Abstract
Land reform studies have often found wanting for not paying adequate attention to the close correspondence between land relations, gender and caste; all of them reinforcing each other and State polices extending legitimacy to this complex web of relationships. These complexities betray theorisation on State intervention in property relations that consider land only as an economic asset, overlooking its sociopolitical significance. The article argues that land reforms in India have been designed to protect landed property. The article further argues that the impact on the bottom rungs could be the crucial criteria for the assessment of any land reforms programme in a third-world country. In Indian conditions, Dalits and women constitute these segments.
Keywords
Introduction
Land reforms have been one of the oldest problems of social sciences research, which continues to maintain its salience in third world countries. Numerous studies conducted in these countries have offered various explanation for the peculiar experiences of the implementation of policies seeking massive restructuring of property relations in the countryside. In India, the lack of political will (Appu, 1975), the dominance of landed gentry in bureaucracy, state legislature and judiciary (Newell, 1972), establishment’s naivety about the land-based power relations (Myrdal, 1968) and lack of concentration alongside the dearth of land resource (Baruah, 1990) have been most thoughtful explanations for the failure of land reforms.
The dual role of intermediate class in opposing privileges of landlords along with rural poor while standing with landlords in upsetting any attempt towards radical change in favour of rural poor was also underlined in this debate (Joshi, 1974). Political economy perspective critiqued the design of facilitating incarnation of semi-feudal landlords into capitalist landlords in place of finishing the older land relations (Patnaik, 1976) because of a newly found bonhomie between erstwhile feudal elements and emerging capitalist class in post-colonial context (Namboodiripad, 1984). A rich corpus of literature critiqued patriarchal and patrilineal control over landed property (Agarwal, 1994; Kodoth, 2001; Razavi, 2007). Some studies have also probed land reforms from the caste perspective (Mohanty, 2001). Moving away from the standard practice of analysing ‘failure’ of the State policy, this article argues that land reforms were actually ‘successful’ in achieving what they were designed to. They vigorously defended the private property in land.
Further, a new stream of investigations has considered multiple sources of power intersecting with each other (Lerche & Shah, 2018; Rao, 2005), but one or the other sources have underplayed in their analysis. These studies presented a profound analysis of the aspects chosen for their focus, but partial explanations offered by them left many cognitive blackspots. For instance, a stream of political economy literature has often overlooked gender–land congruence. It left them unequipped to deal with questions relating to the State’s efforts to contain land within the male-dominated family. The caste perspective has often found wanting in dealing with newer problems arising out of penetration of capital in the countryside.
Land relations have been historically embedded in the social relations marked by gender and caste relations, and any study of State intervention in this web of relationships could not afford to ignore these complexities. Different sources of power class, patriarchy and caste might be conceptually distinct, but, in everyday life, they intersect with each other to produce a particular experience. This article is an attempt precisely in this direction. It investigates State intervention in the matrix of caste, gender and land relations in post-independence India focusing on the most populous state Uttar Pradesh.
The article departs from the common practice of treating the land question only as an economic one. Although economics did matter the most, sociopolitical facets of land were equally important. It was not a coincidence that people placed at the bottom of the caste hierarchy were traditionally kept landless. Dalits 1 were forbidden to hold land, not because of the scarcity of it but to create and maintain a class of landless labourer’s dependent on providing labour to the class of landowners (Patnaik, 1983). This legacy has imprinted on the contemporary situation too. Most of the Dalits were either land-poor or landless who worked on the fields of landowners as agricultural labour and insecure tenants. These agrarian relations sustained and reinforced caste equations and power structure rooted in it.
Similarly, economic rationale alone did not explain the denial of land rights to women. More than that, it was an apparatus to keep them in a perpetual state of dependence and tied to the patriarchal family. Among several other things common in both these cases, the State polices ensured the persistence of power structure rooted in land ownership pattern. The same policies could provide a vantage point for the study of the intersection between social and land relations. This entails having a look at the historical evolution of these policies. The analysis presented in this paper leads us to argue that entire land reforms architecture was designed to offer a robust defence to landed property while its socially embedded nature determined characteristics of ownership.
