15 Land Reforms Legislations : A Sociological Assessment –II

Dr.Shoma Lahiri

Introduction

As recounted in an earlier module, land reforms were conceived as a program that would usher in positive economic change along with social justice in the lives of the cultivators and the rural poor in independent India. This in turn would create a social base for a democratic system of governance. India was said to contain the largest number of rural poor and landless households in the world. To the extent that landlessness was an index of the extent of rural poverty, redistributive land reforms were therefore considered as a measure with immense possibilities. Land ceiling laws were first enacted in 1950s and 1960s. These were revised after the national guidelines were issued in 1972. Though India passed a large number of land legislations directed towards improving the plight of the rural poor, the experience of land reforms has been mixed.

The enactment of land reform legislations lay within the jurisdiction of the states and hence was not uniform. There are no land ceiling laws in Meghalaya, Nagaland, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Daman and Diu, and Mizoram. There has been no implementation of land reforms in Sikkim. Despite the lack of uniformity, India’s states have initiated several land reform tools, including reforming tenancy, imposing land ceilings, distributing government wastelands, allocating house sites and homestead plots. The law varied in its approach. Some states deemed eligible tenants to be owners, their ownership becoming final on payment of price established by the government. In other states the government assumed ownership of tenanted land by paying a price to the landlord and then subsequently transferring the rights to the tenants, based on their application and payment.

According to Government of India statistics, by the end of 2002, 12.4 million tenants on 15.6 million acres of land had benefitted either by having ownership rights conferred upon them or by having their rights protected. This comprises 8% of India’s rural households and about 4% of India’s cultivated land. It is no doubt that the law allowed the tenants to acquire ownership or owner-like rights to agricultural land, but the same law led to the eviction of a much larger number of tenants. The benefits were realized soon after the implementation of the Act, but what it curtailed was the prospect of future tenancies, which limited the livelihood options of the poor as well as the landowners alike. (Hanstad et al, 2008).

Let us now assess the land reform policies in the light of the changes that it brought about in the lives of the rural poor and in the agrarian power structure at large.Impact of Land Reforms: An Assessment Ensuring Redistribution of land: Agricultural land ceiling laws are one of the best known efforts of land reform initiated in India. All Indian states adopted legislations that place ceilings on the amount of land that a person or a family can own. The objective was that excess land beyond the specified ceiling would be distributed to the landless, marginal and the poor. The ceiling laws were enacted and enforced in two phases: i) between 1960-72 when no specific policy prescriptions or guidelines were present ii) from 1972 and after, after the adoption of national guidelines. According to an estimate, as of 2002, the state governments have re-distributed approximately 5.4 million acres of land to 5.6 million households. West Bengal amounts for 20% of that redistributed land and 47% of the ceiling surplus beneficiaries (Hanstad, 2002 :52). According to an estimate, the state governments have allocated 14.7 million acres of government wasteland to poor rural households through land reform. Further it was found that the ceiling legislation also prevented the concentration of landownership. The NSS data on landholdings show that over time the share of land in the largest size-class has declined. But this could be due to the demographic pressure of partitioning family land.

Land Reforms and Reduction of Poverty: It is said that poverty and literacy are both connected to land reforms. DN (2002) cites an econometric study of India’s experience from 1955-1988 that claims that there is robust evidence of a link between poverty reduction and two kinds of land reform, namely tenancy reform and abolition of intermediaries. Another important finding is that land reform can also benefit the landless by raising agricultural wages. Although the effects on poverty are likely to have been greater if large scale re-distribution of land had been achieved, the results suggest that even partial reforms which mainly affect production relations in agriculture can play a significant role in reducing rural poverty. (DN, 2002: 2548). Another study by Parthsarathy and Murthy (1997) (cited in DN, 2002) also claims that land reform enables an advancement of literacy. Despite limited land reform, a comparison of neighbouring states, like West Bengal and Bihar, or Kerala and Tamil Nadu, points out that “superior literacy status is achieved in states where land reforms are implemented successfully”. In this manner, land reform and literacy are also connected to each other.

Land Reforms were particularly successful in certain states like West Bengal and Kerala where the communist governments took initiative to frame as well as implement the law in such a manner that it benefited the landless.

