Land Reforms in India

WHY IN NEWS?

• With livelihoods affected during the Covid pandemic, the importance of land ownership for access to formal loans as well as government relief programmes became more evident. In this scenario it is imperative to take forward the unfinished agenda of comprehensive land reforms in India.

WHAT IS LAND REFORM?

• Land reform is a purposive change in the way in which agricultural land is held or owned, the methods of cultivation that are employed, or the relation of agriculture to the rest of the economy.
• The concept of land reform has varied over time according to the range of functions which land itself has performed: as a factor of production, a store of value and wealth, a status symbol, or a source of social and political influence
• Historically, land reform meant reform of the tenure system or redistribution of the land ownership rights.
• In recent decades the concept has been broadened in recognition of the strategic role of land and agriculture in development.

MAJOR LAND TENURE SYSTEM DURING COLONIAL PERIOD:

• (a) Zamindari System:
  • This system was introduced by the East India Company (Lord Cornwallis) in 1793
  • Under this, a class of Revenue Collectors, called Zamindars, who acted as intermediaries between the British govt and cultivators was created.
  • This system prevailed in the areas of Bengal, Bihar and Odisha.
  • The share of the govt in the total rent collected by the Zamindars was kept at 10/11th, the balance went to Zamindars as remuneration and the system conferred the Zamindars the power to extract as much rent as they wish.
  • So, in order to maximise the profit zamindars started exploiting the poor cultivators.
  • Individual cultivator did not have rights regarding sale, transfer and leasing of land.
  • The actual cultivator was left with no surplus to invest in improved seeds and fertilizers and at the same time no incentive to increase agriculture production and productivity.
  • The agriculture production did not increase as tillers showed no interest in modernisation of Agriculture.
• (b) Mahalwari System
  • This system was introduced by William Bentinck in North India (Agra, Oudh) and later extended to Madhya Pradesh and Punjab.
  • Under this, the responsibility for collecting the land revenue lied with the village community
• (c) Ryotwari System
  • This system was initially introduced in Tamil Nadu and later extended to Maharashtra, Barar, East Punjab, Assam and Coorg.
  • Under this system, the cultivator paid revenue directly to the state without an intermediary and the riots (individual cultivator) has full rights regarding sale, transfer and leasing of land.

NEED FOR LAND REFORMS IN POST-INDEPENDENT INDIA:

• Flawed system of land ownership under British rule:
  • Under the British Raj, the farmers did not have the ownership of the lands they cultivated, the landlordship of the land lied with the Zamindars, Jagirdars etc.
  • Land was concentrated in the hands of a few and there was a proliferation of intermediaries who had no vested interest in self-cultivation.
  • Leasing out land was a common practice. The tenancy contracts were exploitative in nature and tenant exploitation was almost everywhere.
  • Land records were in extremely bad shape giving rise to a mass of litigation.
  • In short >> at the time of independence India had got very inequitable agrarian system in inheritance, so land reform was necessary.
• To ensure distributive justice:
  • The Indian Government after independence was committed to land reforms to ensure distributive justice as was promised during the freedom struggle.
  • A committee, under the Chairmanship of J. C. Kumarappan was appointed to look into the problem of land. The Kumarappa Committee's report recommended comprehensive agrarian reform measures.
  • Consequently, laws were passed by all the State Governments during the 1950s with the a vowed aim of abolishing landlordism, distributing land through imposition of ceilings, protection of tenants and consolidation of land- holdings.
• To reduce rural poverty:
  • Land reform leads to increased rural agricultural wages that help in ensuring more income to the rural landless labourers and thus crucial to rural poverty reduction.
  • More over increased access to land for the poor landless masses by the redistribution of land ensures them an income guarantee.
• Empowerment of women in the traditionally male driven society:
  • Land ownership rights would help in strengthening women’s agency and giving them opportunities to assert themselves
• To increase productivity of agriculture:
  • Since owner-cultivated plots of land tend to be more productive than those under sharecropping tenancy, land reform in the form of tenancy laws that granted security of tenure could raise productivity by converting sharecroppers into owner-cultivators.
• Reduce socio-economic inequality:
  • Abolition of intermediaries would strengthen the position of the actual landholders and cultivators that help them to enhance their social and economic stature.

