

Ceiling laws vary by state. In Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, the law permits a family of five to hold between 10 and 54 acres of land depending upon the quality of the land. In both states, the laws permit the state to buy land above the ceiling, but the required payment to the landowner is set at a much lower level. The state prioritizes the distribution of surplus land among landless and disadvantaged households. In Andhra Pradesh, the state grants surplus land to beneficiaries in parcels up to two and one-half acres of wet and five acres of dry land. According to an estimate,Andhra Pradesh has distributed a total of 582,319 acres of ceiling surplus land to 50,344 beneficiaries while Karnataka redistributed 68,745 acres of land (0.5 per cent of the state’s arable land) to 33,610 beneficiary households. West Bengal set a relatively lower landownership ceiling than the other states and redistributed the surplus land in smaller plots. According to the law, the government has to pay landowners for land taken by the state. But the payment is less than market value. A landowner can also lose his land if the landowner fails to personally farm it. The state distributes the land to local residents who own less than one acre of farm land. The law gives preference to specific disadvantaged groups and persons who form a cooperative society. West Bengal redistributed 1.04 million acres of ceiling-surplus land to 2.54 million land-poor households.

The total amount of land distributed amounts to approximately four per cent of India’s agricultural land. The only states where more than five per cent of agricultural households benefited are West Bengal, Jammu & Kashmir, and Assam. West Bengal distributed ceiling surplus land to 34 per cent of agricultural households, and accounts for 40 per cent of the ceiling surplus land beneficiaries in India. The state’s relative success is based on several factors. First, the law has fewer loopholes than most other state land reform laws. Second, the state government’s political will led to more effective implementation. Finally, the state government’s emphasis on distributing the benefits widely but in smaller plots led to more grassroots support for the process.

d) Government land allocation programs: In addition to the legislative abolishment of intermediaries, tenancy reform, and ceiling laws, some states conducted major efforts to allocate government land to land-poor families. Bandyopadhyay (2008: 38) recollects, and it is also quite interesting to note that that ‘at the height of the green revolution when the entire effort of the Indian state was to attain self-sufficiency in food grain production, the government of India could think of drastically reducing the land ceiling for redistributive land reform. It did for some time have effect on reducing the intensity of rural violence. ’

States have used government land to allocate both house sites and agricultural plots to the land-poor. How does this help the poor? According to a Report (n.d.) even small plots that are 0.07 to 0.10 acre (about 3,000 to 4,500 square feet) in size have been shown to provide the following benefits to farm worker families by providing most or all of the families’ fruit and vegetable needs; space to keep livestock that can provide income (from the sale of products) equivalent to the wages of one full- time adult farm worker; a chance to create wealth through the growth of valuable trees and/or labour intensive improvements to the plot; a valued boost in social status; improved access to credit; and the basis for ending a family’s dependency on a large landowner. Moreover, many of these benefits of house plots are directed towards and received by women. It is widely believed that when women have some control over a house plot, its use and production, they will tend to use the benefits of that plot, including increased amounts of food and surplus income, to benefit the children and family.

Unfortunately, India-wide, the vast majority of rural housing programs provide the poor with very limited space, leaving little room beyond the footprint of a small house. Karnataka and West Bengal have recognized the opportunity in small size plots. Both states recently adopted new programs designed to provide landless and other poor families with access to land that can provide substantial benefits to the family.

Wasteland allocation has also been a government initiative as part of land reform. Wastelands are lands that are either entirely barren or are producing significantly below their economic potential. An estimated 150 million acres of India’s 810 million acres are wastelands and most are owned by state governments. India has tried a variety of ways to use its wasteland to provide the poor with access to land. According to an estimate, the state governments have allocated 14.7 million acres of government wasteland to poor rural households through land reform programs. Six states account for 80 per cent of this land, led by Andhra Pradesh. Most of the allocations took place in the 1970s and 1980s. Most beneficiaries received between two and three acres of land. In recent years,wasteland distribution programs have slowed or stopped altogether. In addition to the lack of new allocations, recent field studies show that a significant portion of the government land supposedly given to poor families is not actually in their possession. In Andhra Pradesh, for example, observers estimate that many of the reported recipients of government wasteland are not in legal or physical possession of their land. In some cases, the lands were distributed “on paper” but not on the ground. In other cases, lands were distributed on the ground, but without formal legal documentation. In still other cases, more powerful interests in the village forced the grantees off the land. Indeed, in many states the failure of state governments generally to maintain accurate, current land records has also undermined their ability to undertake effective redistribution of land, including government land. The Andhra Pradesh state government, with World Bank support, is taking steps to identify and correct cases where the grantees are not in secure legal and physical possession. It is also pursuing the allocation of unallocated wasteland and other innovative and decentralized methods for providing secure land rights to the rural poor. The state’s efforts may provide useful models for other states and countries.