 Operation Barga: This was the second phase of the land reform program undertaken in the state of  West Bengal in late 70s-early 80s when the Left Front government was in power. Although about 300,000 acres of land had been vested in the state following the first phase of land reforms, large  tracts of agricultural land, way beyond the ceiling level was still under the control of the landed  gentry, held through devious means. A massive quasi-judicial process was held to unearth such land  and in 3 years about a million acres of good agricultural land vested in the state.Operation Barga was started by the Left government in 1977 with the intention to give attention to  the sharecroppers and tenants who had been evicted by landlords as they had testified in the quasi- judicial process. The methodology of this program was innovative whereby revenue officials went  to the field to verify the actual sharecroppers in the presence of landowners and recorded their names. This was the reversal of a 100 year old process. Between 1978-81, 1.2 million sharecroppers  names had been listed. In quantitative terms over 1.6 million sharecroppers were recorded giving them hereditary right of cultivation and a fair deal in crop sharing with a certificate of  sharecropping which could be used as a document to establish one’s identity and also for securing crop loans from institutions. About a million acres of vested land were distributed among 2.5  million beneficiaries who were landless or land poor peasants. Half a million households were  given titles to homestead plots. Land Reforms thus directly benefitted over 4 million rural  households, which was a significant proportion of the rural population. Source: D. Bandyopadhyay: Land Reforms and Agriculture: The West Bengal Experience in  Economic and Political Weekly, Vol XXXVIII. No. 9 (pp 881)

West Bengal’s land allocation practices emphasize distributing available land to as many landless families as possible rather than trying to give each beneficiary family a “full-sized ” farm. In recent years, the state has been allocating the dwindling supply of ceiling-surplus lands in very small plots, averaging less than one-third of an acre. Field studies have shown that even a fraction of an acre can provide important supplementary benefits to a landless family. Apart from intensively farming the plots, there were reportedly significant increases in food consumption, income, and social status attributable to the plots.

In other states, the disappointing results were largely due to a lack of political will. In many cases, ceiling legislation was incomplete and allowed large landowners to avoid the law. The laws also failed to provide fair compensation to landowners. Thus, even after policymakers revised the laws, government officials lacked the will to make compulsory land purchases from the relatively powerful landowning class. The lack of adequate land records also made redistribution efforts more difficult. Though there is a need for land reforms still, the lack of political will exists even today.

In Kerala, the Land Reforms Act 1969 which gave ownership rights to cultivating tenants and homestead rights to hutment dwellers is considered as a ‘model’ in the implementation of land reforms. Land Reforms is said to have played a very important role in materializing some of the positive development achievements of Kerala including higher levels of literacy and lower birth and death rates. But in the recent years studies have shown that land reforms in Kerala have failed to provide adequate land to the actual tillers of the soil. The failures in the implementation of measures such as exclusion of plantations from the ambit of land reforms and non-implementation of the ceiling act are pointed out as reasons for the unsuccessful outcomes of land reforms. But Scaria (2010) claims that there is no linear relation between land reforms and land relations in the state today. Her study shows that the scheduled castes who are the actual tillers of soil, still stand at the bottom even today vis-à-vis ownership of land. In fact multiple factors like fragmentation and uneconomic land holdings, larger processes of commercialization, out migration from the region, the impact of social reforms and demographic pressures on land mediate agrarian social relations in the state.

Despite its potential and reach, the general assessment on land reforms in the Indian context is rather negative. For example, the report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations of the Planning Commission of India (1973) said in their overall assessment of land reforms, ‘The programs of land reform adopted since Independence have failed to bring about the required changes in the agrarian structure.’ The lack of political will of the state governments is said to be responsible for this failure. This is amply demonstrated by the large gaps between policy and legislation and between law and its implementation. It is alleged that ‘in no sphere of public activity in our country since Independence has the hiatus between precept and practice, between policy pronouncements and actual execution been as great as in the domain of land reforms’ (Basu, 2014).

After 1947, Congress governments had the delicate task of balancing the expectations of substantial tenants against the existing power and political connections of the old landlord classes in different regions. This was not easily achieved. The Uttar Pradesh Zamindari Abolition Act of 1952 and the Imposition of Ceiling on Land Holdings Act of 1960 pruned the old landlord class, though many families were able to preserve wealth and land through various strategies. The land reforms in UP,for which Charan Singh (1902-87) took credit, broke up many of the old estates. Some of the landlord families lacked the skills and connections in law and administration to match the new rulers. Large numbers of substantial tenant-farmer families became outright owners and employers of landless agricultural workers. In UP, wealthy tenants became substantial landowners; but the actual tillers of the soil – landless labourers – found no change to their position. Their position may have worsened in that now the people they worked for were more secure, confident and powerful than ever before. In the sense that landlords were dispossessed, ‘land reform’ in Uttar Pradesh could be declared accomplished. However, if land reform meant a wider distribution of holdings, little happened. In fact the National Sample Survey data showed the bottom 40 per cent of rural households in UP holding 2.5 per cent of land in 1954 and 2.9 per cent in 1982 (Jeffrey, 2010).