NEED OF LAND REFROMS IN POST-COVID ECONOMY:

• For a significant section of the rural poor, land is both an asset and a source of livelihood.
• Many informal jobs in the urban centres were lost as the economy was hit by the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 and 2021.
• The resulting reverse migration placed greater demands on household resources in rural areas.
• With livelihoods affected, the importance of land ownership for access to formal loans as well as government relief programmes became even more evident.
• But the relatively poor availability of clear and updated land titles remains a hurdle.

OBJECTIVE OF LAND REFORMS:

• Increase investment:
  • To enhance the productivity of land by improving the economic conditions of farmers and tenants so that they may have the interest to invest in and improve agriculture
• Socialistic objective:
  • To ensure distributive justice and to create an egalitarian society by eliminating all forms of exploitation
• Ensure land rights
  • To create a system of peasant proprietorship with the motto of land to the tiller
• Spur overall growth in economy:
  • To transfer the incomes of the few to many so that the demand for consumer goods would be created >> increases economic growth

LAND REFORM INITIATIVES

• Efforts taken under land reforms since independence can be summarised as:

INSTITUTIONAL PHASE (1950s – 1960s):

• Abolition of intermediaries like zamindars, jagirdars, etc.
  • Approximately 57% area of the country was under the Zamindari System at the time of independence.
  • Intermediaries like Zamindars, Jagirdars were abolished and several laws were promulgated by the state to put an end on ‘absentee landlordism’.
  • These laws removed the layer of intermediaries who stood between the cultivators and the state.
  • Abolition of intermediaries was done with compensation unlike in Communist Countries like Yugoslavia, China, Russia etc, where landlords were confiscated from the land without any compensation.
  • Due to the result of Abolition of intermediaries, about 30 lakh tenants acquired land ownership over an area of 62 lakh acres across the country.
• Tenancy regulation
  • Tenancy regulation was the next major issue after passing the Zamindari Abolition Acts.
  • The reform attempted either to outlaw tenancy altogether or to regulate rents to give some security to the tenants.
  • It aims to maintain a balance between the interest of landlords and tenants. It has following objectives:
  • Regulation of Rent
    • During pre-independence period, the rent charged by Zamindars from the tenants was exorbitant, sometimes even as much as 80% of the product was extracted by the zamindars in the form of rent.
    • So, Regulation of Rent meant for fixing and rationalizing the rate of rent paid by the share-cropper to the landowner.
  • Security of Tenure:
    • With the temporary tenancy the personal interest of cultivator is very thin, and the tenants take very less care in preparing the land.
    • The laws related with the security of tenure focussed that a sharecropper should have economic security and the ejectments should not take place except in accordance with the provision of law.
  • Ownership Rights to the tenants
    • It has been highlighted that ownership rights should be conferred on tenants so that the landless masses could get the final rights for the land they plough (Land to the Tillers).
    • In West Bengal and Kerala, there was a radical restructuring of the agrarian structure that gave land rights to the tenants.
• Land ceilings laws:
  • Ceiling Laws fixed the statutory maximum limit on the amount of land which an individual can hold (which was later on amended to holding by a family).
  • The surplus land was to be surrendered to the Govt.
  • In 1942, Kumarappan Committee recommended the maximum size of lands a landlord can retain. It was three times the economic holding i.e. sufficient livelihood for a family.
  • By 1961-62, all the state governments had passed the land ceiling acts.
  • But the ceiling limits varied from state to state. To bring uniformity across states, a new land ceiling policy was evolved in 1971.
  • In 1972, national guidelines were issued with ceiling limits varying from region to region, depending on the kind of land, its productivity, and other such factors.
• Consolidation of land:
  • In order to solve the problem of fragmentation of land holdings and improve farming efficiency, this measure was introduced.
  • Under this, farmers were granted one consolidated land holding equal to the land in the different scattered plots under his possession.
  • Although consolidation of landholding did not have much effect in the southern and eastern states, it made considerable progress in Punjab, Haryana and Western UP.
• Cooperativization and community farming:
  • As the farmers were having small landholdings which were not much remunerative, so the idea under Cooperative farming was that farmers having very small landholding should join hand and pool their land for the purpose of cultivation.
  • In India, majority of the holdings are too small. About 76.4 per cent of the total holdings in India are below the size of 2 hectares and on these again 28.8 per cent of total operated area is engaged into these marginal and small holdings.
  • Cultivation in such a small holding is uneconomic and unprofitable.
  • Cooperative farming enables them to consolidate their small units of land for better utilization.
  • This solves the problem of sub-division and fragmentation of holdings.
  • Benefits:
    • Use of Machinery: A poor farmer cannot purchase the machinery but a cooperative society can easily purchase the various machines. The use of machines will not only reduce the cost of production but will increase the per acre yield.
    • Supply of Inputs: A cooperative farming is in a better position to get the adequate and timely supply of essential agriculture inputs like fertilizer and seeds.
    • Creates brotherhood and communal harmony: A cooperative farming society creates the brotherhood and love for the members because they work for their common interest.
    • Fair price of the Product: A co-operative farming society will bargain in the market and will sell the product at maximum price. The income of the individual farmer will increase.
    • Guidance and training: A co-operative society has more access to agriculture extension services than an individual farmer to increase efficiency and production.

