Land reform in India refers to institutional efforts to reform the ownership and regulation of land in India. Land-reform policy in India had two specific objectives: “The first is to remove such impediments to increase in agricultural production as arise from the agrarian structure inherited from the past. The second object, which is closely related to the first, is to eliminate all elements of exploitation and social injustice within the agrarian system, to provide security for the tiller of soil and assure equality of status and opportunity to all sections of the rural population.”

There are four main categories of reforms:

• Abolition of intermediaries (rent collectors under the pre-Independence land revenue system);
• Tenancy regulation (to improve the contractual terms including security of tenure);
• A ceiling on landholdings (to redistributing surplus land to the landless);
• Attempts to consolidate disparate landholdings.

After Independence, attempts had been made to alter the pattern of distribution of land holdings on the basis of four types of experiments, namely;

• Land reforms “from above” through legislation on the lines broadly indicated by the Central Government, enacted by the State legislators, and finally implemented by the agencies of the State Government.
• Land reforms “from above” as in the case of Telengana and the naxalite movement also to some extent in the case of the “Land Grab” movement.
• Land reforms through legislative enactments “from above” combined with peasant mobilisation “from below” as in the case of controlled land seizure in West Bengal and protection of poor peasants in Kerala.
• Land reforms “from below” through permission of landlords and peaceful processions by peasants as in the case of Bhoodan and Gramdan.

Land reforms measures enforced by various governments-

• Abolition of intermediaries- Soon after independence, measures for the abolition of the Zamindari system were adopted in different states. The first Act to abolish intermediaries was passed in Madras in 1948. Since then, state after state passed legislation abolishing Zamindari rights.

Consequences- As a result of the abolition of intermediaries, about 2 crore tenants are estimated to have come into direct contact with the State making them owners of land. The abolition of intermediaries has led to the end of a parasite class. More lands have been brought to government possession for distribution to landless farmers. However this reform had some drawback. The total numbers of beneficiaries were fraction of total number of farmers requiring state help. It also led to large-scale eviction. Large-scale eviction, in turn, has given rise to several problems – social, economic, administrative and legal.

• Tenancy reforms-

Security of tenure- To protect tenants from ejectment and to grant them permanent rights on lands, laws have been enacted in most of the states. They have three essential features. (a) Tenants cannot be evicted without any reason. They can be evicted only in accordance with the laws.

(b) Land can be resumed by the landlord only on the ground of personal cultivation. But the land-lord can resume the land only up to a maximum limit.

(c) The landlord should leave some area to the tenant for his own cultivation. The tenant in no case should be made landless.

However, tenancy legislations in India are not uniform throughout the country. Each state has its own legislation. In Orissa, a limit has been imposed on the landlords for resuming land for personal cultivation.

Right of ownership- So far as right of ownership is concerned, tenants have been declared as the owners of the land they cultivate after independence. They have to pay compensation to the owners. The amount of compensation should not exceed the level of fair rent. As a result of these measures about 40 lakh tenants have already acquired ownership rights over 37 lakh hectares of land. They have become better-off economically and socially.

In several states, in the matter of tenancy reform, legislation falls short of the accepted policy. What is even worse, the implementation of the enacted laws has been half-hearted, halting and unsatisfactory in part of the country. The legal protection granted to tenants has often been ineffective.

• Ceiling of land- The third important step of land reforms relates to the imposition of ceiling on land holdings. Ceiling on land holdings implies the fixing of the maximum amount of land that an individual or family can possess. Land ceiling has two aspects: one, the fixation of ceiling limit and two, the acquisition of surplus land and its distribution among the small farmers and landless workers.

Up to end September 2001, the total amount of land declared surplus was 73.67 lakh acres, 64.95 lakh acres of land have been taken over by the states. A total of 53.79 lakh acres of land have been distributed among 54.84 lakh tenants. This amounts to saying that about 12 lakh acres of land could not be distributed because of variety of reasons, of which litigation is considered to be the most inhibiting factor.

The operations of the ceiling law made virtually no impact on the agrarian structure. The enforcement of the ceiling law was preceded by a public debate spread over several years. This enabled landowners to manipulate land records leading to fictitious (benami) and fraudulent partitions of lands among their relations, friends, fictitious trusts, etc.

Appraisal of the Land Reforms-

Land reforms have been half-heartedly attempted at various times and this has proved to be a case of the remedy being worse than the disease. By and large land reforms in India enacted so far and those contemplated in the near future are in the right direction; and yet due to lack of implementation the actual results are far from satisfactory.

The Indian Government was committed to land reforms and consequently laws were passed by all the State Governments during the Fifties with the avowed aim of abolishing landlordism, distributing land through imposition of ceilings, protection of tenants and consolidation of land-holdings. One of the significant achievements of these acts was the abolition of absentee landlordism in several parts of India. However, land reforms were half-hearted with regard to the imposition of ceilings and security of tenure. Consequently, the skewness in land distribution was not reduced in any significant manner. Further, a very large number of tenants were actually evicted in the name of self-cultivation. In spite of it, land reforms brought about a significant change in land relations in so far as self-cultivation, rather than absentee landlordism, became a predominant mode of production.

The efficacy of the legislation was, however, considerably reduced for the following reasons;

• The act did not benefit sub-tenants and share croppers, as they did not have occupancy rights on the land they cultivated.
• Intermediaries were abolished, but the rent receiving class continued to exist.
• Many landlords managed to retain considerable land areas under the various provisions of the laws. Benami holdings became the order of the day in many States.
• The problems of transferring ownership rights from the actual cultivators of the land, the tenants, the sub-tenants, share croppers, therefore, remained far from resolved.

All these did not mean that it had no positives. It abolished exploitative the land tenure systems prevalent in agrarian society. It provided security of tenure i.e. the tenants are assured that they can cultivate the land for long time period. In some cases tenants even had given ownership rights. It brought fundamental changes in the agrarian economy, rural social structure, and rural power structure. It moved Indian society towards the egalitarian society.

Conclusion-

It is time the government and civil society thought seriously of land reforms when especially a “humble farmer” is on top. If in the new century we still talk of reforms without effective implementation we will surely miss the bus.