The Zamindari Abolition and Land Reforms Act (ZALR), 1950
The debate on land reforms had already started in the 1930s and basic principles of proposed legislation were already agreed upon by mid-1940s. As per the schema, all intermediaries between the actual tiller and the State were to be abolished. However, the debate on compensation to the intermediaries finally tilted in their favour and it was decided that they would be compensated for the loss of rent collection rights (Thorner, 1956). After Independence, three major acts—the Uttar Pradesh ZALR 1950 2 , the Uttar Pradesh Imposition of Ceiling on Land Holdings Act, 1960, and Consolidation of Land Holdings Act, 1960—were promulgated to advance the agenda of land reforms. ZALR was later replaced by the Uttar Pradesh Revenue Code, 2006.
The main objective of the ZALR was to abolish all intermediary interest in the land between the State and actual tiller of the soil, encourage peasant proprietors, create gaon samaj [village community] and gaon sabha [village council] vested with all common lands, forests, ponds, pathways, abadi (habitation) lands and so forth. It was hoped that these initiatives would deepen democracy in rural areas. The legislative work started soon after Independence and Uttar Pradesh ZALR came into effect from 1 July 1952, vesting all zamindari rights in the State (ZALR, 1950).
However, in one stroke, the entire intermediary paraphernalia came crumbling down the way this act was conceived and implemented fell much short of expectations of the struggling peasantry. Three major issues need to be discussed that were particularly responsible for dampening the spirit of ‘land to the tiller slogan’.
Alongside, the abolition of zamindari, tenants were given non-transferable ownership rights. They could obtain full transferable rights by making a lumpsum payment which was 10 times yearly revenue of the piece of land. This amount was deposited in the Zamindari Abolition Fund that was used to compensate intermediaries. This scheme worked against poorer peasants who were unable to mobilise required funds. It was a precarious condition where the peasantry that was forced to maintain zamindaris with its sweat and blood for centuries was asked to bear the full cost of its removal too (Thorner, 1956). It was only after two decades that all recorded tenants were given full ownership rights.
The distinction between recorded tenants and other sharecroppers proved deadly to the aspiration of the latter. Since colonial period, one group of tenants, mostly peasant castes later recognised as Other Backward Classes (OBC) 3 , were cultivating zamindari land and their name was registered in revenue records. On the abolition of zamindari, these people could claim ownership over cultivated land. Another poorer group of tenants, constituting mainly of Dalits listed in the Schedule of Castes (SC), were tilling the land which was shown by zamindars as under their direct cultivation and recorded in revenue records as khudkasht [self-cultivation]. These were simple oral tenancies. Once zamindari was abolished and the tenancy was banned in Uttar Pradesh, most of these informal tenants were evicted by landlords for fear of losing their land (Das, 2000).
Once zamindars were allowed to retain sir and khudkasht land 4 , they kept large tracts of best quality land. This fault in the abolition process had an everlasting impact. Institution of intermediary was demolished but property relations in the countryside remained intact, resulting in perpetual landlessness and inequalities in landownership. Since this phase of reforms did not break the old land tenure structure to create the new one, the resulting land relations did not break from the past in terms of caste and gender rootedness.
Tenancy Reforms
As against the policy of ‘regulated tenancy’ adopted for some other Indian states, Uttar Pradesh promoted ‘owner-cultivator model’ and took a more radical approach of ‘no tenancy’ in Uttar Pradesh ZALR, 1950. The same approach continued in Uttar Pradesh Revenue Code, 2006. The first major initiative to confer rights on tenants in Uttar Pradesh was to abolish all intermediaries and straightway give ownership to millions of tenants of land under their possession. This was a mammoth exercise that altered land relations in the countryside in a big blow. But this too was not without flaws.
Ordinarily, tenants were understood to be those persons who cultivated land owned by another person on payment of rent which could be in cash or kind. This understanding ignored sharecroppers who paid rent as a share of produce. The initial provision in the state was that ‘any arrangement whereby a person is entitled to a right merely to a share in the produce grown on land in consideration of such person assisting or participating with the tenure holder in the actual performance of the agricultural operation is not a lease’ (Appu, 1975, p. 1349). This definition of ‘tenant’ excluded a large number of sharecroppers. While former zamindars could not evict tenants to resume land, they could do so in the case of sharecroppers (Appu, 1975, p. 1349). A large number of sharecroppers lost access to their land-owning to this fault in the definition of the tenant. About two decades later, the correction was made and sharecroppers were included in the ambit of term ‘tenant’. But by then the damage had been done.