TECHNOLOGICAL PHASE (SINCE 1960s)

• Green Revolution:
  • The green revolution in India refers to a period when Indian Agriculture was converted into an industrial system due to the adoption of modern methods and technology such as the use of HYV seeds, tractors, irrigation facilities, pesticides and fertilizers.
  • It was funded by the US and the Indian Government and the Ford and Rockefeller Foundation.
  • It resulted in a great increase in production of food grains (especially wheat and rice).
  • The Green Revolution, spreading over the period from 1967-68 to 1977-78, changed India’s status from a food-deficient country to one of the world's leading agricultural nations.
• Digitisation of land records
  • Making land records available to all, to contain/check property frauds, became one of the objectives of the government of India in the late 1980s.
  • To address the same, the Digital India Land Records Modernisation Programme (DILRMP) was launched in 2008.
  • It is now under flagship Digital India initiative
  • Aim of the programme:
    • To computerise all land records, including mutations
    • Improve transparency in the land record maintenance system
    • Digitise maps and surveys
    • Update all settlement records
    • Minimise the scope of land disputes.
  • Digitisation would provide clear titles of land ownership that could be monitored easily by government officials, to facilitate quicker transactions.
  • This will also reduce construction timelines and the overall cost for the developer, the benefits of which can be transferred to the consumer, making property prices more attractive.
  • The Digital India Land Records Modernization Programme dashboard shows that land records in 90.1% of villages across the country have been digitised.

RECENT INITIATIVES:

• Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013
  • It regulates land acquisition and lays down the procedure and rules for granting compensation, rehabilitation and resettlement to the affected persons in India.
  • The Act has provisions to provide fair compensation to those whose land is taken away, brings transparency to the process of acquisition of land to set up factories or buildings, infrastructural projects and assures rehabilitation of those affected.
  • The Act replaced the Land Acquisition Act, 1894, a nearly 120-year-old law enacted during British rule.
• Model Agricultural Land Leasing Act, 2016
  • The model Act seeks to permit and facilitate leasing of agricultural land to improve access to land by the landless and marginal farmers.
  • It also provides for recognition of farmers cultivating on leased land to enable them to access loans through institutional credit.
• Model Contract Farming Act, 2018