In Bihar, though there was a lot of public enthusiasm created for land reforms and concomitant agrarian change, legal tangles and political obstacles stood in the way of deep changes in land ownership patterns. In fact a Land Reforms Commission, reported in 2008, that almost 75 per cent of the rural population in Bihar was landless or ‘near landless’.

While the achievement cannot be discounted for those benefited, significant negative impacts experienced by a far larger group offset the positive results:Mass Eviction of Tenants: Tenancy reform caused large-scale eviction of tenants. One study estimates that tenant families were ejected from as much as 33 percent of India’ s agricultural land due to tenancy reform legislation. Though the Land Reforms Act was framed in late 1950s, it was implemented in different parts of the country not before 1965. During this period the landlords got ample opportunity to take care of their interests. A large number of tenants were evicted on the pretext of ‘resumption for self-cultivation. ’ It is widely held that success in tenancy reforms was possible in an area where the tenants were better organized and powerful. But in many cases it has been seen that the very prospect of reforms has led the landlords and joint family landholders to effect large scale evictions of tenants from land. Therefore in such cases tenurial reforms led to a decrease in security of tenure. In his assessment of the impact of Land Reforms Act in Mysore, C.B Damle (1993) alleged that ‘by the time the ‘radical’ tenancy legislation was tabled in the state legislative assembly for enactment in 1974, nearly 78 per cent of the tenants had already lost their occupancy rights because of their evictions, mostly on the flimsy ground of ‘resumption for self cultivation’. Amy Basu (2014) also cites how land ceiling legislation in a number of villages led the members of the joint family to divide the land in smaller proprietary units causing both fragmentation and mass eviction of tenants.In addition to causing evictions, the tenancy laws caused passive dispossession of the poor. These laws prevented the poor farmers from accessing land through tenancy. Most rural households believe that landowners risked losing some rights to their land when they rented it out. As a result,(1)  some landlords choose not to farm their land rather than to lease it out for fear of losing rights and control to tenants; (2) when land is rented, it is given only to people the landowner can trust not to assert rights. For extra protection, the landowner also rotates the tenants to different parcels, often every year. In a country which is largely agricultural and where land is the source of income and social status, the poor households do not fear exploitation as much as they fear not being able to access land to improve their lives. The landless poor households often report that they wish more land was available for rent.Failure in Land Consolidation: Due to the differences in the quality of land holdings, land consolidation reform was not as effective. Land consolidation is aimed as a processes which brings together bits and pieces of land, owned by a person but strewn around in different places, together,such that it facilitates cultivation and boosts productivity. But in the course of distribution of land it was found that land consolidation became a difficult fact because richer farmers used their power to obtain better quality of landholdings. Despite widely introduced legislations in 16 states, land consolidation program was unsuccessful in all except 3 states of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh to some extent. Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Karnataka made little achievement (Basu, 2014). Factors like heterogeneous land quality affected land consolidation. This was of course not a problem in states like Punjab, Haryana where the land quality was not uneven. In other states, farmers did not want to lose any fertile parcel of land because they were not quite sure about the quality of land to be allocated to them. Land consolidation also suffered because of the resistance of landowners, interpersonal disputes, weak land administration and such reasons. Other factors like lack of scientific land records especially in the states in the eastern region, corrupt bureaucracy, legal loopholes and lack of technical skill on the part of officials were other causes of failure of land consolidation. Further, small farmers and tenants feared that they would ultimately be evicted and become jobless due to farm mechanization facilitated by land consolidation. As their tenancy rights were not legalized, the tenants were also concerned about the security of their rights, because they thought that land consolidation may be a pretext for their eviction by landlords. Farmers were also hesitant to change the existing arrangements due to their strong sentimental attachment to land parcels.

Proletarianization : Studies on agrarian processes in contemporary India show that land reforms were more successful in the subsistence based paddy cultivation areas rather than in areas with commercial plantation. Interestingly, even where the reforms were successful, it is said that most of the beneficiaries were from among the upper and middle castes rather than the lower dalit caste groups. However it was found that Land Reforms were unable to improve the economic status of the beneficiaries much. Although ex-tenants became land owners and landless labourers got small homestead plots, a large part of the lands were unviable for cultivation. In fact, according to an estimate in the Dakshin Kanada region about 86% of such land distributed to the middle castes was fragmented and unviable (Jodhka,1995). They had to look for alternative sources of income and sometime they even joined the large force of agricultural labourers in the region. This was solely an impact of land reforms. The region saw an increase in the number of agricultural workers who are largely casual labourers. Many ex-tenants who got evicted also joined the rank of agricultural labourers. This trend is known as the proletarianization of labour.