By the time this definitional anomaly was rectified, landowners had already firmed their grip on land and thwarted two attempts of the imposition of ceiling on their landholdings. When tenancy arrangements resumed after an initial drive of evictions, one of the obvious consequences of the ban on leasing-out of land was the practice of concealed tenancy. It continues till date. However, government data did not reveal the extent of informal tenancy; various field-based studies have shown that it could go up to 10–15% of cultivated area and about 20% of total operational holdings.
The problems of informal tenants were manifold. They were insecure, exploited and more than that invisible, all three closely intertwined. As discussed above, restrictions on lease in the land also meant that the existence of tenants who lease-in land from a landowner was not recognised by the State. They remained invisible for the government, bereft of any legal protection. They were denied the security of tenure by the law, keeping them in a perpetual state of uncertainty. Most of the informal tenants came from land-poor lower castes having weak bargaining power in the lease market. The persisting threat of eviction forced them to accept undue demands of rent by the landowner. Since most of the landowners in these tenancy relations were from dominant castes, they used this leverage to exercise power over tenants in non-economic spheres too, consequently cementing control of one caste over another.
Informal tenancy relations were another method to exploit labour at cheaper rates since tenant families were expected to work on lessee’s own-cultivated land also, that too at much lower than market wages. This had enormous costs for women from land-poor ‘lower’ castes who had formed bulk of the labour force in agriculture. Since landowning ‘upper caste’ did not traditionally allow women from their ranks to participate in agricultural labour, it was only women from peasant jatis [castes] who worked on their own farms and Dalit women who also worked as agricultural labour.
In this situation, several stakeholders advocated that tenancy should be allowed but in a regulated manner. They cited the successful model of ‘regulated tenancy’ practiced in Indian states such as West Bengal and Kerala where millions of tenants were given heritable rights over possessed land and a fair rent was fixed by the law. It was felt that if the state has failed to give ownership of land to the tiller, at least it could ensure access through tenancy. Advocacy groups argued that by recognising de facto situation on the ground, governments would be in a position to protect the interest of the tenants.
Tenancy reforms aiming at security of tenure and fixation of fair rent were always considered a transient arrangement, the final objective being giving ownership of land to actual cultivator (Appu, 1975). In this sense, after following ‘land to the tiller’ model of land reforms for long, it would be stepping-back for the state if the tenancy was considered the main channel of ‘access’ to land for land-poor communities. Many states have laws that provide for regulated tenancy but outside a couple of left-ruled states mentioned above, nowhere registration of tenants was ever possible against the mighty backlash from the landed classes. The truth remained that balance of power was so tilted in favour of landed classes in the tenancy market that they did not allow any documentation of lease arrangements.
The third and increasingly powerful voice recommended leaving tenancy contracts to the market. International organisations like the World Bank have been advocating that the government had no business in land lease business. They demanded that land lease should be legalised in all Indian states and restrictions on terms of the lease should be lifted wherever they were in place. Terms of tenancy contracts and rent should be decided by the lessee and lessor without any intervention by the State (World Bank, 2007). They argued that market forces would correct anomalies in the lease market and produce efficient outcomes. Surprisingly, this advocacy has gained traction in the recent past despite failure of these prescription in different parts of the world (Borras, 2005).
The proponents of free-market tenancy forget that land lease in India was not just an economic activity; it also had sociopolitical consequences. The small tenancy was one of the most potent instruments that was often deployed to exercise control over land-poor castes. It also had constraining effects on the labour market. Leaving it unregulated would have disastrous consequences for the entire society.
Distribution of Government Land
The programme of distribution of government land started in 1975–1976 after the failures of ceiling surplus initiative became apparent. It was an easy way out without disturbing the property relations in the countryside. However, this too did not go uncontested from the landed gentry for at least two reasons. One, a substantial amount of gaon sabha land was already under unauthorised possession of powerful interests. Two, these people were opposed to any initiative that had the potential of changing the balance of power in villages.