• • It seeks to create a regulatory and policy framework for contract farming
  • Based on this Model Act, legislatures of states can enact a law on contract farming as contracts fall under the Concurrent List of the Constitution
  • Under the Model Act, the producer can get support from the buyer for improving production through inputs (such as technology, pre-harvest and post-harvest infrastructure) as per the agreement.
  • However, the buyer cannot raise a permanent structure on the producer’s land.
  • Rights or title ownership of the producer’s land cannot be transferred to the buyer.
• SWAMITVA scheme
  • It stands for ‘Survey of Villages Abadi and Mapping with Improvised Technology in Village Areas’ 
  • The scheme is for surveying the land parcels in rural inhabited area using Drone technology
  • The survey shall be done across the country in a phase wise manner over the period 2020 -2025
  • It aims to provide rural people with the right to document their residential properties so that they can use their property for economic purposes.
  • Benefits of the scheme
    • The delivery of property rights through an official document will enable villagers to access bank finance using their property as collateral.
    • The property records for a village will also be maintained at the Panchayat level, allowing for the collection of associated taxes from the owners. The money generated from these local taxes will be used to build rural infrastructure and facilities.
    • Freeing the residential properties including land of title disputes and the creation of an official record is likely to result in appreciation in the market value of the properties.
    • The accurate property records can be used for facilitating tax collection, new building and structure plan, issuing of permits and for thwarting attempts at property grabbing.
  • Need for the scheme
    • Several people in the rural areas don’t have papers proving ownership of their land.
    • In most states, survey and measurement of the populated areas in the villages has not been done for the purpose of attestation/verification of properties.
• Draft Model Land Title Act, 2019
  • NITI Aayog is making a ‘Model Land Title Act’ which will pave the way for conclusive land titles as against assumptive ones at present.
  • Apart from that, the govt is also working on a unified legal framework that will give for state-guaranteed land ownership.
  • Conclusive land titles are guaranteed by the state for their accuracy and require provision for compensation by the state in case of any conflicts.
  • Guaranteed title systems have been developed and used in countries such as Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom.
  • Conclusive land titling will encourage easy access of credit to farmers and lessen a large number of land-related lawsuits.
  • Apart from that, it will enable transparent real estate transactions and land acquisition for infrastructure development.
  • At present, land ownership in India is determined through various records such as sale deeds, property tax receipts, and survey documents.
  • The government is of the view that massive progress in computerisation of land records will benefit in leading towards conclusive land titles.

IMPACT OF LAND REFORMS

• Ensure food security:
  • Earlier large tracts of wasteland belonging to zamindars/ big farmers remained uncultivated. These lands were given to landless labourers as a result of which there is increase in area under cultivation leading to food security.
• Agricultural productivity
  • Equal distribution of land will encourage intensive cultivation resulting in increased agricultural production leading to higher production levels.
  • Some farm management studies conducted in India testified that small farms yielded more production per hectare. It is so because family members themselves cultivate small farms.
  • Moreover some of the land owners shifted to direct ‘efficient’ farming in order to get ‘exemption’ from land ceiling.
• Reduce social inequalities:
  • The tenancy laws have given the tillers protection from exploitation by providing them security of tenure and fixing maximum chargeable rents.
  • In a rural economy, whoever controls land, controls the power >> land ceiling reduced this power inequality among villagers.
  • As intermediary rights are abolished >> India no longer presents a picture of feudalism at the top and serfdom at the bottom.
• Minimize the role of caste:
  • In rural India >> ownership of land was the primary source of power to impose caste system. Distribution of land helps in minimising the role of caste in rural life.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

