Landlords Without Land: The U. P. Zamindars Today

Abstract

A MONG THE MORE SPECTACULAR ACHIEVEMENTS of Indian Government during its first decade of independence were extensive programs of land reform carried out in almost every state. Basing themselves upon Congress Resolutions dating back to I930's, which called for an end to feudalism and exploitation on land as well as to imperialism, various state governments took up question of agrarian reform as soon as they were in power. In large and populous state of Uttar Pradesh, for instance, a Zamindari (Landlord) Abolition Committee was appointed even before independence, in I946, and its report formed basis of legislation, enacted in i95i, which stripped large landlords of bulk of their estates and awarded land to cultivators. Similar legislation was soon passed into law elsewhere, and provides to this day fundamental legal framework for India's agrarian order. In fifteen years since its enactment this land reform legislation has come under severe criticism. Many critics have pointed out how initial proposals were watered down for political reasons in course of their passage through state legislatures, with result that sizable loop-holes were built into legislation. They insist furthermore that proposals were even in their initial conception excessively timid, for they failed to deal in any significant way with either of two fundamental problems facing rural India, that of social inequality and that of agricultural stagnation. The lot of landless and outcaste at bottom of rural society, critics contend, was in no way improved by abolition legislation, while cultivating castes who were its beneficiaries simply became tenants of state rather than of zamindar, with neither their social status nor their tax burden substantially altered, and with little new incentive for investment in land. W. C. Neale concludes his exhaustive study of land reforms in Uttar Pradesh with flat assertion that the abolition of zamindari system will not end poverty in Uttar Pradesh or even contribute much to solution of that problem.'