Land Reforms in India
Land Reforms in India
CHAPTER 4
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higher returns. At the same time, the landlord was not particularly concerned
about improving the economic condition of the cultivators. Consequently, agri-
cultural productivity su¤ered, and the oppression of tenants resulted in a pro-
gressive deterioration of their well-being.
In the years immediately following India’s independence, a conscious
process of nation building considered the problems of land with a pressing
urgency. In fact, the national objective of poverty abolition envisaged simul-
taneous progress on two fronts: high productivity and equitable distribution.
Accordingly, land reforms were visualized as an important pillar of a strong
and prosperous country. India’s first several five-year plans allocated sub-
stantial budgetary amounts for the implementation of land reforms. A degree
of success was even registered in certain regions and states, especially with
regard to issues such as the abolition of intermediaries, protection to tenants,
rationalization of di¤erent tenure systems, and the imposition of ceilings on
landholdings. Fifty-four years down the line, however, a number of problems
remain far from resolved.
Most studies indicate that inequalities have increased, rather than de-
creased. The number of landless laborers has risen, while the wealthiest 10
percent of the population monopolizes more land now than in 1951. Moreover,
the discussion of land reforms since World War II and up through the most
recent decade either faded from the public mind or was deliberately glossed
over by both the national government of India and a majority of international
development agencies. Vested interests of the landed elite and their powerful
connection with the political-bureaucratic system have blocked meaningful
land reforms and/or their earnest implementation. The oppressed have either
been co-opted with some benefits, or further subjugated as the new focus on
liberalization, privatization, and globalization (LPG) has altered government
priorities and public perceptions. As a result, we are today at a juncture where
land—mostly for the urban, educated elite, who are also the powerful decision
makers—has become more a matter of housing, investment, and infrastruc-
ture building; land as a basis of livelihood—for subsistence, survival, social
justice, and human dignity—has largely been lost.
reform resurfaced, albeit in a di¤erent garb and with a di¤erent objective and
motivation. Whereas the government-led land reforms had been imbued
with some e¤ort to attain equity, social justice, and dignity, the new land
reform agenda is solely market driven, and aimed at increasing GDP regard-
less of any externalities or costs associated with the process. Promoted and
guided by various international financial institutions (IFIs) such as the World
Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), government emphasis on
land reform since the 1990s reflects and seeks to fulfill the macroeconomic
objectives of these multilateral economic institutions.
While the return of land reform to the government’s list of priorities is a
welcome development, the manner in which it is being undertaken—its objec-
tives, and, consequently, its impact on people, especially those already mar-
ginalized and now being further deprived of a stake in the system—raises a
number of questions and prompts one to look for alternatives. The remainder
of this chapter, therefore, will devote its energies to identifying and monitor-
ing the implementation of certain specific IFI-sponsored programs in partic-
ular states with a view to examining their short-term and long-term impact on
the lives and livelihoods of local residents. It is hoped this shall enable an
informed critique of the IFI-led land reform programs and serve as a lesson
for peoples elsewhere in India and in other regions of the globe.
that will transform the current system of land tenure into a market-oriented
system of exchange. This tranformation includes a number of incremental
steps that begin with titling and cadastral surveys (mapping). The latter are
then formally tied to the establishment of state land registries, the creation of
new landholding legislation, the concomitant establishment of a land admin-
istration department within the state, and finally the removal of restrictions on
land leasing (see figure 1 in the introduction to part II of this volume). A sim-
ilar plan had already been put forward as early as 1975, when a land reform pol-
icy paper published by the World Bank described land registration and titling
as the main instruments for increasing an individual’s tenure security and
linked titling and registration to the establishment of flourishing land markets.
The process of land tenure formalization provided the major tools—land titles
and cadastral mapping—that were to enable the use of land as collateral for
credit.
While none can argue against the need for straightening land records and
providing secure land titles and registration, the motivation for the exercise
must delve deeper than the mere creation of land markets for private profit.
The belief that land markets alone would take o¤ and address the historical
inequality that was their foundation has been challenged by the reality of
India’s ongoing crisis in food security. The shift in agriculture that has taken
place since the first period of World Bank–endorsed privatization schemes in
the 1970s points to an important historical and economic trend that has com-
plicated the more recent attempts at marketization and poverty reduction in
the twenty-first century. Industrialization, and the limits placed on national
development programs to that end, exacerbate already existing inequalities in
land distribution. The shift in Indian agricultural policy toward export and the
increased embrace of neoliberal economic model casts much doubt on the pur-
ported benefits of the current World Bank land reform agenda in India.
