Country Case Study

Land policy in India has been under discussion even prior to independence and especially following the infamous Deccan Riots. One of the important issues on which the peasants backed the independence movement was the land to the tiller policy promised by the then Congress party. Immediately after the independence a Committee under the Chairmanship of Late Shri J C Kumarappa (A senior Congress leader of equivalent status of Mahatma Gandhi) was appointed to look in to the problem of land. The Kumarappa Committee gave its report and it was during that time the discussions on land reforms began world over in different countries. There were a few important issues confronting the policy makers then. First, land was concentrated in the hands of a few and there was a proliferation of intermediaries who had least interest in self-cultivation of land. Naturally leasing out land was a common practice. Second, the tenancy contracts were expropriative in nature and the tenant exploitation was ubiquitously prevalent. Third, the records of land were in extremely bad shape giving rise to large number of litigations. It is irony that the Supreme Court of India in 1989 commented that the revenue records are not documents of title (Wadhwa, 1989). This is a sad commentary on land records of the country. On this background land policy was shaped in the country.