Land reforms in Bihar: An appraisal

Land is the base of India's economy. The close link between poverty and landlessness has been continuously discussed in India's political arena since independence, with rural land reforms being placed high in the policy agenda. Commitment to land reforms is also a part of the heritage of our national freedom movement. The poverty in rural society and extreme exploitation of peasantry by intermediaries, moneylenders and others leading to their impoverishment and misery, attracted the attention of government and planners since independence. Thus, India accepted land reforms as an integral instrument of its Five Year Development Plans with a view to bringing radical changes in the existing agrarian structure, and to achieving the objective of a socialistic and egalitarian pattern of society as is enshrined in our Constitution. Ceiling on land holdings and redistribution of surplus land to the landless have been stressed by many on the grounds of equity and agricultural efficiency. This led to an attempt to directly alter the pattern of distribution of land holdings through enactment of different legislative measures in Bihar. Tracing the evolution and progress of land reforms in Bihar, the present paper observes that its impact on the agrarian structure has not been significant. As a result the poor do not occupy a priority location in development planning. Thus land reforms have been used more as a rhetoric than a sincere commitment by the State. At the end, the paper puts forward a fifteen point programme to effectively implement land reform measures in the State within a short span of time.