Land Reforms and its Social Consequence
‘Land Reform’ refers to the redistribution of ‘surplus land’. Decided on the ceiling on cultivable holdings for small farmers and landless was taken in view of the workers. From a broader perspective, land reform meant not only the redistribution of land but also the development of institutions related to land reform and farming. Under this, loan cooperatives for tenancy farming, education related to farming, marketing and advisory services were also included. by Gunnar MirjalIn his book ‘Asian Drama’ it is stated: ” ….Land reform is a planned and institutional reorganization between the individual and the land. No reorganization of land ownership and tenancy can be successful unless it is planned for Policy should not be made.” Looking at land reform in social and economic context, there is also a need for mechanization in it.
Since the Congress government after independence was committed to bring about structural changes in the field of agriculture, therefore Pt. A committee was formed under the chairmanship of Jawaharlal Nehru, whose recommendations were implemented in the reform programs in the field of agriculture. Some of the main recommendations were as follows:
(1) All the middlemen between the state and the cultivator should be removed. By removing all the brokers and middlemen, there should be a concept of cooperative in their place, which has no interest of its own in the middle.
(2) Land should be developed as a source of employment. The landowners who are not cultivating the land should have the right to cultivate it through cooperative, with the condition that if they want to cultivate themselves, then they or their heirs will get the right of cultivation on the land.
(3) The maximum size of the caste should be fixed. Acquisition of land beyond this maximum limit through village cooperatives It should be done.
(4) Small holdings should be increased, as well as their further shortening (division) should be stopped. When the planned programs were carried out according to the suggestions of the Planning Commission,
many suggestions were given by the commission to different states. These are as follows:
1. Improvement in land tenure 2. Land ceiling 3: Elimination of middlemen 4. Consolidation of holdings 5. Maintaining systematic records of land. In his important study related to land reform, P. C . Joshi said that instead of the interest of the agricultural farmers, land reform programs are often working for the interests of large pressure groups.
As a result of land reforms, such groups in the villages are as follows:
1 Big landowners: Above all, the interests of those landlords who have grouped the land under their home farm or ‘individual farming’. evicted tenants from their lands. This has happened in different ways in different states.
Rich peasants with tenants with whom they live really big and they are also financially prosperous. They have further strengthened their position under the new land laws. This category has benefited the most due to the improvement in tenancy rules.
Inferior tenants. This is the group of most affected farmers with small holdings. Despite land reforms, there has been no significant difference in their condition. There is no difference in their position in the right of tenancy on the land and in the profit on it. The difference is that earlier he was directly concerned with the zamindar. Now from the state.
Voluntary tenants at will, tenants at will, and agricultural laborers At the bottom of this category, voluntary tenants are agricultural laborers who share in agricultural produce who have no right to the land, while the land is actually cultivated only where the population density is What’s more, they work on their own small holdings as well as on the lands of others but without any benefit or security.
Yogendra Singh, after studying land reforms and Panchayati Raj programs in some areas of eastern Uttar Pradesh, put some aspects of the current rural power-equation as follows:
(1) Upper castes (such as Thakurs, Brahmins, Bhumihars), former landlords and the class of moneylenders still have power. Somewhere this authority is straightforward and clear and somewhere hidden.
2) The struggle for power has started organizing the lower castes and groups as well. At the caste level, now these groups are also becoming participants in power.
(3) The village political system is still completely affected by the economic constraints and prosperity of different caste groups. The power balance of the power equation seems to be in favor of the group which is financially strong in the village.
K.L. Sharma (1980) has presented two directions of social mobility in his study of 6 villages of Rajasthan. Not only the agricultural laborers but also some old landlords have come down in class status. The newly emerged rich farming class is now emerging as a bourgeois class in place of the old landlords.
Kotovsky (1964) has also drawn attention to the increasing proletarianization among the village peasants. This is also evident from a study conducted between 1961-81. The share of farmers declined from 52.3% to 41.5% while that of agricultural laborers increased from 17.2% to 25.2%. New dominance due to green revolution and land reforms
The rise of class (caste) has also taken place.
Rise of New Sovereign Races
( Emergence of New Dominant Castes )
In order to understand the process of social change in the Indian agricultural society, it is necessary to understand about the dominant castes of land owners in rural India. Despite rapid industrialization, land ownership is still the basis of wealth, prestige and political power.