• Issues with zamindari abolition:
  • In many states intermediaries were allowed to retain possession of lands under their ‘personal cultivation’. These were widely misused and in many cases there were ‘mass evictions’ of tenants by land lords to bring the land under the pretext of ‘personal cultivation’.
  • Unholy nexus between bureaucracy and land owners >> result in ineffective implementation
  • Unevenly implemented across states
  • Zamindari abolition laws were able to remove only the top layer in the multi-layered agrarian structure. Other intermediaries remain intact.
• Issues with tenancy reforms:
  • Absence of proper records
    • Laws related to the security of tenure has not been implemented effectively due to lack of correct and up-to-date land records since a person can claim to be a tenant only when his name appears in the land records
  • Ineffective implementation:
    • Only upper strata of tenancy got the benefit of these tenancy regulation
    • In most of the states, these laws were never implemented very effectively.
    • Despite repeated emphasis in the plan documents, some states could not pass legislation to confer rights of ownership to tenants.
    • Few states in India have completely abolished tenancy while others states have given clearly spelt out rights to recognized tenants and sharecroppers.
    • Although the reforms reduced the areas under tenancy, they led to only a small percentage of tenants acquiring ownership rights.
• Issues with land ceiling:
  • There were many exemptions such as for plantation lands etc.
  • Judicial intervention to protect the right to property resulted in delays in implementation
  • Ceilings fixed by most of the states were very high
  • In most cases landowners managed to divide the land among relatives and others, including servants, in so-called ‘benami transfers’ – which allowed them to keep control over the land. In some places, some rich farmers divorced their wives (but continued to live with them) in order to avoid the provisions of the Land Ceiling Act
  • As the excess lands were re-distributed >> it leads to land fragmentation >> affected economy of scale >> investment and mechanisation in small plots becomes unproductive.
• Challenges in co-operativisation of farming and land consolidation:
  • Emotional attachment with land:
    • The farmers are not willing to surrender the rights of land in favour of the society because they have too much attachment with it.
  • Lack of cooperative spirit:
    • The spirit of cooperation and love is lacking among farmers.
    • They are divided in various sections on caste basis.
    • There is no unity among them, so they are not ready to become the member of the society.
  • Illiteracy and lack of awareness:
    • Most of the farmers lacks awareness about innovative method of resource pooling and cultivation methods
    • They are not ready to accept any change in the cultivation process.
  • Lack of capital:
    • The co-operative farming societies are also facing the capital shortage problem and these are unable to meet the growing needs of agriculture.
    • Credit facilities to these societies are also not sufficient.
  • Politicization of cooperative societies:
    • Most of the cooperative societies works under patronage of a political party >> which influences in the election of members and decision making. This makes motives of political party above the business interest of the society.
  • Lack of trust:
    • The management of cooperative often turns out to be dishonest. The selfishness of the members creates mistrust and ineffectiveness in operation.
  • Loss of independence:
    • Under co-operative farming, farmers face loss of independence in their farming operation which the farmers find it difficult to accept.
• Challenges of green revolution:
  • Green revolution has a skewed focus on rice and wheat ignoring other crops. This cropping patter change had bring huge negative externalities such as:
    • Water depletion:
      • Rice and wheat are water-intensive crops. Canal systems were introduced, and irrigation pumps also sucked out the groundwater to supply the water-intensive crops >> thus depleting the groundwater levels.
      • Punjab and Haryana are major are beneficiaries under green revolution, and hence they are among the highest water depleted regions in India.
    • Nutritional imbalance:
      • Crops such as coarse cereals, pulses and oilseeds were left out from Green Revolution >> resulted in low protein availability to Indian consumers.
    • Depleted the soil's nutrients:
      • Repeated crop cycle in order to ensure increased crop production depleted the soil's nutrients.
      • To meet the needs of new kinds of seeds, farmers increased fertilizer usage.
      • The pH level of the soil increased due to the usage of these alkaline chemicals.
      • Toxic chemicals in the soil destroyed beneficial pathogens, which further led to the decline in the yield.
  • Unequal benefits:
    • Regional imbalance:
      • It has so far affected only 40 percent of the total cropped area and 60 per cent is still untouched by it.
      • It has hardly touched the Eastern region and arid and semi-arid areas of Western and Southern India.
    • Benefited rich famers only
  • Excessive usage of chemicals:
    • The Green Revolution resulted in a large-scale use of pesticides and synthetic nitrogen fertilisers for improved irrigation projects and crop varieties.
  • Ecologically damage
    • Use of HYV seeds affected gene pool
    • Deforestation
    • Water and land pollution from fertilizer and pesticide
    • Construction of dams >> affects ecological landscape
    • Noise pollution from increased use farm machineries
• Challenges of land record digitization
  • Poor synergy across land record departments
    • There is minimal coordination between the Revenue Department (custodian of textual records), the Survey and Settlement Department – (responsible for managing the spatial records) and the Registration Department- (responsible for registering land transactions).
    • This creates a huge divergence between the land area reported by the textual and spatial record, enhancing the chances of legal disputes over the definition of boundaries and the extent of a land plot.
  • Lack of skilled manpower in land record departments
    • Major roadblocks in ensuring continuous updation of land records is the lack of skilled manpower in land record departments of various states.
  • Lack of swift mutation of land property:
    • Mutation of a property is the transfer or change of title entry in revenue records of the local body.
    • No state/UT has the provision for online mutation on the same day as the registration.
    • Only 61% of these villages have digitised mutation records. And the remaining 39% records may have digitised land records, but these have not yet been updated.
  • Lack of uniformity in digitisation of land records:
    • Heterogeneous nature of regulations/guidelines for land record management in India makes the digitisation progress non-uniform.
• Other challenges:
  • Lack of uniformity:
    • As ‘land’ is under state list >> there is no uniformity in land reforms laws >> which created lack of clarity and unevenness.
  • Property disputes:
    • Nearly two-thirds of all pending cases in Indian courts are related to property disputes.
    • NITI Aayog has said that such property cases take an average of 20 years to settle
    • The result is that millions of Indians cannot use their principal asset as collateral to borrow from the formal financial system.
  • Negative effect on agriculture productivity due to fragmentation:
    • The overall impact of land reforms on agricultural productivity seems to be negative in India.
    • The broad reason for this seems to be inadequate implementation, and indirect and unintended negative consequences of the policy

