Land Reforms: Loop full of holes

Bihar's village economy supports nearly three-fourths of its population, yet it remains one of the most exploitative in the world.

Bihar owes much of its rural poverty to its failure to implement land reforms. The village economy supports nearly three-fourths of the state's population, yet it remains one of the most exploitative in the world.

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A handful of upper-caste landlords (Brahmins, Rajputs and Bhumihars) own inestimable acres, while lakhs of lowly Dalits and tribals work under inhuman conditions on them for bare survival. The only section that has benefited from the partial land reforms has been the "middle tier" of semi-landed peasants - the Yadavs, Kurmis and Koeris.

Bihar boasted of the most vigorous land reforms movement in colonial India under the Kisan Sabha of the 1930s. However, this movement was largely represented by the middle peasants, says Shishir K Jha, a social scientist. The Dalits and tribals had little direct involvement. This remained true even after Independence.

The Congress party, with close ties with the landlords, also remained largely disconnected from the movement.

Rulers derail reforms
Post-Independence, Bihar's ruling class came overwhelmingly from the landed gentry, with an obvious lack of interest in land reforms. A man no less than India's first President Dr Rajendra Prasad - considered Bihar's most progressive leader to date - opposed the movement after Bihar's assembly became the first in the country to table a bill for zamindari abolition.

The most vocal supporter of reforms, then state finance minister KB Sahay, was run down by a truck days before the bill was to be tabled - allegedly on the orders of the Maharajadhiraj of Darbhanga, one of the country's richest landlords. He survived, and came to present the bill all bandaged up from the hospital.

The bill was finally passed in 1950, and was followed by the Land Ceiling Act of 1962. But both reform acts were severely "reformed" - watered down versions of original bills with deliberate loopholes to prevent redistribution, writes Jha.

Results
"Even today, some 1.4 million acres of land is under illegal possession of landlords and mahants. Between 85 per cent and 90 per cent of rural households own less than five acres each," says Jha.

The partial implementation benefited the backward caste "middle-peasants" - the Yadavs, Kurmis and Koeris - who form the political class of today.

The lot of the lowest Biharis - the cultivators and the agricultural labourers who form 44 per cent and 35 per cent of the state's workforce respectively - remains the same as it has been for centuries.