Consequences of the Agrarian Reforms

By: EconomyWatch   Date: 21 April 2010

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Consequences of the agrarian reforms tells about the results of the adoption of agrarian reform after the independence. Agrarian reform helped the Indian Government to diminish the power of the feudal landowners and to redistribute land and land resources among all classes. The consequences of the agrarian reforms are explained below.

  • Abolition of intermediaries

    Before independence, the British government created an intermediate class for collecting taxes easily. The people of this class had no direct relationship with farmlands. They were only made to collect taxes. They also were capturing land from the poor farmers or small landowners. Agrarian reforms aimed at the removal of this class.

  • Restriction on acquiring lands:

    Large amount of land capturing had been restricted through agrarian reform. Big landowners who had no direct connection with cultivation couldn't collect taxes. Ceilings were imposed on the ownership of land. The long running feudalism in the rural area had been destroyed.

  • Effect On The Rural Middle Class:
    • At the time of agrarian reform the land of some big landlords had been captured by the Government because the amount of land property exceeded the predetermined upper limit. Therefore, as a result, those big landlords then entered into the middle class. Some financially healthy cultivators also had been promoted to the middle class.
    • After the end of the feudal era, through agrarian reform, this middle class occupied an important position not only in the area of rural economy but in the country's political structure as well.
  • Effect on the lower section:
    • The lower class people had not been affected too much by agrarian reforms. Only in some special cases the sharecroppers and land less farmers benefited by the redistribution of land and land property.
    • Some tenants who wanted to start self cultivation hardly got the scope to do so. However, some of them had got a chance to start self cultivation but the conditions offered to them were not comfortable.
    • The creation of the new middle class had further deprived the lower class people by using their economic and political power. The feudal landholders had been converted into commercial cultivators, but the position of the poor farmers remained the same. Then they were working on a contract basis, which couldn't ensure the job security.

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