Impact on Agrarian Structure: The land reforms were envisaged as a measure that would lead to both economic development and social justice. It was thought of as an initiative that would help in overcoming the stagnation in agriculture by creating an interest in it. The crux of the land problem was that land was concentrated in the hand of a few who were neither interested in cultivating or managing it. Alongside large masses of peasants who were the actually tillers of land were dissociated from it. The fundamental aspect of land reform was to remove this discrepancy which would in turn increase productivity, address social injustice and lead to economic development. But it did not turn out the way it was envisaged.

Although land reform was a program with a radical intent, and its ideology was one of anti-landlordism, oriented towards the general interests of the peasants, it was found that the actual programme of land reform ended up serving the interests of the peasant proprietors rather than of the rural poor. According to P.C. Joshi, (1970), ‘the intermediate classes made a joint front with the rural poor to oppose the feudal burdens imposed by the landlord class. But it then made common cause with the landlords in order to oppose any interpretation of land reform which might mean redistribution of land in favour of the rural poor.’ (pp A-145).

Although there was the perception of a crisis of the agrarian system and a widespread peasant discontent on the eve of independence, this feeling was skilfully exploited by the political elites to wrest the maximum benefit for the intermediate classes from the old landed interests rather than from the rural poor. P.C Joshi (1970) mentions that the content of the agrarian reform program was such that a) they did not seek to attack the land concentration but only to modify it b) that they sought to extend protection not to all classes of tenants but to certain specified sections belonging to the upper strata of the peasantry. (pp A-151) Thus the land reforms in the long run led to the emergence of the new landed classes, consisting primarily of medium land owners and superior tenants, who would henceforth exercise direct control over the economic system and wield enormous political power, from the village to the top levels of the power structure. Thus, land reforms did not make any significant difference to the people at the bottom of the agrarian structure or the actual tillers of land, the intermediate classes or the classes of superior tenants were the ones who benefitted.

Land Reforms and the Exclusion of Women: Historically land reform has excluded women. A transfer of property rights to the landless and land poor is said to have increased the bargaining power of the tenants in the wage market. But studies on Andhra Pradesh (cited in DN, 2002) point out that this was not so in the case of women agricultural labourers, whose families got some waste land as part of land redistribution. They did not share in the improved bargaining position. The responsibility of women for household maintenance, and the diversion of men ’s incomes into liquor and other channels of personal consumption, left women with lower wages than men and forced women to accept various onerous conditions of work, that men refused to accept. This shows that it is not enough to increase the bargaining power of men only. The realization is that specific attention needs to be paid towards increasing the bargaining power of women as agricultural labourers by allotting them individual land rights as well. Women’s ownership of land is necessary to stimulate their labour and investment. In the case of rural male outmigration, ownership of land by women becomes a necessity for acquiring credit and necessary flexibility in management of farm resources.

Conclusion

Thus, land reforms in India have had a mixed record. They had been envisaged as a tool through which the state would directly intervene to improve the conditions of large masses of the rural impoverished poor, who had very low bargaining power in society. The first phase of land reforms in the early 60s was left to the states. But initial enthusiasm for land reform abated because India faced a massive food crisis in the decade of the 1960s and the state’s attention had to be directed towards productivity enhancing measures like the Green Revolution. The rising tide of rural unrest in the form of Naxalism in different states forced the government to think of land reforms again and national guidelines were formulated in 1972 regarding reducing land ceilings, introducing family based ceiling on land, tenancy reform and other such similar measures. Almost a decade later a review undertaken as part of the Sixth Five Year Plan found that land reforms had failed to achieve its goals due to the lack of the political will of the State. In fact, P. S Appu, a long-time observer of land reforms opines that the ‘successful abolition of intermediary interests as against the near-complete failure of tenancy reform and land ceiling legislation and redistribution of ceiling-surplus land has been largely a reflection of the class character and democratic political structure of the post-colonial Indian state and state power. The Seventh Five Year Plan (1985 -90) reiterated land reform to be the core of the anti-poverty program of the state and integrated it with mainstream rural development activity. But with globalization and the ushering in of neo-liberal reforms land reforms have become a forgotten agenda of state policy. Market based land reforms were introduced with key financial and technical support of the international agencies and banks which ultimately did not benefit the poor as they were unable to access land. The rural sector in India today is marked by simmering unrest due to the land acquisition policies of the government which favours the industry. While we witness a gradual shift towards land markets, India is still left with the persistence of a land question!

Bibliography:

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• ——————– 2003. Land Reforms and Agriculture: The West Bengal Experience Economic and Political Weekly. Vol XXXVIII. No. 9. pp 879-884
• ——————— 2008. Does Land Still Matter? Economic and Political Weekly, Vol XLIII. No. 10 pp 37-42
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