This shift in agricultural production goals has been promoted most fer-
vently since the 1980s, by policy makers and politicians, who conceptualize
agriculture more as an industry that must be conducted to maximize profits,
and less as a way of life with social and ecological ramifications. The trend has
been justified by the substantial increases in agricultural output, which, it is
argued, has substantially eased India’s national food-security concerns.
Undoubtedly, Indian granaries are overflowing. And yet, the individual in the
typical Indian village is starving to death, and a “failed” farmer resorts to sui-
cide. Surely, the disparity between these two realities calls for a closer exami-
nation of the issues involved.
Commercialization of agriculture first gained a foothold in India in the
1960s, with the green revolution in Punjab, when the World Bank, along with
the US Agency for International Development (USAID), promoted agricultural
productivity through importation of fertilizers, seeds, pesticides, and farm
machinery.4 The Bank provided the credit necessary to replace the low-cost, low-
input agriculture in existence with an agricultural system that was both capi-
tal- and chemical-intensive. The Indian government decided that the potential
of the new technology far outweighed the risks and, accordingly, devalued the
Indian rupee for the five-year plan period (1966–1971) to generate the purchase
of approximately US$2.8 billion in green revolution–related technology, a jump
of more than six times the total amount allocated to agriculture by the state dur-
ing the preceding plan period (Shiva 1991). Most of the foreign exchange was
spent on imports of fertilizer, seeds, pesticides, and farm machinery.
While subsidizing these imports, the World Bank also exerted pressure on
the Indian government to obtain favorable conditions for foreign investment
in India’s fertilizer industry, for import liberalization, and for the elimination
of most domestic controls on prices for basic agricultural products, e.g., grains
and milk. The Bank advocated the replacement of diverse varieties of food crops
with monocultures grown from imported varieties of seeds. In 1969, the Terai
Seed Corporation (TSC) was started with a US$13 million World Bank loan.
This was followed by two National Seeds Project (NSP) loans. This program led
to the homogenization and corporatization of India’s agricultural system. The
Bank provided the NSP US$41 million between 1974 and 1978. The projects
were intended to develop state institutions and to create a new infrastructure
for increasing the production of green revolution seed varieties. In 1988, the
World Bank gave India’s seed sector a fourth loan to make it more “market
responsive.” The US$150 million loan aimed to privatize the seed industry and
open India to multinational seed corporations. After the loan, India announced
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In the past, irrigation schemes had led to more severe environmental prob-
lems such as a rise in soil saturation and salinity in irrigated areas, which in
turn brought more severe soil degradation. Not surprisingly, the World Bank
came forward with new aid programs to resolve these problems, and it is now
well into a second phase of water project loan disbursements. In 2001, the
Bank announced two water and irrigation projects in the states of Rajasthan
and Uttar Pradesh (UP).6 The US$140 million credit for Rajasthan and the
US$149.2 million credit for Uttar Pradesh are both on standard IDA7 terms,
with a forty-year maturity and including a ten-year grace period.
Premised on the assumption that irrigated agriculture could be the engine
of agricultural growth but has been constrained by a failing public irrigation and
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drainage system, these two projects aim to initiate fundamental reform in water
resources management and irrigation as a means to improve the living stan-
dards of the poor. The projects claim that improving agricultural productivity
will generate additional jobs in the rural sector. In Rajasthan, projected aims are
to benefit an estimated 250,000 farm families and stimulate demand for labor
estimated at approximately 29,000 jobs per year, while in UP, the project is
expected to generate additional employment for 22,000 rural farm families per
year, representing a 24 percent increase in rural farm employment.
In addition, it is claimed that the formation of community groups under
some of the project components will empower the rural population, particu-
larly women and other disadvantaged people. The project also supports envi-
ronmental management capacity, which will benefit a¤ected communities by
reducing pollution, preventing water-related diseases and improving public
health.
These projects, with their laudable objectives, have just been initiated, and
it would be instructive to monitor their implementation and progress vis-à-vis
the actual impact on people in the regions a¤ected. It must be kept in mind
that the present IFI-led ventures in the sector of water are basically premised
on the following two assumptions: First, in view of the impending water
scarcity there is a need for water resources management in the form of large
projects, for the storage and transfer of river waters. This requires huge
investments that are beyond the capabilities of the government, and hence
require liberal participation of the private sector. Second, in order to ensure
water conservation and its proper distribution, there is a need to establish sta-
ble water markets and fair pricing. The emphasis, therefore, is on the creation
of water markets, which will impinge on important issues of equity, social jus-
tice, and sustainability.