Srinivas first mentioned the concept of dominant caste in the article ‘Dominant Caste of Rampura’ published in 1959 issue of American Enologist, this out-of-the-box dissertation presented a new insight about the process of changes taking place in Indian society. Of . Since then many sociologists and social anthropologists have taken up the task of studying the various aspects of sovereignty in rural India.
Srinivas has told that in order to be sovereign, it is necessary to have the following hair in any caste:
- He should have considerable amount of cultivable land in his possession. 2. The number of people of that caste should be quite large. 3. He should get some high and prestige among the local castes. • Land ownership has traditionally been confined to a small number of castes. These landowner castes and landless agricultural laborers and other professional artisan castes have been with them. Even after five decades of land reforms, one third of the Scheduled Castes are landless and the other castes have small landholdings. Apart from this, the ‘Green Revolution’ also raised the importance of cultivable land. As a result of which the attention of some traditional trading castes towards land ownership was also attracted and they started buying land to become more and more land owners. Apart from all these things, it is also true that any caste having only ownership of land, members
Being more in number or prestige does not make it sovereign. For that it is also necessary to have some new elements like western education, appointments of people of that caste in local administration and political ‘powa’ etc. This is the reason that some castes which were previously sovereign no longer remain so, adult suffrage and democratic decentralization of power (Panchayati Raj) also pushed some middle class and lower castes forward. The system of reservation in the state and central legislatures also raised the status of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. The spread of education among the people of these oppressed classes also brought about some changes in the criteria of attainment of sovereignty.
Due to the vast expansion of communication and transport, the dominance of the village level is not enough to make a caste sovereign. Rather, it is more important to have regional sovereignty to be sovereign. This social situation can also be understood in another way. A particular caste may dominate its village in terms of number of members, economic status and political influence, but if it is surrounded by hostile and angry castes from all sides in the villages, then the village level dominance of that caste has no effect on prosperity. There won’t be much effect. Therefore, dominance over a larger area is more effective. It is also an important point that the ideal of Sanskritization for the lower castes is not always Brahmin only. In many areas, other castes also become its basis. For example, if a region is dominated by Kshatriyas, then the ideal of culturalization there is the Kshatriya caste. The same applies in the case of Brahmins and Vaishyas also. This sovereignty is so pervasive that where Kshatriyas dominate, Brahmins along with other castes are looked down upon and are often treated with degrading treatment. For example, in eastern Uttar Pradesh, where Thakurs dominate, Thakur zamindars may employ any Brahmin other than their Kulguru as a servant to cook food. Similarly, in the villages of Punjab, Jat landlords often treat Brahmins as their servants.
The caste which is dominant, keeps a little distance with the other castes of its village or area. That caste considers itself the protector and watchdog of the local culture there; Norms of conduct are also set by him for others, for violating which strictness is also taken. All the values and beliefs of that particular region are imprinted on that sovereign caste. Since the lower castes try to rise up in the local caste hierarchy through the process of sanskritisation and acquire other characteristics of dominance and can become sovereign caste in future, therefore, viewed from this aspect, sanskritisation is seen as an attack on the concept of sovereign caste. can go . Perhaps that is why even today in many areas the efforts of the dominant castes to culturalize the relatively lower castes are not seen in a good light. In this ‘social tug of war’, the dominant castes continue to adopt new politics in which the basis of dominance remains out of reach of the lower castes. The lower castes also constantly try to strengthen their position by taking advantage of the new opportunities in the Indian society. An example here might give you the gist of this discussion. The upper castes have always avoided many occupations contaminated with ritualistic point of view, such as leather work, brewing and selling, etc. After independence, many facilities provided to the Scheduled Castes, especially with the nationalization of big banks, ‘Social Banking’
Taking advantage of many government and non-government schemes, many relatively lower castes adopted this profession on a large scale and in a very short time accumulated a lot of money and property, which also increased their political power. The example of the Jatav community of Agra can be given here, which American anthropologist Owen Lynch has also done a great study in his book ‘The Politics of Untouchability’ (1969). It is another thing that the occupations corrupted by the ritualistic approach are no longer out of reach of many upper castes and due to the forces of social liberalism and market market in the last 4-5 decades (which are largely due to westernization). ) Upper castes have also intensified economic competition by engaging in such professions. As it has been said earlier that the incentives given in the field of education and reservation in jobs have also strengthened the socio-economic political position of many lower castes more than before and thus new grounds of sovereignty are being created. The Prabhu caste plays an important role in settlement and settlement of disputes by the traditional village or caste committee. The influential members of the Prabhu caste not only resolve the disputes that arise between the members of different castes, but often the people of one caste themselves also look to them to settle their inter-caste disputes by meeting them. S.C. Dube and Peter Gardner have raised some serious objections to the basic concept of sovereignty. Throwing light on the favorable side of the above situation, S.C.
