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India

After Independence, it was assumed that unemployment would


become a myth of the past and no one would have to suffer the way they
suffered during the British rule. Unfortunately, quite the opposite
occurred; the number of people unemployed was rapidly increasing in the
three decades after Indias independence.
When the British left India, they left behind an economy that aimed
at the empires own development at the expenses of the masses. At first
glance, it appears that the British invested heavily in Indias infrastructure
and economy from for example the railway system linking major towns in
South Asia, the textile industries in Bombay, and the iron industry in
Bihar. However, further scrutiny shows the grim misrule of the British from
the rampant landlordism to the millions of deaths from famines.
Under the British, private property in land came to be formally
recognized by the law and the system set up multiple stages of middle
men who became the link between the peasants and the government.
The evolution of private landed property as formally recognized under the
British resulted in unfair land relations system that results in the stark
employment issues that India faced. The British strategy relied mainly on
raw materials, which promoted the group of industrial development in
metropolitan centers at the expense of rural conditions. This resulted in
famines and scarcity of food.
When the British left India, this is the agrarian structure that was left
over during the time of independence: extremely unfair imbalance of land
being concentrated mostly in the hands of a powerful few landlords who
took advantage of the peasants. The poor often suffered incredibly from
debt, rents, evictions, etc. In class we talked about how this derived from
the lack of security of tenure and the constant threat of eviction or crisis.
The landlord had utter complete control over their workers. The
agriculture industry continued to slow due to lack of proper irrigation,
infrastructure issues, and outdated land relations. Rural areas were
plagued with unemployment and underemployment. The operation of
uncontrolled market, world agricultural depression, and the rising price of
food grains in the two decades before independence lead to a major crisis
having a devastating effect on the livelihoods of the people
Political independence attempted to set about a process through
extensive state intervention that intended to stimulate capitalistic
development. This included land reforms which attempted to distribute
the rights in lands and transform the rural hierarchy of the land relations.

The Indian capitalist class made efforts to strengthen and consolidate


itself and sought to overcome the market constraints arising from the
agrarian structure, through large scale state expenditure.
The bulk of the agricultural producers lived on the margin and were
unable to invest in the improvement of the land. There was widespread
underemployment and the economy could not provide and sustain
continuous employment for the available labor. These circumstances
could not keep sustain the growing population. The Land Reforms resulted
in updated agricultural technology, investment in irrigation, and improved
of the overall infrastructure. The policy resulted in a significant growth
especially compared to the growth in the first five decades of the
twentieth century. However, eventually, the domestic output of food
grains starting decaying and the country was forced to rely on imports of
large quantities of food.
The inability of the Land Reforms to make any drastic alteration in
terms of the landholding led to a situation where the rent-barrier inhibited
private investment and reduced the high productivity achieved previously.
A large portion of the income was selfishly taken by the landlords, which
deterred capital formation because the actual people working on the land
were left with neither the surplus required for investment for agricultural
development, not the incentive to enhance their productivity. This led to
an aggravated inflationary spiral and a slowing down of agricultural
growth. Successive monsoon failures in 1965 and 1966 burdened the
agriculture which already showed signs of stagnation, and led to a fall in
agricultural and food grain output by 20 per cent. The inflationary
pressures and the crisis that gripped the economy by the mid-sixties
rapidly changed India' reputation as a model developing country.
Soon after, the concept of unrestricted markets was away with and
a system of regulated marketing and a regime of administered prices was
implemented to put an end to the fraudulent marketing practices and to
reduce prices of food and other necessities like medicines. The Intensive
Agricultural Development Programme (IADP) targeted a few districts and
sought to generate growth impulses in the surrounding areas,
employment generation, and market regulations.
It recommended a system known as Cooperative Village
Management Scheme which was a decentralized system that was made
up of both the features of collective farming and
cooperative farming. Rural anti-poverty and employment generation
programs were also given priority and the development investments

generated employment opportunities and people benefited in the form of


income generation and marginally raising the poor above poverty line.
Without altering the land relations there can be no full-fledged
capitalist development. Radical Land Reforms came to be implemented
for the first time after the French Revolution when land was confiscated
and distributed to beneficiaries without compensating the feudal
landlords. The Revolution abolished feudalism under pressure from the
peasantry. There were many peasant movements on the immediate
demands of higher wages, security of tenure, higher share of produce,
while certain struggles were of a far more radical nature aimed at
overthrow of feudalism. The mass mobilization of the peasantry against
feudalism and militant struggles waged against feudal rent, unjust
evictions, usurious moneylenders and oppression of landlords forced the
Indian National Congress to articulate the peasant related issues.
Agrarian Programs called for substantial reduction in agricultural rent or
revenue paid by the peasantry and in case of uneconomic holdings,
exemption from rent and imposition of progressive income tax on
agricultural incomes above a fixed minimum.
The abolition of the intermediary rights of the non-cultivating
landholding intermediaries became a difficult proposition involving
political costs as the Congress derived their strong support from these
parties and hence, the ruling elite did not entertain it. During the British
rule, these intermediaries extracted exorbitant rents and appropriated a
major share of it, paying only a portion as revenue to the British. The land
was also concentrated in the hands of these intermediaries, with their
tenure covering more than 40 per cent of the area of the country. The
measures to abolish intermediaries have generally been declared by
policy makers and mainstream economists as successful. However, this
success did not however mean the annihilation of landlordism or the end
of land concentration altogether.
Landlordism continued, and so did the monopoly of land in a few
hands while all that was required of them to retain their dominant
landholding position was to undertake a change in the position from the
formerly absentee cultivator who indirectly cultivated the land using
tenants to that of a direct cultivator using hired labor. There was a
cascading effect of these reforms on the tenants who were unprotected
and the Zamindars in their drive for retaining their dominant position
resorted to large-scale evictions and declaration of these lands to be
under personal cultivation. The congress agrarian reforms committee
defined personal cultivation as those lands where direct physical labor
was applied along with actual participation in agricultural operations. It

also called for a ceiling on the quantity of land that could be used for
personal cultivation to ensure that there was some sort of equality.
Despite the land reforms, the lower class peasants continued to get
the short end of the stick; many landlords evicted or forced workers to
surrender their land. The reforms even ensured a liberal compensation
was provided to the intermediaries for any portion of their feudal estates
taken over by the government. The delay in the enforce the reforms
resulted in opportunities to circumvent the laws and dilute landlords
provisions. There was also a direct relationship between the
compensation paid to the intermediaries and the burden on the peasants
as they were asked to bear the expenses to buy their right of ownership in
some cases and even otherwise the compensation was to be financed by
the net increase of revenue accumulating to the state in the form of rents
and land revenue direct paid to the Government by the tenants.

The compensation to landlords was nearly twice the amount


invested on social services, nearly equal to the sum on transport,
communication and industry; even more than the sum for and community
development, irrigation and power put together. It clearly points to the
interest of the ruling classes in maintaining the dominance of the
landlords and their monopoly over land. The main thrust of these laws
was to convert the landlords into capitalists even as there were massive
evictions of the tenants who were demoted to the position of landless
agricultural workers which constituted an emergent trend.

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