The Mystic Phrase ’Land Reforms’

Almost every one of the critics from abroad who examine our national economy and express their opinions, and comment on our Plans, refers to ‘land reforms’ and recommends speedily bringing them into force; because they are essential to progress, agriculture being the foundation of progress in other spheres. But it is almost certain these critics have not examined what they refer to as ‘land reforms’. Because this phrase is constantly used in official literature it is taken for granted that they denote some very desirable reforms. It is not realized that the legislative enactments and Bills going under this fine name are expropriatory enactments and proposals which far from being changes calculated to improve agriculture, do just the opposite. These legislative measures are dis-incentives for increased production. They are framed to deprive owners of land of their rights of ownership, and to break up large farms into non-mechanizable small units. They are intended to bring about transfer of ownership, so as to place the broken-up units in the hands of poor labourers who cannot save or invest money on any improvement of their lands.

Just when there was a great wave of interest among the bigger farmers, be they owners or lessees, to introduce modern tools and methods of cultivation, and a phenomenal demand for fertilizers and tractors was growing, these new legislative measures based on socialist dogma were passed under the thoughtless; dictation of the Congress High Command. They, in fact, crushed the movement for modernizing agriculture by liquidating those farmers who were eager and had the means to modernize and improve production. A great and unhealthy fog of uncertainty descended on the occupation and the lives of agriculturists. Food farmers who had planned for greatly increased production, naturally expecting to increase their net earnings, are now afraid even to go near their lands, the Congress Party having fanned the fire of class-conflict and violence. Discord between owners and lessees, between lessees and wage-earners, and generally between those who ‘have’ and those who depend on the ‘haves’ for providing them fruitful occupation during seasons of agricultural activity, has taken the place of cooperation and industrious work in what Burke rightly called the most difficult of all occupations. Those who would have brought progressively increasing agricultural production into being are looking on those who once most loyally cooperated with them in that work as their dangerous enemies receiving orders from irresponsible political ‘workers

Such are the ‘reforms’ to which constant reference is made without understanding their true nature. These ‘land reforms’ are the legislative contrary of chemical fertilizers. Any amount of fertilizers may be bought or distributed even free, but without the great psychological fertilizer of ownership-incentive and harmonious cooperation, the chemical fertilizers by themselves will tear no fruit. And a great part of the stuff will even go the blackmarket from small farmers for the ready money which it will buy, as they prefer it to waiting on the monsoon for a better crop.

Henry Hazlitt, the well-known economist, writes:

The so-called ‘land reform’ that our government officials are demanding has meant and still means destroying existing large-scale agricultural enterprises, dividing land into plots too small for efficient or economic cultivation, turning them over to untried managers, undermining the principle of private property, and opening a Pandora’s box of still more radical demands.

Although these remarks were made by Henry Hazlitt about Latin American governments receiving Aid from the USA, readers can see how every word in the extract quoted applies completely and appositely to what has been done, and is being done, in India.

The abolition of zamindari estates and the liquidation of the intermediary collectors of land revenue was real reform. That has nothing to do with the liquidation of freehold-owners of land as is being contemplated as land reform. Indeed, I led the zamindari abolition in India in 1938 by a legislative committee that went into the subject in undivided Madras and gave its report, which led to the abolition of zamindaris in all the provinces throughout India. There is confusion in the minds of many people on this point. The hereditary agencies set up for collection of government land revenue should not be confised with big owners of freehold land, who are not just intermediaries, appointed for administrative convenience by the British Government for tax collection from peasants. These freehold landowners may be big or small and should not be confounded with farmers of land revenue created by the Government. The bigger land owners have been now made the target of a liquidation programme, and this is what has arrested the progress of farming in India. In addition to the direct injury done, the smaller peasants have lost their natural leaders, for have abandoned their rural homes and gone to live in the towns and cities. Large acreages of rice land have been turned to production of sugarcane to feed the sugar mills, and thereby evade the Land Ceiling Acts. Indeed these exemptions from the Ceiling Law are closely connected with the politics of the Congress Party. One of the staunch supporters of the Congress in Madras has thus evaded the Ceiling Law. He was one of the biggest rice producers in Thanjavoor district. It is a case big enough for an independent parliamentary enquiry. So also the change from rice to jute in other parts of India.

Land is a sensitive wife, said the author of Kural. If the owner does not personally attend to the minutest detail in cultivating the farm but is indifferent, the farm will in turn become indifferent to him, like the housewise who is not duly cared for by her husband. The uncertainties and conflicts that now hamper investment and generally reduce the interest of the owner in his land, must be brought to an end and give place to a bond between owner and land such as exists between a Hindu wife and her husband, to which Tiruvalluvar has campared it. This is the true land reform that national production requires. Every form of property, including farms, small as well as big, calls for this guarantee of relationship, so that sacrifices may be willingly made for its conservation and improvement.