What initiatives did the colonial administration take in land survey and revenue fixitation
Answers
Answer:
Land policy formulation through planning period
Plan period
Major issue
Policy thrust
First Plan1951 - 56
Area under cultivation to be increased. Community development (CD) networks to take care of the village commons. Vast uncultivated lands locked under large sizes of holdings.
Land reforms to bring in the fallow under cultivation and increase land use efficiency. Tenant to be given the rights to cultivate land. Abolition of intermediaries.
Second Plan 1956 - 61
Concern about vast rainfed agriculture, low land productivity and thrust on irrigated agriculture.
Soil conservation as an important programme. First phase of land reform implementation. Irrigation development for the rainfed areas. Training and extension work for the technology through CD.
Third Plan 1961 - 66
Food security concern dominated. Cultivable waste land to be brought under cultivation. Bringing the lagging regions under mainstream growth.
Area development as an approach. Intensive area development programme adopted for selected districts. An integrated land policy approach was inherent. Soil surveys were taken up.
Fourth Plan 1969 - 74
Emphasis on food security continued as minimum dietary requirements to be met. Incentives were created for diversion of land towards food crops and enhancing the capacity of such land. Domination of large holding sizes and low allocation and technical efficiency.
Increased emphasis on irrigation and soil conservation in dryland regions and technological change introduced. Higher cropping intensity the main concern. Second phase of land reforms with land ceiling acts and consolidation of holding. Institutional changes brought in.
Fifth Plan 1974 - 79
Problems of degradation land management in irrigated command areas surfaced. Drought-prone areas attracted attention.
Drought-prone area development. Desert area development programmes, and soil conservation started and further enhanced. New impetus to dry farming.
Sixth Plan 1980 - 85
Underutilization of land resources. Drought-prone areas continued to attract attention. Attention lagging areas on the background of green revolution required cultivation.
Land and water management programme under drought-prone area programme in selected areas.
Seventh Plan 1985 - 90
Soil erosion and land degradation surfaced as major issues. Land going out of cultivation. Deforestation and degradation of forest lands.
Soil and water conservation and averting land degradation. Specific attention to degraded lands. Wastelands Development programmes. Long-term view of land management.
Eighth Plan 1992 - 97
Dryland and rainfed areas requiring attention. Degradation of land in irrigated command areas. Peoples' participation surfaced as major issue in land management at village level.
Emphasis on watershed approach. Soil conservation merged with watershed programmes. Agroclimatic regional planning approach incorporated.
Ninth Plan 1997 - 2002
Land degradation increased significantly. Integrating Watershed Development Programme across various components. Rethinking on land reforms. Gap between potentials and actual crop yields need to be bridged. Need for a long-term policy document.
Bringing the underutilized land under cultivation. Management of wastelands. Maintenance of village commons. Decentralized land management system. Panchayat Raj institutions to manage the village lands. Rethinking on land legislations
Answer:
Land problems in India continue to attract equal attention from policy-makers and academics. The renewed interest in land issues stems from the perceived impact of liberalization and opening up the economy. Tenancy, land ceiling and land administration are being revisited with a new perspective. Among the issues under renewed focus, legalizing tenancy, revising the ceiling limits, quality of land, meeting the challenge of miniscule holdings that are a consequence of marginalization and land administration are dominating the debate. This paper looks at these issues. It sets a background to the emergence of land policy in India from pre-Independence and, after tracing it through various phases, maps out the impacts and emerging challenges. After an analysis of the development of land policy over various planning periods, the issues at stake during the 1990s are reviewed. Finally a case is made for a new land-policy framework that includes reforms to the maintenance of land records, deals with concealed tenancy and non-viable land holdings, and the problem of land quality. These issues have assumed greater importance in the current economic transition in rural areas.
Explanation:
Land policy in India has been a major topic of government policy discussions since the time prior to Independence from British rule. The peasants of the country strongly backed the independence movement and the "Land to the Tiller" policy of the Congress Party because of the prevailing agrarian conditions. The agrarian structure during British administration emerged with a strong historical background (Baden Powel, 1974; Dutt, 1976; Appu, 1996). The land-revenue system implemented by Todar Mal during Akbar's regime can be traced as the possible beginning of systematic efforts to manage the land. This method incorporated measurement, classification and fixation of rent as its main components. Under the various pre- British regimes, land revenues collected by the state confirmed its right to land produce, and that it was the sole owner of the land. British rulers took a cue from this system and allowed the existence of noncultivating intermediaries. The existence of these parasitic intermediaries served as an economic instrument to extract high revenues (Dutt, 1947) as well as sustaining the political hold on the country. Thus at the time of Independence the agrarian structure was characterized by parasitic, rent-seeking intermediaries, different land revenue and ownership systems across regions, small numbers of land holders holding a large share of the land, a high density of tenant cultivators, many of whom had insecure tenancy, and exploitative production relations (Appu, 1996).
Immediately after Independence a Committee, under the Chairmanship of the late Shri J. C. Kumarappa (a senior Congress leader), was appointed to look into the problem of land. The Kumarappa Committee's report recommended comprehensive agrarian reform measures. India's land policy in the decades immediately following its independence was dominated by legislative efforts to address the problems identified by the Kumarappa Committee (NCA, 1976; Joshi, 1987). A substantial volume of legislation was adopted, much of it flawed and little of it seriously implemented.