Phase-I

This phase commences just after Independence.

All economies were agrarian before they were industrialised, only their periods vary. Once democratic systems developed, the first thing the developed countries of today did was to complete the agrarian reforms in a time-bound way. As land remains the means of livelihood for the larger section of society in an agrarian economy, the successful completion of agrarian reforms benefitted the maximum number of people thereby improving their economic conditions. At the time of Independence, India was a typical agrarian economy and had inherited a very inequitable agrarian system. Land reforms will be a major plank of independent India and as part of the agrarian reforms it was made clear by the pledge of the Indian National Congress in 1935 itself. Land reforms in India had three objectives similar to the other economies which opted for it in the past:

(i) Removing institutional discrepancies of the agrarian structure inherited from the past which obstructed increasing agricultural production, such as, the size of agricultural holding, land ownership, land inheritance, tenancy reforms, abolition of intermediaries, introduction of modern institutional factors to agriculture, etc.

(ii) The other objective of the land reforms in India was related to the issue of socio-economic inequality in the country. The high inequality in land ownership not only had a its negative economic impact on the economy; but it was badly intertwined with the caste system in India and the allocation of social prestige and status by the society at large.14 More than 80 per cent of the population from its livelihood inherited the agrarian system which had inequitable ownership of the asset, i.e., land to earn income. The government wanted to go for a restructuring of land ownership in the economy on logical grounds and with public welfare approach. This objective of land reforms got enough socio-political attention as it tried to dismantle the age-old agrarian structure in the country. It became such a hot issue that land reforms in India got a ‘bad- name’, synonymous to land-grabbing by the government and allotting them to the landless masses.

(iii) The third objective of land reforms in India was highly contemporary in nature, which did not get enough socio-political attention—it was the objective of increasing agricultural production for solving the inter- related problems of poverty, malnutrition and food insecurity.

To realise the objectives of land reforms, the government took three main steps which had many internal sub-steps: