The Land Question, And Answer

Context: India needs a radical land reforms programme. Land reform should be a central subject, while agriculture can remain with the states.

Issues with land reforms: The absence of effective and equitable land reforms accounts for the persistence of poverty. 

• Being a state subject, various states implemented reforms with varying degrees of effectiveness and equity.
• Lack of surplus land: While feudal land relations were abolished, tenants got ownership rights; owing to manipulations in land records, much surplus land was not available for distribution among the landless tillers (Dalits) of the soil.
• Less than one per cent of the total land in the country was declared as surplus.
• Misplaced priorities: The programme was implemented in a country where non-agricultural sectors and activities were fast developing, absorbing increasing numbers of the rural population (the relevant criteria for land entitlement should have been employment and main source of income).
• Gave rise to tenant turned capitalist farmers: Helped by Green Revolution technology, bank nationalisation and priority sector lending and urbanisation, they dominated small farmers.
  • In the 1970s and 1980s, there was an interlocking of land, labour, credit and product markets—those who controlled land controlled water, which later promoted water trade, including drinking water trade.
  • Economic rise: Many members of rich farm households moved into industry, business and professions. Many migrated abroad for quality higher education and employment.
  • Political rise: The tenant-turned-capitalist farmers formed political parties, which produced strong state-level leaders who controlled state-level planning, fiscal policies and politics. Rich farmers have formed strong power blocs (resisting pro-poor changes), with unquestioned bargaining power, not only in north-western India but also in states like Maharashtra.

Way Forward

• Towards land reforms: Social restructuring needs agrarian reform, in the form of a land reforms programme, in addition to the measures that farmers are agitating for. Agricultural land should be pooled and equally distributed among farm households, based on the two aforementioned criteria.
  • Non-farm households should not be permitted to hold farmland. 
  • Land reforms should be a central subject, while agriculture can remain a state subject.
• Shared prosperity: Even as agricultural prosperity must be promoted, it should not be just shared between farmers (especially rich ones) and urban consumers, but by all. Farm workers, in particular, must benefit from it.

Conclusion: Such a land reform programme will empower and enrich marginalised and excluded individuals and social groups. It should be the kernel of a justiciable universal property right that must form an integral/inalienable part of Article 21 (Right to Life) of the Constitution.