Land reforms refer to a series of policy measures taken by the government of India after independence, to regulate ownership, operation, and leasing of land. Nearly two centuries of British revenue policy has caused extreme indebtedness of farmers, land fragmentation, increase in income inequality in rural India, less productivity, and stagnation of agriculture. After independence, the government of India took up issues of farmers on mission mode and initiated a series of reforms to rid Indian agriculture of feudalistic and exploitative agrarian structure.

Evaluation Of Land Reforms

1.Abolition of Intermediaries: Abolition of zamindari and similar intermediary tenures during 1950-55 essentially involved the removal of intermediaries between state and actual cultivators. a.

1. Positives of this measure: This measure brought nearly 2.5 crore farmers into a direct relationship with the state. This facilitated distribution of 61 lakh hectares of land to landless farmers. b.
2. Issues with this measure:

i. It led to the large-scale eviction of poor tenants from land. While landlordism has been abolished, absentee landlordism now continues to flourish. ii. The legislation conferred ownership rights not upon the actual cultivator, but on the statutory tenant, who himself was an intermediary with a chain of sub-tenants under him. c. Assessment: Thus, the abolition of intermediary rights on land has been a mixed blessing. Undoubtedly, this zamindari abolition has paved the way for a remarkable shift in the balance of power. But the goal of “land to the tiller” was not achieved. 2. Tenancy reforms: These reforms include, regulation of rent, providing security of tenure, and conferring rights of ownership for tenants.

Positives of this measure

This policy mandated that the Rent payable to the landowners should not exceed one-fifth to one-fourth of the gross produce of the land. In the light of this guideline, all the states have enacted laws for the fixation of rent. A very important aspect of tenancy reform is the conferment of ownership rights to tenants. This reform resulted in nearly 124.2 lac tenants getting ownership rights.

Issues with this measure

There existed a large-scale inter-state variation in rents fixed by the states. Due to a loose definition of the term personal cultivation, landowners continued to resume land for self-cultivation and evicted the tenants despite it being illegal. These reforms have failed to regulate rents because of the poor position of land-hungry farmers. Conferment of ownership also failed as only tenants operating in 4 percent of land got ownership rights. Assessment: Overall impact of tenancy reforms has been rather limited. Legislation for conferment of ownership rights could not yield good results because many tenants are incapable of buying land from the landowners and many of them are unwilling to do so. 3.Ceiling on Landholdings: To reduce the existing disparities in the pattern of land-ownership and make some land available for distribution to landless agricultural workers, the imposition of ceilings on agricultural holdings above a certain limit was envisaged. Positives of this measure: Till 2001, the total amount of land declared surplus was 73.67 lakh acres, 64.95 lakh acres of land had been taken over by the states. A total of 53.79 lakh acres of land have been distributed among 54.84 lakh tenants. Issues with this measure: In the second phase of this reform that started after 1972, ceiling limits have also been lowered. Besides this, the exemption for orchards, grazing land, religious/charitable/educational trusts, sugarcane plantations, tanks, fisheries have made the ceiling laws virtually redundant. Assessment of this measure: The operations of the ceiling law made virtually no impact on the agrarian structure. The public debate preceding this law over several years enabled landowners to manipulate land records. 4. Consolidation of Landholdings: Fragmented and subdivided landholdings, as well as small sized holdings, have made Indian agriculture unremunerative. So consolidation of these lands was necessary to boost efficiency and economy in India’s agriculture. This process till now is completed only in very few states, prominent among them being Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh. One of the reasons for the tardy progress of this aspect of land reforms is that small farmers have a strong fear that consolidation favours large farmers.

Impact Of Land Reforms

1. Land reforms have put an end to zamindars, jagirdars, and other exploitative intermediaries and reduced the revenue burden on farmers.
2. Land ceiling laws had resulted in surplus land which created jobs for marginal and small farmers.
3. The cumulative effect of all these reforms motivated investment and improved agriculture productivity.
4. Land reforms changed the rural power structure drastically. Land reforms were followed by sanskritization and democratic decentralisation. This resulted in lower castes organizing themselves and asserting their rights.
5. One of the important impacts of land reforms is that it has paved the way to change subsistence farming into commercial farming.

After more than 70 years of independence, one notices some achievements in the sphere of land reforms. At the same time, our efforts in this direction have not yielded desired results. Most of the planks of land reform measures are ambivalent and there are large gaps between policy and legislation and between legislation and implementation.