BEST PRACTICE:

• Bhoomi Project in Karnataka
  • It aims to digitize the paper land records and create a software mechanism to control changes to the land registry in Karnataka.
  • The project was designed to eliminate the long-standing problem of inefficiency and corruption in the maintenance of land records at dispersed and poorly supervised and audited block-level offices.
  • The relevant document—the record of rights, tenancy and crops—has been made available through kiosks
• Use of blockchain technology to prevent property fraud:
  • Andhra Pradesh government has tied up with a Swedish firm to use new blockchain technology to prevent property fraud.
  • As in all other trades, blockchain will allow participants in a distributed ledger to check the ownership of a land parcel.
• Rajasthan Urban Land (Certification of Titles) Act, 2016:
  • This law ensures that the state government is a guarantor for land titles in Rajasthan, and will provide compensation in case of issues of defective title.
  • The guarantee is based on certification provided by the Urban Land Title Certification Authority, which will verify ownership of any property for a fee.
• Land Records and Services Index (N-LRSI):
  • It is launched by a Delhi based non-profit think tank National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER)
  • The index assesses states’ performance on two broad dimensions — digitisation and quality of land records

CONCLUSION

• Land reforms undertaken since independence have upheld the socialistic directive principles of state policy which aims at equitable distribution of wealth.
• However, there have been certain challenges which need to be overcome to attain the true objectives of land reforms.
• With an aspirational goal of India becoming a USD 5-trillion economy by 2025, we need to adopt ‘new and innovative land reform measures’ such as land record digitisation, land monetization, conclusive ‘land titling’ etc. to unleash the true potential of land resource in India.

PRACTICE QUESTION:

Q. Does India need to change the land ownership process, and what are the hurdles in implementing it?