Land Reforms in Uttar Pradesh and Their Impact

What the official syllabus says

Main Examination, General Studies V:

• Land Reforms and its impact in UP.

Topics in detail

Background

• Land revenue systems in colonial UP: the permanent settlement in the Banaras region, mahalwari settlements in the doab, the taluqdari system of Awadh
• Peasant grievances: high rents, illegal cesses, insecure tenancy, evictions; the Kisan Sabha movements
• The UP Zamindari Abolition Committee (1946) chaired by Govind Ballabh Pant

Zamindari abolition

• UP Zamindari Abolition and Land Reforms Act, 1950, in force from 1 July 1952
• Removal of zamindars and other intermediaries; compensation and rehabilitation grants
• New tenures: bhumidhar, sirdar, asami and adhivasi; later simplification of the categories
• Land vested in the gram sabha: common lands, ponds, pastures

Consolidation of holdings

• UP Consolidation of Holdings Act, 1953 (chakbandi)
• Aims: fewer and larger plots, roads and drains, land for public use
• Achievements and problems: disputes, delays, corruption in the process

Land ceilings

• UP Imposition of Ceiling on Land Holdings Act, 1960, made stricter in the early 1970s
• Ceiling limits by land quality and family size; surplus land declared and distributed to landless families
• Problems: benami and fictitious transfers, litigation, small amount of surplus land

Land records and the Revenue Code

• Records: khatauni (record of rights), khasra, maps; the lekhpal and the tehsil
• Uttar Pradesh Revenue Code, 2006 (in force from 2016), which brought many earlier revenue laws together
• Digitised land records (Bhulekh), digitised maps and the national land records modernisation programme
• SVAMITVA: property cards (gharauni) for houses in village residential areas, mapped by drones
• Land acquisition under the 2013 Act and land purchase by agreement for highways and industrial areas

Impact

• End of intermediaries; direct relation between the cultivator and the state
• Rise of the middle and owner-cultivator peasantry, especially in western UP, which helped the Green Revolution
• Limited gains for landless labourers and Dalits; slow ceiling redistribution
• Fragmentation continues: most holdings are small or marginal
• Women's land rights: inheritance rules and joint titles
• Remaining issues: disputes in courts, encroachment on gram sabha land, tenancy and leasing, land for industry

Tenancy, leasing and gram sabha land

• Ban on sub-letting under the 1950 Act and its exceptions (for example for disabled persons, widows, minors and serving soldiers)
• Hidden tenancy and sharecropping in practice; the case for legal, recorded leasing so that tenants can get crop loans and insurance
• Allotment of gram sabha land to landless agricultural labourers, SC families and others; pattas for house sites
• Encroachment on ponds, pastures and other common lands; court orders for their restoration
• Land management committees of the gram panchayat

Land and social justice

• Who gained from abolition: owner-cultivators of middle castes; who gained less: tenants-at-will, landless labourers, women
• Link between land and political change in UP: the rise of peasant-based politics after the 1960s
• Land disputes as a major source of litigation and violence in rural UP

Main land laws of UP

Overlaps

• Land reforms in India since independence: General Studies III.
• Agriculture and its problems in UP: General Studies VI.
• The national movement's peasant struggles: Uttar Pradesh in the Freedom Struggle.