e)Land Consolidation: Consolidation of landholdings was another aspect of land reform that tried to ensure that small parts of land belonging to the same small landowner, but situated at some distance from one another could be consolidated into a single landholding to increase productivity. However this aspect proved to be difficult to implement in practical terms due to a variation in land quality across plots. (Ghatak and Roy, 2007)

Implementation of Land Reforms

The implementation of land reform has been uneve n in India to say the least. However in order to acquire a sense of the extent of land reforms we will discuss how it was received in different regions of the country.The legislative approaches varied by state. Land ceiling laws were first enacted in 50s and 60s. These were revised after the national guidelines were issued in 1972. D. Bandyopadhyay (1986) who has been tirelessly recording the progress of land reforms says that of the 25 states, there are no land ceiling laws in Meghalaya, Nagaland, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Arunachal Pradesh, Goa Daman and Diu, and Mizoram. There is no implementation of land reform laws in Sikkim as well.

Though Kerala made a valiant effort at instituting land reforms during the 1950s, initially the Bill was aborted but subsequently it was taken up again in 1969 by the CPI-M led coalition under C. Achutha Menon who carried it through. The Kerala Land Reforms Amendment Act of 1969 made large numbers of landless people into owners of the land. Tenants became landowners, but more importantly, landless labourers were given the ownership of one-tenth of an acre of land on which their huts stood. This device – bestowing ownership rights on a tiny occupied house and small plot around it – became a favoured model of other state governments thereafter. (Jeffrey 2012). In West Bengal after the CPI-M government came to power in 1977, they followed the Kerala model and granted ownership of 0. 8 acres of land to the agricultural labourers. Operation Barga (1978-81), recorded 1. 2 million sharecroppers in 3 years giving them ‘hereditary right of cultivation and a fair deal in crop sharing with a certificate of sharecropping which could also be used as a document to establish one’s identity and also for securing crop loans for institutions.’ (Bandyopadhyay, 2003: 881). These people remained loyal to the Communist government for almost 30 years.

Whether states would permit the creation of new tenancies was perhaps the most controversial aspect of the tenancy laws. Karnataka, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh are representative in some ways. In Andhra Pradesh, the law gave many existing tenants perpetual rights to tenanted land. The Telangana area of Andhra Pradesh prohibits new tenancies unless the landowner is a smallholder (defined as holding less than 18 acres of irrigated land) or deemed “disabled,” interestingly a status defined to also include women. In the Andhra area of Andhra Pradesh, the law permits tenancy relationships, but they must meet strict requirements regarding duration, rates, and renewal that grant substantial rights to qualifying tenants. In West Bengal, only share tenants were entitled to permanent rights and at a regulated share rent. Karnataka’s law prohibits tenancy, with a few minor exceptions. The state has the power to seize land leased without compensation to the landowner and to distribute the land to land-poor families. With some narrow exceptions, West Bengal does not allow fixed-rent (cash) tenancies, but does allow sharecropping (although, because the law gives permanent rights to such sharecroppers, it discourages landowners from future sharecropping relationships).

Conclusion

To conclude, land reforms in India during the 1960s was one of the radical steps taken by the Indian State to empower large masses of people. It meant a series of legal interventions to abolish vested interests in land and give land to the actual tiller, regulate tenancies and improve land records, impose a ceiling on the amount of land an individual/a family can own, ensure consolidation of land and so on. Although it was uneven in its spread, it empowered large sections of people and has been long recognized as a rural development initiative. Though the progress of land reform was thwarted by the growth of liberalization, the importance of land reforms as a measure is still being felt. The significance of land reforms as an aspect of poverty alleviation and rura l development has been well recognized by experts and reiterated in the Plan documents over the years. Though land reforms is seen as a sort of anachronism today in the era of privatization, especially with the growth of land markets, we will go on to see in the subsequent module, how its failure has led to a growth of economic disparities in the rural areas and progressive increase in rural violence and unrest affecting large numbers of people.

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Bibliography

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