was common among all the states, there was no uniformity in the specific terms of land reform legislation among the states. (a) Zamindari Abolition Abolition of Zamindari was part of the manifesto of the Indian National Congress party even before Independence. What was Zamindari and who were the zamindars? Zamindar referred to the class of landowners who had been designated during British rule as the intermediaries who paid the land revenue to the government under a Permanent Settlement.
They collected rent from peasants cultivating their land and were obliged to remit a fixed amount to the government as land taxes. There was no legal limit to these demands, and zamindars generally extorted high rents from the cultivators leaving them impoverished. In public opinion, these zamindars were considered to be a decadent, extravagant and unproductive class who were living on unearned income. Abolishing their privileges and restoring land to the cultivators was therefore a prime objective of the government.
Three systems of revenue collection had been introduced by the British. In Bengal and most of north India, the Permanent Settlement placed the responsibility of paying land revenue on the rentier class of zamindars. In south India, the cultivators paid the land revenue demand directly to the government under the system known as ‘ryotwari’ (‘ryot’ means cultivator). The third system, found in very small pockets of the country, was ‘mahalwari’ where the village was collectively responsible for paying the land revenue.
Most provinces in India had enacted laws abolishing the zamindari system even before the Constitution was framed. By , Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Madras, Envisioning a New Socio-Economic Order When tenancy reform laws were announced many landowners claimed to have taken back their land for ‘personal cultivation’ and that tenants were only being employed as labour to work the land. Tenancy reform was bound to be ineffectual in the absence of a comprehensive and enforceable land ceiling programme. Land reform measures initiated in Kerala and West Bengal met with reasonable success.
While abolition of landlordism was remarkably