At the same time, the language being used in the water sector restructuring
projects is reminiscent of the Joint Forest Management (JFM) and its empha-
sis on participatory management. Under the new World Bank projects, the irri-
gation sector, too, is being couched in the same rhetoric of community man-
agement, though now in a less pervasive and publicized manner. In the
management of tanks and lift irrigation (so-called minor irrigation) and even
in the management of canal irrigation, phrases such as “participatory irrigation
management” (PIM), or the more explicit “irrigation management turnover”
(IMT), are the new catch phrases. Consequently, all sectoral reform programs
or development projects speak of “joint management,” “co-management,” or
“shared management.”
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ernment introduced a new forest policy (NFP) in 1988, which called for sub-
stantive change in the management of that sector. The NFP altered the aims
of forest management, shifting them from a more commercial and industrial
focus toward those that stressed the functions of environmental preservation
and the preservation of basic needs for people living in or near forests. The
NFP required that forests be managed first as an ecological necessity, second
as a source of goods for local populations, and, finally, as a source of wood for
industries and other nonlocal consumers. This policy was pioneering to the
extent that it recognized the people living in and around the forest as an essen-
tial factor in the governance of forests, considering them to be in partnership
with the forestry department and giving primacy to their needs with regard to
use of forest produce.
In 1990 the government directed all states to develop a participatory
approach, similar to that of the NFP, in their e¤orts to restore the nation’s
degraded forests. Within seven years of this directive, seventeen states had
issued orders enabling what is now known as JFM. Several states had used
bilateral/multilateral funding to initiate forest sector projects, each with JFM
as the guiding principle and value. By 1998, the vast majority of the states had
introduced JFM programs and policies, most often with financial and techni-
cal support from the World Bank.
One such project was initiated in the state of Madhya Pradesh in 1995. Its
goals included increasing the productivity and quality of forests, protecting the
environment, alleviating poverty, and strengthening and streamlining the poli-
cies of the forestry sector that the project hoped to achieve through the adop-
tion of better practices and new technologies to increase forest productivity, the
promotion of private sector participation in forestry sector development, the
maintenance and improvement of biodiversity, and the strengthening of
institutions involved in forest sector management.
This project was deemed to be successfully completed in December 1999,
and the World Bank subsequently proposed a second phase, to be implemented
beginning in 2002. It would be worthwhile to assess whether the earlier proj-
ect did, in fact, meet the needs of the rural poor and indigenous peoples. By its
own admission, the Bank now holds that the JFM project in Madhya Pradesh
fell short of delivering the full measure of control and access required to alle-
viate the poverty of forest-dependent communities; what it now suggests is a
new strategy of community forest management that envisages additional rights
and responsibilities for local groups.
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favor of the other loses out on the very basic meaning and purpose of devel-
opment. In order to envisage viable land-use patterns that ensure high agri-
cultural production along with social justice and environmental sustainabil-
ity, land must be conceived within an equity-based development strategy that
is economically viable, ecologically sound, socially acceptable, and politically
feasible through the creation of an institutional framework. This, of course, is
easier said than done. This chapter will now turn to addressing a few of the
complex issues involved in developing such a strategy for land and agrarian
reform in India.
Forests. The case has been made above for an ecological balance between the
proportion of land designated for forestry, agriculture, and nonagricultural
purposes. There is a need to explore the linkages among rural poverty, land-
lessness, and skewed land tenure systems with particular attention to the
problems of deforestation. The reduction of forests inevitably disturbs the
ecological balance. Cyclical patterns of droughts followed by floods have been
clearly linked to this. At the same time, there is no guarantee that the already
existing skewed distribution of land outside the forests will not be replicated.
Unless the government engages in the exercise with a blueprint for land
reforms in mind, fertile lands cleared by the government are most likely to
be taken over by rich farmers, private companies, and state enterprises, or
held by speculators as a hedge against inflation.
