GS Paper: GS3-11.Land Reforms in India

Context

The farmers’ agitation in India has attracted worldwide attention and support.

Story of land reforms in India

• Being a state subject, various states implemented reforms with varying degrees of effectiveness and equity.
• Objectives: The objectives were the same: Abolition of feudal landlordism, conferment of ownership on tenants, fixing land ceilings, distribution of surplus land, increasing agricultural productivity and production, etc.
• However, owing to manipulations in land records, much surplus land was not available for distribution among the landless tillers.
• Less than one per cent of the total land in the country was declared as surplus.
• The relevant criteria for land entitlement should have been employment and main source of income.

Change in social structure after land reforms

• The ex-tenants, after getting land made use of several programmes —Green Revolution technology, bank nationalisation and priority sector lending, urbanisation and expanding urban markets.
• They cornered a disproportionate share of various subsidies.
• The tenant-turned-capitalist farmers formed political parties, which produced strong state-level leaders, who controlled state-level planning, fiscal policies and politics.
• In place of a strong Centre and weak states, came a weak Centre and strong states.
• Rich farmers have formed strong power blocs, with unquestioned clout and bargaining power, not only in north-western India but also in states like Maharashtra.

Need for agrarian reforms

• Farmers are seeking legal safeguards against market fluctuations, especially against any downward pressure on agricultural prices.
• While they welcome every rise in prices, they demand legal protection against price falls, a legitimate stance.
• 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.

Reforms for farmworkers

• Agricultural land should be pooled and equally distributed among farm households.
• Non-farm households should not be permitted to hold farmland.
• Land reforms should be a central subject; while agriculture can remain a state subject.
• Such a 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.

Conclusion

The right to life is hollow without a right to livelihood. Through an effective land reforms programme, let’s build a prosperous India based on equity and justice.

UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)

Updated land record system could help the landowner in many ways. However, there is a lack of an updated land record system in India. There are several factors responsible for it. The article highlights these factors.

Need for updated land record

• For a significant section of the rural poor, land is both an asset and a source of livelihood.
• 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.
• The government of India’s Digital India Land Records Modernisation Programme (DI-LRMP) scheme is the most recent effort in encouraging updating of land record.

Reasons for lack of updated land record data

The National Council of Applied Economic Research made a pioneering effort in this direction by launching NCAER Land Records and Services Index (N-LRSI) in 2020.

Following are the finding of NCAER about the poor state of land records.

• The dismal state of land records is due to the failure of the Indian administration to evolve from British-era land policies.
• In addition, land record regulations and policies vary widely across Indian states/union territories.
• Though DI-LRMP provides a common framework for reporting the progress of land record management by states/UTs, the heterogeneous nature of regulations/guidelines for land record management in India makes the progress non-uniform.
• One of the major roadblocks in ensuring continuous updation of land records is the lack of skilled manpower in land record departments in states.
• Another dimension relates to the poor synergy across land record departments.
• There is a lack of synergy between the revenue department as the custodian of textual records, the survey and settlement department managing the spatial records and the registration department, which is responsible for registering land transactions.
• The swiftness of the process of updating ownership as the result of the registration of a transaction is commonly known as mutation.
• The information obtained from all the state/UT sources in this regard revealed that no state/UT has the provision for online mutation on the same day as the registration.

Way forward

• With poor inter-departmental synergy, aspiring for updated and accurate records will always be a distant goal and states/UTs should take necessary actions to have the appropriate systems in place.
• The improved system of land records is likely to facilitate the efforts that some states/UTs are making to ease land transactions — like lowering stamp duties by the Maharashtra government.
• Finally, these efforts are going to be instrumental for the health of India’s rural economy.

Consider the question “How an updated and functional land record system could help transform the rural economy? What are the hurdles in creating the updated land record system?”

Conclusion

The governments need to take measures to remove the hurdles in the creation of a robust land record system so as to help the landowners access institutional channels of credit.

Land ceiling laws, enacted to deal with the problems of a bygone era, remains unchanged even in most of the States. This has given rise to different problems. The article suggests the relaxation of the ceiling acts to deal with the problem of land degradation and water depletion.

Background of the ceiling laws

•  India implemented land ceiling laws to deal with the ‘zamindars’ and impose landowning limits based on total production value of land—irrigated, grove, orchard, dry, etc.
• Landholdings were scrutinised at individual and family level, and large farms were discouraged.
• For most states, the ceiling ratio of dry-to-irrigated land is 3:1.

Issues with the ceiling laws

• In 2020, State land laws remain unchanged, trapping farm families in a negative ownership trap.
• As with each generation, the average landholding of individuals reduces.
• Dropping farm incomes, higher inputs costs, low sale price, soil degradation and water depletion erode production and farm value.
• A progressive farmer hits production saturation due to limited land.
• Contract farming has been no consolation either.
• The result is that the Indian farm size is very small, 86% under two hectares, and is decreasing as the average size of operational holding has declined to 1.08 hectares in 2015-16 versus 1.15 in 2010-11 (Agricultural Census 2015-16).
• The government is reticent on the Economic Survey’s recommendations to increase land ceiling limits.
• Recently, Karnataka rescinded land limit reforms.

How to deal with soil degradation and water depletion

• 30% of India’s land is degraded, bad agri-practices threaten soil health, and water-guzzling crops like paddy, sugarcane, etc, have resulted in a water crisis in many places.
• States must study soil conservation program of the US, which paid farmers subsidies for soil conservation or allowing land to be fallow.
• States should incentivise farmers for agro-ecological plantations and agro-forestry by relaxing land ceiling limits for them.
• State Acts may include organic plantations under exempt categories similar to tea/rubber plantations.
• Native biodiversity based mixed orchards, from mahua to moringa, can be encouraged and exempted by state governments.
• Policy change will have benefits—soil and water rejuvenation, increase in farmers’ incomes and new products for the free market.
• The return of organic matter and biodiversity will sustain farmland productivity.
• Plus APEDA predicts a $50 billion organic export 2030, but the cherry would be additional carbon credits.
• If 10% of arable land converts to organic grove land, India will mitigate climate change and pollution.
• Each hectare with 0.01% humus can store 80,000 litres of water. We need a central policy to bolster this drive.
• Farmers may take over waste or degraded land, beyond land ceiling limits, and restore land as a carbon sink and produce more nutrition per acre.
• As farmers will care for these lands, the government’s financial burden to restore wastelands will lessen.

Consider the question “Land degradation threatens India’s future if not dealt with in time. In light of this, examine the reasons for soil degradation and suggest the ways to deal with it” 

Conclusion

As a nation, we have a choice to steer the bigger farms towards agro-ecology or allow industrial farms to take over rural India. The government needs to bring out a fourth Ordinance to free the land for healing the Earth.

Source:-

https://www.financialexpress.com/opinion/reform-land-ceiling-laws-incentivise-farmers-for-agro-ecological-plantations-and-agro-forestry/2113635/