The ZALR 1950 had provisions for the allotment of gaon sabha land to landless families. Agricultural labourer belonging to SC and ST categories found priority in allotment of pattas [assignment paper] after families of in-service armed forces personnel died or permanently handicapped in battle with the enemy. Despite challenges, this has proved to be the most successful policy initiative in addressing the problem of mass landlessness in the state. Till 2008, under this programme 1,168,496 hectares of land has been distributed to 3,682,795 eligible persons. Out of these, 2,076,874 belonged to SC category, 946,216 to OBC category, 656,646 to general category and 3,059 to ST category (Board of Revenue, 2008).
The picture on the ground was not as rosy as it appeared from the data. First of all, the land distributed under this programme was not fit for cultivation. 5 Some government schemes attempted to revive this land, but a piece of land found unfit for cultivation by the village community and kept aside for miscellaneous purposes for a long time could not be repaired beyond a point. Initially, taking possession of assigned land and then maintaining it was never an easy task for the ‘lower caste’ beneficiaries of this scheme. Several cases of violence against Dalits throughout the 1980s and 1990s were triggered by this issue.
ZALR also had provision for the allotment of house sites. Agricultural labour and rural artisan belonging to SC category were given priority followed by members of SC, ST, OBC and Below Poverty Line (BPL) category. Fisherfolk was benefitted from the provision of the lease on water bodies vested in gaon sabha.
It was only in 1995 that a policy was adopted to issue joint pattas in the name of man and woman of a household. Before that, all the government land was assigned only to the ‘head of the household’. Needless to say that like all other progressive elements of the State policy, this too remained on paper. The Revenue Code has also mandated to issue joint pattas. But the problem is that the bulk of the government land distribution had already taken place before this policy was adopted.
Distribution of government land, and not the ceiling surplus land, created two-tier landowning arrangement. First tier of owners of best quality land and second tier of government land assignees. It was not difficult to guess that the first tier was populated by the dominant castes and second one by Dalits.
ZALR and the Persisting Caste and Gender Equations
This limited overhauling of land relations did not upset land–caste equations. Before abolition, Thakurs 6 were the biggest zamindars, controlling about 34% of intermediary rights. Post-abolition, their share in landownership came down to 19%. Still, with a population share of 7.2%, they had disproportionately high control over land. But Muslims with 15% population of the state had a 20% share in zamindari right that came down to 8% ownership in the post-abolition scenario. Brahmins 7 owned 18% land with 9.2% population. Yadav, Kurmi, Lodh and Gurjar 8 had a combined population of 15%; their share in land increased from 6% to 20%. These castes composed a major chunk of superior tenants and proved to be major beneficiaries of this process. All backward castes put together reached 38% in ownership from 8% zamindari rights. With a population share of 21%, Dalits owned 9% of the land after abolition. They had only a 1% share in zamindari rights (Saxena, 1985).
The law that denied Dalits their fair share in the land also excluded women from their rights. A gender-blind approach guiding the law helped maintain land-patriarchy congruence. The ZALR was a classic case of the believer in the ‘man-farmer’ myth to the extent that it did not even recognise the existence of women in farming except in the section on devolution, that too for excluding them from their rights (Saxena, n.d.). Before 2008, only male descendants were recognised as Class I heir. Women were taken to be residing in families represented by their fathers, husbands and sons.
Even a cursory glance at provisions of previous ZALR or its new incarnation—the Uttar Pradesh Revenue Code, 2006—would reveal that entire effort was to contain land within a male-headed family. This objective was partly achieved by keeping two separate provisions for male and female landowners. Section 108 (2) of the Revenue Code provided an order of succession of all classes of male tenure holders namely bhumidhar, asami or government lessees. 9 According to this provision, widows and unmarried daughters were placed in the class-one heirs along with male lineal descendants. But married daughters were placed on fourth priority in succession order while there was no such precondition for male heirs. Surprisingly, the statute did not shy away from open discrimination. Practically, this distinction between ‘married’ and ‘unmarried’ daughters would take away the interest of most of the daughters in father’s property since it was highly likely that at the time of father’s death in advance age, daughters would already be married. The Code also didn’t allow unmarried daughters to maintain ownership of the inherited land with her after marriage. If she married, then Section 109 triggered and restored the said land to the nearest male lineage described in Section 108.
