Land Reforms In India

Land reforms refer to bringing about a change in laws, regulations and customs with regard to ownership of land. Land reforms occupied the most significant position in the policy debate of India for a considerably long period of time. The responsibility of their implementation had to be shouldered by the individual states. Unequal distribution of productive assets like land that was introduced during the colonial regime by the British, coaxed the government of post independent India to implement these reforms with a motive to reduce poverty and other social inequalities prevailing in the society which are also a part of the developmental goals of India. Land reforms that were initiated in India had three main elements as follows:
i) Abolition

These zamindars were not the actual tillers of the soil. They usually rented out their land to the tenants who were the actual tillers. The tenants were either poor farmers or landless labourers. The zamindars had to pay a fixed amount of rent to the British and could in turn collect a rent of their choice from the actual tillers. This created a vicious cycle of exploitation. Thus, the landlords did not take much interest in investing in land improvement as they could regularly collect land revenue and the tenants could not invest due to lack of adequate financial resources, leaving large tracts of fertile land uncultivated, which led to decline in agricultural productivity. The British government in turn became a backbone of this zamindari system. The Indian National Congress that was mobilising the Indian masses against the British rule was annoyed with this system and vowed to abolish it once it came in to power. Hence, during the first five year plan of its rule it decided to introduce the reforms. Thus, these land reforms have been brought about as agents of socio-economic change in

Thus, the dominant land owning castes had protection from the bureaucracy which could manipulate the goals of land reforms in such a way that they would benefit the landowning dominant castes in some way or the other. The 1974 act of land reforms ignored the issues of landless agricultural labourers and also the redistribution of surplus land acquired after implementation land ceiling for the benefit of the poorer sections when viewed from the lens of reality. In order to evaluate the impact of land reforms on the agrarian relations and structure in Karnataka, the following have to be taken into