With reference to the measures of Tenancy Reform in India, which of the statements is/are correct ?
1. Regulation of rent
2. Security of tenure
3. Confirment of ownership on tenants
Select the correct

Question

With reference to the measures of Tenancy Reform in India, which of the statements is/are correct ?
1. Regulation of rent
2. Security of tenure
3. Confirment of ownership on tenants
Select the correct answer using codes given below :

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — D, 1, 2 and 3. Tenancy reform is the second of the planks of post-independence land reform (the others being abolition of intermediaries, ceilings on landholdings and consolidation of holdings), and every standard account gives it exactly these three measures. (1) Regulation of rent: State tenancy laws replaced the customary rent — which in sharecropping commonly took half the crop or more — with a statutorily fixed 'fair rent', so that a defined and much smaller share of the produce went to the landowner. (2) Security of tenure: a tenant who can be turned off the land at will has no reason to invest in it and no bargaining power over rent, so the Acts restricted eviction, laid down the grounds and procedure for it, and in several States provided for the registration of tenants — West Bengal's Operation Barga, begun in 1978, which recorded the names of sharecroppers (bargadars) and protected their cultivating right, is the most-cited example. (3) Conferment of ownership on tenants: the logical end-point, 'land to the tiller' — giving the cultivating tenant the right to purchase, or vesting in him outright, the land he tilled. Kerala's land reform legislation went furthest down this road, and in Uttar Pradesh the Zamindari Abolition and Land Reforms Act, 1950 abolished the intermediaries and settled cultivators in new tenure classes (bhumidhar, sirdar, asami) with heritable rights. The three measures are a sequence, not a menu: capping rent is worthless if the tenant can be evicted, and secure tenure at a low rent still leaves the tiller without an asset — hence ownership.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Rent regulation alone was the weakest form of tenancy reform and never stood by itself. A landlord free to evict could simply remove any tenant who insisted on the statutory rent, which is why security of tenure was legislated alongside it.  (b) The most tempting wrong answer. It captures the protective half of tenancy reform but omits its declared goal — conferring ownership on the tiller. Several State laws did exactly that, giving tenants the right to purchase the holding or vesting ownership in them directly.  (c) Drops rent regulation, which is where tenancy reform historically began: fixing a statutory 'fair rent' in place of the customary share, which in sharecropping was often one-half of the produce or more.

Concept: Land is a State subject (Entry 18 of the State List), so there is no single national land-reform statute — every State legislated its own, which is why coverage, definitions and exemptions differ so much. The reform programme adopted after 1947 had four planks: abolition of intermediaries such as zamindars and jagirdars; tenancy reform; ceilings on holdings with redistribution of the surplus; and consolidation of fragmented holdings. Tenancy reform addressed the cultivator who tilled someone else's land, and worked through three instruments — a statutory fair rent, protection against arbitrary eviction, and the conferment of ownership rights on the tenant. Its record was uneven: oral and concealed tenancies left tenants off the record, landowners used 'resumption for personal cultivation' clauses to evict before the law bit, and land records were rarely updated, so a great deal of tenancy simply went underground.

State PCS 2019 Q39 — Economy PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2019 Q39 — Economy PYQ with Answer