Widows were treated even more precariously. If there was more than one widow of a tenure holder, all such widows together were entitled to take only one share. Additionally, if a widow remarried, she lost her right over the property. Section 109 of the same law also specified that if a woman who has inherited land as widow or daughter, dies, then the said land shall devolve upon the nearest surviving heir of the last male tenure holder. Besides, the widow, mother or a daughter inheriting the holding in that capacity did not get an absolute right as on her death the devolution of the property would not go to her heirs, but the heir of the last male tenure holder. One could see an attempt by the law to contain landed property within the male-dominated family at the cost of women’s right to equality. Without gender-biased laws and policies of the State, patrilineal and patriarchal hold over land would have not persisted so long (Saxena, 2016).
The Revenue Code: Reversal of Dalit Land Rights
ZALR promised some concessions to Dalits who were bypassed in the abolition of intermediaries by making a distinction between recorded and oral tenancies. But the new law, the Uttar Pradesh Revenue Code, 2006, threatened to undo rights that were conferred upon Dalits by the old law. Sections 123 (1) and 123 (2) had the provision for the regularisation of possession of agricultural labour and village artisan on gaon sabha and private land respectively for a housing site. The Revenue Code has a similar provision in Sections 67-A (1) and (2). Similarly, allotment of housing patta was covered under Section 122-C of ZALR, while Section 64 did the same job in the new law. But the real change was in the priority list. Section 123-C, Subsection (3) of ZALR allocated SC/ST, OBC and BPL among General category 10 first, second and third priority, respectively. But Section 64 of the Revenue Code gave equal preference to all these categories. However, it was stated that priority would be given to homeless families or those who had insufficient space considering the size of the family. However, given the power balance in the rural areas, its impact on Dalits was predictable. More than this, a long-lasting impact on Dalits would be of the removal of Section 122-B (4F). This section regularised possession of SC/ST agricultural workers on gaon sabha land.
At one level where the new law has plugged all the channels of increasing Dalits’ ownership over land, it has opened flood gates for alienation of land. ZALR Section 157A had forbidden any transfer of land from a person belonging to SC to a non-SC person if bhumidhar was left with less than 1.26 hectares of land after the said transaction. Now, in Section 98 of the Revenue Code, this condition has been replaced with new conditions of the non-resident in the district where land was located and not having an heir. This step has been hailed as the liberation of Dalits as now they would be able to sell their land at market rates. 11 However, earlier provision was not a full proof system and market forces were able to exploit loopholes in the law. But in the new law, even that flimsy protection has been taken away.
These protections were provided by the law to those land-poor groups who faced the risk of falling in the ranks of landless after land alienation. The objective of these legal provisions was to protect Dalits from moneylenders and distress sale. That is why protection was not just against sale but also any kind of transfer including gift, lease or mortgage. With the increasing penetration of urban capital in rural areas and investment in land for speculative purposes, such arrangement was needed more than ever. And precisely for the same reasons, it has been lifted.
The issue was not just about modifications in some legal provisions but changing the direction of land laws. Till now, land reform laws aimed at the inflow of land to Dalits and capped outflow, but the Revenue Code has taken a reverse direction in this context.
The Uttar Pradesh Imposition of Ceiling on Land Holdings Act
Abolition of intermediary left behind a highly polarised agrarian structure, the erstwhile zamindars rechristened as new landlords controlling large tracts of land and mass landlessness and land-poverty on the other side. During the decade of 1950s, it increasingly became clear that in the process of abolition of intermediaries, zamindars had secured excessive concessions to the extent that threatened the very objective of land reform. Due to their preponderance in elected state legislatures, they retained sir and khudkasht legally and usurped large tracts by evicting tenants wherever they were unable to resist. ‘Land to the Tiller’ was still a far cry.
The spectre of radical peasant movements haunting and the threat of food grain crisis looming large, another round of reforms was initiated within a decade of Independence. It should be noted that as per the Constitutional schema, ‘land’ was a state subject; however, each time land reforms were initiated at the central level, it reflected the political ground realities of the times. State governments were still dominated by ‘upper-caste’ landed gentry while Nehruvian centre wanted to move in a progressive direction and saw feudal remnants as impediments on development (Newell, 1972).
