China literally took land from land owners and redistributed them, and invested heavily in creating an unrivaled manufacturing capability by displacing millions of people without their consent
Can India do the same?
Already did:
Land reforms since independence
Land reforms refer to the regulation of ownership, operation, leasing, sales, and inheritance of land.
Objectives of land reforms after independence
Land is the basis of all economic activity and for a largely agrarian society like India; this carries a lot of import.
Indian rural society is symbolised by a rich landowning minority (zamindars/landlords) and an impoverished landless majority (peasants). Therefore, land reforms are a vital step towards economic and social equality.
Objectives of land reforms:
- 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
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:
- Rent regulation
- Tenure security
- Conferring ownership to tenants
Land policy formulation through the planning period (Five Year Plans)
| Plan Period | Chief Issue | Policy Thrust |
| First Plan 1951 – 56 | Increase 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 – 61 | Agriculture mostly dependent on rains alone. Low land productivity. | Soil conservation. First phase of land reform implementation. Irrigation development. |
| Third Plan 1961 – 66 | Food 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 – 74 | Food 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 – 79 | Problems of degradation. Drought-prone areas. | Drought-prone area development. Desert area development programmes. Soil conservation. Dry farming. |
| Sixth Plan 1980 – 85 | Underutilization of land resources. Drought-prone areas. | Land and water management programme under drought-prone area programme in select areas. |
| Seventh Plan 1985 – 90 | Soil erosion. Land degradation. Deforestation. Degradation of forest lands. | Soil and water conservation. Prevention of land degradation. Wastelands Development programmes. |
| Eighth Plan 1992 – 97 | Dryland and rain-fed areas needing attention. Degradation of land is irrigated command areas. | Watershed approach. Soil conservation combined with watershed programmes. Agro-climatic regional planning approach incorporated. |
| Ninth Plan 1997 – 2002 | Land 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 cease 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.
With a cap on the size of landholding, an individual/family could hold equitable distribution of land was possible to an extent. With only landlord abolition and no land ceiling, the land reforms would not have been at least partially successful. Land ceiling ensured that the rich farmers or higher tenants did not become the new avatar Zamindars.
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.
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.
