Abstract
The redistribution of land has been a major item of the recent land reform programs in India, as in many countries of Southeastern Europe and Latin America and in China and Japan, where the increasing pressure of population on land has led, in the absence of a sufficiently rapid growth of non-agricultural employment, to a progressive diminution of the size of holdings and accentuated the inequality in the distribution of land. The ruling party in India--the Indian National Congress--has been committed to radical land reforms for at least 25 years and to the imposition of ceilings for at least 10 years. The 55th Session of the Congress held at Jaipur in December 1948 (a year after Independence) adopted an Economic Program which included the imposition of ceilings. The Congress Agrarian Reforms Committee again recommended the absolute limitation of landholding in 1949. And both the First and the Second Five Year Plans of the Congress Government explicitly recommended the fixation of ceilings. More recently, the 63rd Session of the Congress held in January 1958 urged that there should be a maximum limit on the size of the holding under personal cultivation. The three major opposition parties, the Praja Socialist Party, the Communist Party of India, and even the Jana Sangh (usually regarded by the intelligentsia as conservative) also promised the fixation of ceilings and redistribution of land in their manifestoes for the general election of 1957. The neoGandhian Bhoodan movement has been concerned almost exclusively with the collection of gifts of land from landholders and its free distribution among the landle s s.
Published Version
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