In 1957, the National Development Council resolved that all the states would enact ceiling laws within 2 years and implement them in the next 3 years. Following the direction from the centre, the Uttar Pradesh Imposition of Ceiling on Land Holdings Act, 1960 was enacted that came into effect from 1961. It prescribed very high ceilings on land along with several exemptions. The act was amended to downwardly revise ceilings in 1972 that came into force from June 1973 (Newell, 1972).
Till 2008, 369,361 acres (149,475 hectares) land was declared ceiling surplus. Out of this, 30,002 acres (12,141 hectares) land could not be taken possession of because of the pending court cases and other procedural issues. A total of 339,359 acres (137,334 hectares) was taken possession of. Due to staying orders of different courts, vesting in gaon sabha and reduction in the area during land consolidation exercise, another 21,493 acres (8,698 hectares) could not be settled with beneficiaries. Finally, a total of 317,866 acres (128,636 hectares) 12 was distributed (Board of Revenue, 2008). Whatever minuscule area of land distributed, given the widespread landlessness among Dalits, it was not surprising that they were the main beneficiary of this programme.
The imposition of ceiling on agricultural holdings and redistribution of surplus land has been the cardinal element of any land reforms programme. But in Uttar Pradesh, this too miserably failed to make a dent in highly iniquitous land ownership structure. Ceiling surplus area distributed was hardly 0.7% of the total operated area in the state. This meant that, on an average, a little over 1 hectare ceiling surplus land was distributed in each village. There was a tendency in government machinery and academia alike to blame implementation (Ladejinsky, 1972) the truth of the matter was that the act was virtually porous from inside. Exemptions given in the act undermined the entire exercise.
The imposition of a ceiling on land holdings had the potential of damaging caste–land congruence, if not completely demolished. It was precisely this issue that explained its failure. The fiasco of the ceiling surplus measures was primarily due to backlash received from caste. The caste mobilised from top to bottom to ensure that no land was taken outside. It put political pressure to dilute law, liaison with bureaucracy for the tiresome implementation of whatever was left and organised to thwart any attempt at the village level. The result was for everyone to see. Most of the land in all the villages was still held by the original clan of holders.
Like caste, patriarchy came down heavily on the law to mould it accordingly. For instance, the Uttar Pradesh Imposition of Ceiling on Land Holdings Act, 1972 allowed a family to claim additional unit for adult sons, but this exemption did not apply to adult daughters. Further, the entire emphasis of land laws on ‘family’ betrayed women’s rights. The refusal to see women as an independent person was expressly enshrined in the law. In case of Ceiling Act too, Section 17 defined, ‘tenure holder means a person who is the holder of a holding, but does not include – (a) a woman whose husband is a tenure holder’. Apart from practical implications, this section was a telling example of the ‘male landowner’ assumption, underlying the entire land reforms edifice. And when this provision was implemented, the husband was counted as an independent unit but not his wife even if she owned land independent of the husband. As a result, the wife lost her land if it exceeded the ceiling limit. The married minor daughters were also not counted as separate units (Chaudhary, 2009).
Dalits, Women and the Question of Land
As we have seen, land reforms in Uttar Pradesh have a mixed record, some admirable successes cohabiting with crucial failures. But when it came to women’s land rights, the state has little to offer. The entire land reforms architecture found it difficult to withstand scrutiny from a gender perspective. The absence of women from the land reform laws of the state was so glaring that these laws did not foresee any possibility of women as tenure holders. The inheritance provisions also remained archaic and did not treat women equally. As we have seen that land reforms did not significantly change the caste–land relationship in the state, the same went true about gender–land complex too. Most of the works on land rightly focused on inheritance laws. The channel of inheritance was the most important way of owning land for anybody, and it is more so in the case of women. But the limited focus on inheritance laws overlooked other sites of gender discrimination.
The State’s legitimacy to patriarchy resulted in minuscule ownership of land by women who constituted half of the population and labour force engaged in agriculture. Considering that the operational holding pattern in the state reflected ownership structure, it came out very clearly that control over land was heavily skewed against women of the state. Although they have increased their share a bit during the last two decades, their access to land was too short of their share in the population. In 2001, women possessed 5.8% of holdings covering 4.65% of the total operated area in the state. Their share in number and area reached 6.35% and 5.06% and further to 6.94% and 5.37%, respectively, in 2011. In the agricultural survey of 2015–2016, 7.65% of holdings have been reported to be owned by women covering an area of 5.79%. 13
As stated above, the abolition of intermediaries majorly helped backward castes but almost bypassed Dalits. Distribution of ceiling surplus land was negligible in the state. It was only the government land distribution programme that benefited Dalits to an extent, that too with its shortcomings. Another noteworthy point was that while women’s land rights faced a stagnation, the rights of Dalits were facing a reversal. The recently enacted Uttar Pradesh Revenue Code, 2006 was an example of this tendency.