Traditionally, impoverished farmers moving into forests have been
identified as the principal, direct agents of forest loss. Hence, land reform that
can ensure more equitable landownership may well do more to relieve pres-
sure on forests rather than any other policy of forest resource development. In
this context, and as suggested above it would be helpful to explore the efficacy
of social forestry programs already undertaken in states such as Andhra
Pradesh.
Land Degradation. Patterns of land use also have an impact on soil erosion
and land degradation. For instance, agricultural practices designed to suit
market conditions presuppose a permissive use of agrochemicals to maxi-
mize productivity. When land is perceived as a commodity or investment that
must be made good upon, it is rigorously exploited to generate immediate,
short-term profit, often at the expense of a long-term impact in the form of
severe land degradation. In arid and semiarid regions, the introduction of
perennial irrigation in order to increase yield causes salinization of the land.
Irrigation on poorly drained land has waterlogged the soil, causing salts in
the groundwater to rise and accumulate on the surface, turning farmland
into a salt-encrusted desert. Artificial fertilizers and chemical sprays under-
mine the natural fertility of soils and increase its vulnerability to erosion. Of
a total land expanse in India of 329 million hectares, nearly 141 million
hectares (43 percent) of the land is subject to water and soil erosion. Other
types of land degradation such as waterlogging, alkaline and arid soils, salin-
ity, ravines, and gullies a¤ect another 34 million hectares (Vyas 1999, 18).
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Given the fragile nature of the ecosystem and land quality that has resulted
from such a dependency on chemical inputs, care must be exercised in deter-
mining land-use patterns in the future. Agriculture is expanding to wastelands
that are not suited for cultivation, hence pushing India’s small farmers into a
less fertile land base. Additionally, the rising demand for irrigated agriculture
has led to massive overexploitation of groundwater. And, with the demand for
more water, local wells often dry up, leaving small and marginal farmers to
either pay for expensive state-provided water or abandon the unproductive
farm. In response to the same crisis in water access, wealthier farmers, cor-
porations, and the state resort to expensive technology-dependent extraction
of groundwater, which exacerbates the overall problem of groundwater deple-
tion. The ecological consequences of the current dominant model of devel-
opment are serious and need to be addressed.
1. Tribal people have the right to develop according to their own culture and
join the mainstream as equals, while maintaining their identity.
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The Panchsheela principles have been most difficult to achieve, and in many
ways they lack sufficient definition for use in policy making. The resource-rich
regions of the tribal peoples in India have been drawn into the plans for national
development, with its emphasis on industrialization and ever-higher produc-
tivity. Already, industries and irrigation schemes built on large dams have dis-
placed many tribal people and transformed them into landless migrant labor.
The Indian government has presented tribal development schemes as a prin-
cipal tool for poverty alleviation. However, these schemes have not taken into
account the total dependence of the tribal population on land and their lack of
other productive assets. It is critical that the unique existence and subsistence
patterns of tribal people be empathetically understood so that economic devel-
opment can be harmonized with social change. Without such understanding,
India may well have to face more indigenous struggles for national identity, as
it has already in Nagaland, Jharkhand, and many other regions.
Women and Land. With farms linked to the wider market economy, the con-
dition of women’s participation in farming has also undergone a change, and
not for the better. Traditionally, rural women have been responsible for half of
the world’s food production. They remain the main producers of the world’s
staple crops—rice, wheat, and maize— which provide up to 90 percent of the
rural poor’s food intake. Their contribution to secondary-crop production,
such as that of legumes and vegetables, is even greater. Grown mainly in
home gardens, these crops provide essential nutrients and are often the only
food available during lean seasons or when the main harvest fails. Women’s
specialized knowledge of genetic resources for food and agriculture makes
them essential custodians of agrobiodiversity. In the livestock sector, women
feed and milk the larger animals, while raising poultry and small animals
such as sheep, goats, rabbits, and guinea pigs. Additionally, once the harvest
is in, rural women provide most of the labor for postharvest activities, taking
responsibility for storage, handling, stocking, processing, and marketing.
However, in the market-driven agriculture, a conceptual division of labor
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between what are considered the productive tasks of farming and the unpro-
ductive tasks of household and reproduction recasts the women’s role as “mere
‘supporters’ of the ‘producers’” (Clunies-Ross and Hildyard 1992). This view,
however, tends to overlook the e¤ects of the realities of the rural-urban migra-
tion of men in search of paid employment and rising mortalities attributed to
health problems such as alcoholism and HIV/AIDS, which have led to a rise
in the numbers of female-headed households in the developing world. This
“feminization of agriculture” places a considerable burden on a woman’s
capacity to participate in agriculture, in view of the difficulty in their ability to
gain access, control, and recognition with regard to ownership of valuable
resources such as land, credit and agricultural inputs, technology, extension,
training, and services.
