The Indian State and the Unfinished Task of Land Reforms: A Critical Analysis

Abstract

The task of land reforms in India even though was looked at as a critical issue at the time of independence to ameliorate structural inequality has been a long abandoned cause for the Indian welfare state. Land as a resource for a fast developing nation like India has come to be hotly contested in the midst of the growth versus justice paradigm. However, the Indian State has had throughout the history of independent India, the stated explicit goal of balancing the two. The justice aspect has been fading after neo-liberalization set in the 1990s, but the pressures of democracy have kept it in discourse. This paper critically examines one of the most recent and comprehensive policy interventions on the unfinished task of land reforms in India from the Indian State. This intervention is in the form of the Report of the Committee on State Agrarian Relations and the Unfinished Task in Land Reforms (2009) brought out by the Ministry of Rural Development. This Report is unique to the extent that it contextualizes the issue of land reforms into the wider spectrum of land issues which constitute the framework of Indian politics today, such as the land acquisition of agricultural land for non-agricultural perspectives. Thereby, it gives us an opportunity to raise some fundamental questions on the political possibility of land redistribution in India today, the democratization of Indian agrarian relations and ask whether and how can the Indian State today balance the claims of growth and justice in terms of land.