The essentials
In rural India, land is the most important resource, and its ownership is closely tied to caste. Traditionally, landowners were mostly from upper or dominant castes, while many Dalits and Adivasis worked as landless labourers. The agrarian structure thus combined caste and class inequality.
After independence the state attempted land reforms. The abolition of the zamindari system removed intermediaries between the state and cultivators and was the most effective reform. Tenancy reforms aimed to protect tenants or give them ownership, but in many places landlords evicted tenants or declared themselves cultivators. Land ceiling laws set an upper limit on land a family could hold, with surplus to go to the landless, but landowners often avoided them through benami transfers (in the names of relatives or servants). As a result, land reforms only partly reduced inequality, with notable exceptions such as Kerala and West Bengal.
The Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s introduced high-yielding variety seeds, chemical fertilisers, pesticides and assured irrigation, first in areas such as Punjab, Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh, coastal Andhra Pradesh and parts of Tamil Nadu. It greatly increased wheat and rice output, but its benefits went first to medium and large farmers who could afford inputs, widening inequalities. Farming became commercialised and market-oriented, and traditional payments in kind declined. Labourers were increasingly paid in cash, and many became migrants moving between regions; Jan Breman called them "footloose labour".
Key points
- Agrarian structure links caste with control over land.
- Land reform measures: zamindari abolition, tenancy reform, land ceilings.
- Green Revolution: higher productivity but uneven benefits and ecological costs.
- Later problems include debt, falling water tables and agrarian distress.
Common mistakes
Do not say the Green Revolution reduced regional inequality; it increased it initially.