Certain communities in India (especially in the northeast and the south)
have practiced the tradition of customarily recognizing women’s property
rights. In these areas inheritance laws and marriage practices have been so tai-
lored as to provide and protect these rights; many studies have been devoted
to examining these practices. Several matrilineal and bilateral systems of land
inheritance have also given women advantages in many respects, especially in
granting them economic and social security, and considerable autonomy and
equality in marital relations. These systems, however, have eroded over time.
Interventions by both colonial and postcolonial government policies, particu-
larly in the legal and economic spheres, as well as the complex processes of
social and cultural change (which the former set in motion), have degraded
customary practices. Large joint family estates have fallen into disuse; formerly
egalitarian tribal societies have grown economically di¤erentiated; there has
been an increasing penetration into the culture of market forces and notable
shifts in the techniques of production, the social division of labor, and land
relations; sexual mores have altered; and patriarchal ideologies have spread
their influence. Women, in particular, have been profoundly a¤ected by these
changes, and their customary exclusion from major authority in public bod-
ies has meant that they are not the ones directing the change or are even in a
position to e¤ectively protect their interests. The task is a complicated one, and
government intervention in the form of honest land reform could go a long
way in ensuring social justice and equity for women.
Besides private property or property owned and controlled by the state, com-
mon property such as forests, grazing lands, water, and fisheries can also be
held and managed through a community resource management system.
These are di¤erent from open-access land and natural resources, e.g., forest
areas and lakes, where there are no rules regulating individual use rights. The
system of common property operates through a “complex system of norms
and conventions for regulating individual rights to use a variety of natural
resources” (Runge 1992, 17). Specifying rights of joint use, common-property
regimes envisage tacit cooperation among individuals.
Traditionally, common-property regimes have contributed substantially to
village economies by providing a source for fodder, fuel wood, small timber,
and employment in local products derived from raw material. At the same
time, they have also proved to be a stable form of resource management.
However, the combination of population growth, technological change, and
political forces has in many cases destabilized existing common-property
regimes, while the institution of common property itself has often been
blamed for these problems and accused of resource mismanagement. The
imposition of private property rights has been instituted as a remedial mea-
sure. But enforcement of private property rights from outside the group or vil-
lage is not a sufficient condition for optimal resource utilization and may lead
to the adoption of land use patterns that are incompatible with local needs or
place land use in the hands of those, such as absentee owners, with fewer
incentives for efficient, equitable local management.
The scenario described above may become especially worrisome if lands are
subjected to a new zoning system, in which grazing land may be redesignated
as commercial land and local forests turned to conservation forests with con-
cessions for tourism companies. In either of these cases, the access of those
who have traditionally depended upon the communal land is curtailed. The
worst a¤ected are the women whose daily lives have been severely strained by
the additional load of daily livelihood activities of food, fodder, fuel wood, and
water collection. Alienation and involuntary migration are, again, the in-
evitable outcomes, as is erosion in the long-term capacity of such land
development.
On the counts of efficiency and equity, common-property regimes have tra-
ditionally existed as a viable proposition for more equitable national develop-
ment. This has been especially true for a developing economy in which
poverty and natural resource dependency have arisen out of a skewed distri-
bution of resources. Common-property regimes have provided a hedge against
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Conclusion
The framework of analysis provided above describes the increasing importance
of land reform to the national and global agenda from national food security,
economic, ecological, and social perspectives. The direction of land politics and
land reform in India will continue to be one of struggle and hope. It will be
important to widen the scope of land reforms beyond the mere activity of redis-
tribution of land or revisions of ceiling limits. In order to be e¤ective, land
reform must be seen as part of a wider agenda of systemic restructuring that
undertakes simultaneous reforms in the sectors of energy and water. Deeper
structural reforms will ensure that the exercise of land redistribution actually
becomes meaningful, enabling small farmers to turn their plots into produc-
tive assets. The case of expropriation in Brazil (see chapter 15 in this volume)
o¤ers one such example of the necessary structural reforms that could help
facilitate a solution to some of the challenges posed here.
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PART TWO
Land Reform:
Critical Debates and Perspectives
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