After independence, the Nehru government started a planned development process. The stress was on agricultural reforms and industrialization. The condition of agriculture in India at that time was pitiable. The country depended on imported foodstuff. People in the villages were in poverty. In the circumstances, the government felt the need to reform the agricultural sector. It realized that there should be drastic changes in the ownership of the land and its distribution. To bring these changes there was a series of land reform bills. The reforms were carried. out at the Centre and in the States.
The first important land reform law was to end the zamindari system. With this, the middlemen between the government and the farmers were ceased to exist. The ownership of the land by zamindars was canceled. The land of the zamindars was taken from them and it was distributed to the farmers who farmed it. With this, the power of zamindars weakened. It improved the condition of the real farmers.
Although zamindari system was ended by this law, landlord-ship, tenancy, sharecropping, etc. did not end. In the agricultural sector, there were many layers and zamindars were the top layer. The top layer was removed but other layers remained. The second series of land reforms tried to end tenancy system. It made a condition that till the tenant paid the rent, he could not be ousted from the land. This law could offer some kind of protection to the tenants. The rent to be given to the landlord was also reduced by this law.
But in many States, this law was not properly implemented. Since the tenants were not given any written documents, the law proved useless in many cases. Only in Wet Bengal and Kerala, the law was effectively implemented. These States were able to restructure the agricultural system by giving the tenants the right to their land. The third land reform law related the maximum land a family could own. The limit for maximum land would depend on each region. For example, in Assam, it could be 50 acres but in Bengal, it might be only 25 acres. The ceiling was determined according to the type of land and fertility of soil.
If the land was well- productive and fertile, the land area one could retain would be smaller than less productive and infertile land. The extra land taken from the families would be taken and distributed among the landless poor. But all this did not happen as planned. Landowners used different techniques to keep their land by using various loopholes of the law Many landowners escaped from the law by giving away their extra lands to their relatives.
Even their servants were given land. Thus they were able to keep control of their land. To escape from the land ceiling laws, in some regions, rich landowners and farmers officially divorced their wives, although they lived together. This way they could keep the land by giving a share to the wives. The efficacy of the land reform laws was not similar in all States. It is true that some changes did happen. But there was hardly any big difference in the inequality prevailing in the agricultural sector. It affected the production of agricultural goods. The land reform laws are important in India. Such reforms will remove the poverty i villages and bring social justice.