Bay remarks that talking about sovereignty would be meaningful only if the power is transmitted to the whole group and it is implemented in the interest of the whole group or at least in the interest of a significant section of the group. . But when it is said about the sovereign caste that there is inequality of glory, prestige and power among different people in the so-called sovereign caste and the person of the sovereign caste exploits the weak people of his caste like the non-sovereign people, So perhaps it would be inappropriate to call him ‘Lord caste’. Therefore, before establishing supremacy in a caste on the basis specified by Srinivas, we must adopt the formula of unity and working in harmony in the interest of the caste. The fact that the lords who have attained powerful status belong to a specific caste is not enough to target that caste as a sovereign race. Apart from this, the tendency to unite all in relation to intra-caste unity and power is essential to be established as a sovereign race. Where these conditions exist, a caste can become a sovereign race. In their absence, the framework of community power can only be better understood in terms of GOD persons, GOD’s parties and their advocates. Srinivas in his reply states that although Duche Prabhu accepts the existence of people and Prabhu parties, yet this
Those belonging to the Lord race are hesitant to go through the entire curvature and accept the existence of the Lord. The fundamental point of Srinivas here is that both the Prabhulog and the Prabhu group place their sovereignty in the fact that they are part of the same race. One thing can be seen here that even if all the leaders of Prabhu Dal are not correct, then most of the leaders are from Prabhu caste. Except in those areas where two rival castes are face to face and each of them is trying to establish its dominance, all so called sovereign people come from the sovereign race itself. The sovereignty of the sovereign is not limited to the local level. As already mentioned in this discussion, the dominance of a caste at the village level is not of great importance. Sovereignty will be considered complete only when it pervades the entire region. If this happens, then even one or two families in the village that belong to the lord caste, they are known as influential at the local level because they have a mutual contract of a certain functioning under the lord relationship. In such situations other people in that village are also familiar with the said contract or methodology and thus the cases in such village are also disposed of accordingly. Ghanshyam Shah alludes to the formation of caste committees, while talking about keeping an organized front in favor of the sovereign caste in spite of the possibilities of diversity of vested interests. Within the caste structure, an important renewed model was developed by the sovereign group of the ethnic group to establish harmony among people of different economic strata. In this way, this GOD also protects the interests of its class and also maintains its leadership.
The history of caste committees goes back to the late nineteenth century, although their numbers increased after independence. The Sardar Kurmi Kshatriya Sabhas of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, the Nadar Mahajan Sangam of Tamil Nadu and the Gujarat Kshatriya Sabhas of Gujarat are examples of some of the powerful caste committees.
These caste committees projected the economic interests of sovereign groups as caste interests. These committees generally adopt two types of methodology or strategies to win the support of the relatively poor level of the concerned castes. Firstly, the leaders of these committees draw people’s attention to caste principles based on the concept of purity (purity) and pollution. Caste members are encouraged to maintain or improve their caste status. Stories presenting the past in glorified form were created, the caste members were kept in the guise by weaving a web of rhetorical words such as “economic backwardness”, “economic development” etc. Secondly, for the mutual organization of homogeneous members, caste committees have on occasion passed resolutions against the government alleging exploitation of caste.
When one thinks about caste theoretically or empirically, one finds that Srinivas never claimed that the concept of sovereign caste fully explained the concept of power in rural India. The unity of the ethnic group in general, and the unity of the sovereign race in particular, is not immutable or static, but rather elastic and dynamic in the broader contexts. This unity can be specifically targeted in the form of opposition to other castes. As day by day emphasis is being laid on popularizing public welfare schemes and economic reform schemes through democratic institutions and their implementation by ensuring the participation of majority of the people in them, the importance of lord castes is increasing day by day. The reason for this is that these castes have the ability and ability to control these institutions. economic and political resources.
In the frightening competition to control, all the members of the Lord castes do not personally get the power directly, but collectively they definitely get the “power”, and also implement and use it. Thus the political process and economic development both at the microscopic and the secondary micro (meso) levels seem to be clearly bearing the seal of the sovereign caste concerned. The bureaucracy-bureaucracy related to development and law and order, the influence of the local lordship on the bureaucracy can be seen as a ground reality in day to day life.