IGNOU HISTORY NOTES : Modern India - PLANNING AND LAND REFORMS IN INDIA

IGNOU HISTORY Study Notes for IAS, UPSC Exams

Modern India 1857-1964

PLANNING AND LAND REFORMS IN INDIA

Structure
39.0 Objectives
39.1 Introduction
39.2 Agrarian Policy and Freedom Movement
39.3 Land System Before Independence Z
39.4 The Planning for Land Reforms
39.4.1 Abolition of Intermediaries
39.4.2 Ceiling on Land Holdings
39.4.3 Other Measures
39.5 Social Implications of Land Reforms
39.6 Let Us Sum Up
39.7 Key Words
39.8 Answers to Check Your Progress Exercises

39.0 OBJECTIVES

After reading this Unit you will :

become familiar with the British Policy towards Indian agriculture;
get an idea of the land settlements which existed in various parts of India on the eve of Independence;
be able to list a series of measures undertaken by the Indian Govt. to develop agriculture since 1947 onwards; and
learn the impact of these agrarian measures on the rural society.

39.1 INTRODUCTION

In this Unit we will attempt understanding how the planning process initiated after India gained freedom was used by our country to bring about economic and social change in the countryside. The measures adopted in this regard were land reforms such as abolition of intermediary rights and giving security of tenures to cultivators. Another feature was administrative and physical reorganisation of the quality of land management for agricultural development. Land reforms should be seem in two ways in the context of planning:

the institutional changes in land ownership structure and its productive uses for social and economic development, and '
changes in administrative and technological processes of agrarian economy enabling fuller uses of the institutional measures of land reforms to enhance social well being of peasants and agricultural workers in villages.

The tyo measures were inter-related but the institutional aspects of land reforms occupied a position of pre-eminence in the process. This itself was a product of the historical forces that were released during the Freedom Movement. This Movement, over a period of several decades contributed to the evolution of an agrarian policy and also the policy of rural social and economic development in India. The Indian National Congress both as a political party and as a national movement contributed centrally to the evolution of this policy.