In the last two decades, land possession of Dalits in the state was almost stagnant and much lower than their share in the population. As against 21% share in the population, Dalits owned 17% holdings and 10.85% area in 2001. Corresponding figures in 2006 were 17.11% and 10.86%, respectively. Taking possession of operational holding reflective of ownership pattern given almost negligible reporting of tenancy in agricultural census data, SC-owned holdings were 17.23% that covered 11.17% area in 2011. In 2016, 16.95% holdings, covering an area of 11.03% area, were owned by Dalits. 14
Concluding Discussion
The analysis presented in the article clearly reveals that land reforms edifice in the State has been designed to protect landed property and all the potential challenges to it have been neutralised by providing a robust defence to social relations cohabiting land relations. The domination of landholding classes, mainly consisting of ‘upper caste’ men, amid the State’s quest to modernise Indian agriculture set the tone of ZALR. This contradiction was resolved in taking away their rent collecting rights, albeit with compensation for the loss, but maintaining the status quo vis-à-vis their property rights in terms of allowing them to keep land recorded as under self-cultivation. Erstwhile intermediaries were facilitated to reinvent themselves into capitalist landlords preserving ownership of large tracts of best quality land. As a consequence, the thick congruence between caste and land was frozen forever.
Further, there has been a misnomer that castes were homogeneous entities. The internal differentiation of castes has been a historical reality and the inequality between households of the same caste has been on the rise. The same is true about the caste–land equation. It was some wealthy households at the top that controlled a substantial quantum of land among landowning castes. Now the question could be ‘how did some households of landowning castes managed to control land across political-economies’.
Feminist works have sufficiently demonstrated that the patriarchal, heterosexual, monogamous family in India, like elsewhere, has played a crucial role in the control of wealth through history, and like caste, the family has never been internally homogenous. This has also been a well-known fact that these male-dominated institutions catered to the anxiety of men to control wealth and women’s body, both closely tied to each other. This analysis has helped us understand the role of the family as a crucial link between caste and patriarchy.
In everyday life, it was the site of the family where caste–land, caste–patriarchy and patriarchy–land dyads interacted with each other to create a land–caste–patriarchy triad. Historically, variation in ‘control’ or ‘decontrol’ over women’s labour along caste and landownership axis has been one of the most self-evident reflections of triad’s dynamic.
Once we situated family in the discourse of land reforms, and its interface with social institutions, the crucial links between all of them got illuminated.
The ZALR precisely sought to protect these very links by its provisions discussed above on the abolition of intermediaries while allowing landlords to retain ‘self-cultivated’ land and simultaneously providing for devolution that ensured retention of land in the family. Although ZALR provided for individual holdings, reading its inheritance statutes along with the Ceiling Act amply clarified its intent of considering the family as a unit with land recorded in the name of ‘head of the household’, obviously a male. While gender, class and caste biases were almost essential features of many regulations, what distinguished revenue laws of Uttar Pradesh was that they didn’t even attempt to hide them. The ZALR could be read as a classical document in the defence of the land–caste–patriarchy triumvirate.
Surprisingly, the Revenue Code, while seeking to make the land tenure system of the state market compatible, persisted with the caste and gender bias of the ZALR. It pretended to be making law gender just and free from caste discrimination, but its pre-condition of the marital status of daughters and limited ownership without transferable rights to them go hand-in-hand with easing of curbs on the sale of land owned by Dalits and dropping of clauses that confer land rights on them.
The Ceiling Act was even more straightforward in stating the simultaneity of caste and gender at work in protecting landed property. The act provided a high ceiling, exemptions and distinction between daughters and sons, all in one go.
