Before colonialisation, India was an Agranian Economy which means that agriculture was the main source of livelihood for most of the people of India. But after Britishers captured India, they exploited natural as well as the human resources for the glory of their own country.

After the British rule, our agriculture sector was totally destroyed. There was low productivity, disguised unemployment, subsistence farming, outdated technology and what not.

To promote the growth in the agriculture sector, various land reforms were introduced during 1950-90 (post independent India) which unfotunately failed to make much difference in this sector.

LAND REFORMS:

Land reforms primarily referred to chnage in the ownerships of landholdings. This was a need in India where majority of its population was dependent on agriculture and to bring equity in agriculture. Some of these land reforms were:

1. LAND CEILING- 

• Land ceiling refers to fixing the maximum limit of land which could be owned by an individual. If anyone had land beyond this limit, it was confiscated my the government and was alloted to small farmers and landless cultivators.
• This was done to reduce the concentration of land ownership in few hands and to promote equity in the agricultural sector.

BUT THIS LEGISLATION FAILED  as its implementation was delayed which the big farmers took benefit of. It gave them time to register the land in the name of their close relatives and were able to escape from this legislation.

2. ABOILATION OF INTERMEDIARIES

• Zamindars used to extract huge amount of interest from farmers. The government took various steps to abolish these intermediaries and make farmers the actual owners of land.
• The main purpose of this was to bring farmers into direct contact with the government and give them right to make profit from their output.

This legislation was also a fail as zamindars found some loop holes in this legislation. They evicted the tenants from their lands and claim that they were the self cultivators. And some farmers who got the ownership of the land did not benefit from the land reform.

CONCLUSION

The land reforms were successful in Kerala and West Bengal because 
the Government of these states were committed to the policy of Land
Reforms but other states did not have the same level of commitment 
and inequality in the land Holdings continued.