Nowhere else the reinforcing dynamic of caste and gender could be more glaring than the case of Dalit Women, located at the other end of the land ownership structure. It was not just a coincidence that a group of people located at the bottom of the land, gender and caste hierarchy owned only 1.32% of the total holdings in the state covering an area of less than 1% (0.75% to be precise) 15 of the total operated area in Uttar Pradesh. This group of women, belonging to ex-untouchable jatis and historically forbidden to own any property, constituted more than 10% of the state’s population. They continued to be in this state because ZALR protected landed property and the Ceiling Act refused to demolish caste–gender hold over it.
Policy Implications
The analysis presented in the article also revealed that land reforms in Uttar Pradesh have by and large bypassed a large chunk of marginalised groups. This was not a surprising outcome given loopholes in the architecture of these initiatives. The failure of the reforms to address landlessness at the bottom of the social hierarchy was not a failure of the implementation but the design. Like any other legislative action, land reforms too were reflected the power balance in the society where landed elite had an edge. The policymakers consciously chose to give relief to the poor but not at the cost of the interest of the landed classes. Their interests were to be protected.
This impasse of balancing the interests of the rich and the poor left the project of the land reforms to be a non-starter. Any effort to revisit the existing land reform architecture would have to first realise that land reforms needed to be conceptualised from the perspective of the landless. It is an intervention of the State in favour of the poor aimed at altering economic and power relations to pave the way for development and democracy. Once land reforms were perceived from the standpoint of the poor, the imposition of ceiling emerges as the cardinal element and Dalits and Women emerge as the priority group of these initiatives.
From this perspective, the emerging agenda of land reforms mandated lowering of ceiling limits and much lower limits for the absentee and non-resident landowners. It also directed plugging of loopholes in the Ceiling Act in the form of various exemptions and imposition of revised ceilings from retrospective effect to capture cases where evasion has taken places earlier. This agenda also demanded criminal sanctions against people who evaded ceilings by furnishing wrong information or non-disclosure of ceiling surplus land.
One of the core objectives of the emerging land reform agenda was to demolish patrilineal control over land. This could be only done by replacing legal provisions on inheritance that prioritised keeping land within the patriarchal family over women’s land rights. The trickiest question was whether the devolution of agricultural land should be governed by revenue laws or personal laws. It was no hidden secret that personal laws, both Hindu and Muslim, conferred more rights to women than the Revenue code or its previous incarnation, the ZALR. For instance, the Hindu Succession Act (HSA), 2005, interpreted by recent Supreme Court judgement has clearly stated that daughters have an equal right to property. The apex court coined a very interesting phrase ‘Once a daughter, always a daughter’. Revenue laws appeared to have grudgingly given some concessions to women after 2008, but those were miles away from equal rights to women.
The problem was not as simple as it appeared. The state applied its laws since ‘agricultural land’ was a state subject in Indian Constitutional Schema, but the inheritance of any type of property was governed by personal laws. The HSA was a central law, and, according to the Constitution of India, central laws prevailed over state laws if there were two acts on the same subject. HSA, 2005 did not expressly or by implication excluded agricultural land from its preview. Keeping agricultural land outside the purview of personal laws was a colonial legacy and it had no other justification. It defeated the very purpose of personal laws also since, in agrarian states like Uttar Pradesh, agricultural land constituted the largest source of wealth.
A recent Supreme Court judgement 16 has emphasised that daughters have equal right to their fathers’ property even if father had died before 2005, when amendment to HSA came into force. Still, this illustrious judgement is unlikely to make a significant impact on women’s right over ancestral agricultural land because of artificial distinction created by laws between devolution of agricultural land and other landed property.
One of the most important criteria of the efficacy of land reforms initiative was to assess its impact on Dalits, who form the bulk of the landless and were historically forbidden from holding land. Recent changes in the Revenue Code were likely to hurt the land rights of Dalits.
Any attempt towards the deepening of democracy in Indian society would be a non-starter without demolishing this deadly congruence of caste, patriarchy and land. Last but not least, no development model in the world, whether capitalist or socialist, has been successful without demolishing pre-existing landownership structure paving way for rapid industrialisation and generation of employment. Redistribution of land was the most effective method of the eradication of poverty, ensuring social development and justice. The multiplier effect of policy interventions and investments in agriculture and land has been highest.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author is thankful to Shilp Shikha Singh for valuable suggestions.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
