|
Featured Papers from Direct Essays
|
|
|
|
|
|
This is a preview of a paper to view the full text you need to signup and login.
|
Land Reform
|
|
|
‘Land reform is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for economic development.’ Discuss with reference to land both privately-owned and communally-owned in India and the USA. ... Land reform is one such redistribution policy, resulting in the transformation of tenant cultivators into smallholders who will then have an incentive to raise production and improve their incomes. There is ample empirical evidence that land redistribution not only increases rural employment and raises rural incomes, but also leads to agricultural production and more efficient resource utilisation. Nonetheless, land reform may be a weak instrument of income redistribution if other institutional and price distortions in the economic system prevent small farm-holders from securing access to much needed critical inputs such as credit, fertilizers and seeds. Furthermore, many land reform efforts have failed because LDC governments bowed to political pressure from powerful landowning groups and failed to implement the intended reforms. In this essay, we will seek to discuss the characteristics and implications of land reform policies in the context of the Indian and American economies. ... During the first fifteen years after independence, institutional reform of agriculture, styled as the integrated rural development approach, constituted the mainstay of India’s agricultural policies. This included encouragement of cooperative farming, community development programs and land reforms.
Besely and Burgess classified these land reforms into four main categories: the first relates to tenancy reform, including attempts to regulate tenancy contracts both via registration and stipulation of contractual terms, such as shares in share tenancy contracts alongside attempts to abolish tenancy and transfer ownership to tenants. ... These allowed a larger share of the surplus from the land to be extracted from the tenant. Third, there are the endeavours to implement ceilings on landholdings with a view to redistributing surplus land to the landless. ...
Available evidence shows that the distribution of land reform in India is highly skewed. ...
It could, however, be argued that a skewed distribution of land ownership alone does not justify a policy of land redistribution. ... But this line of reasoning ignores a characteristic feature of land as an asset, which enables large landowners to reap rewards in excess of their contribution to the production process: that is land, in essence, is an asset in fixed supply. Growth of population and money incomes exerts an upward demand pressure on a fixed supply of land, pushing up rents or the price of land. In this situation, large landholders have an incentive to lease their land rather than cultivate it themselves. ... Nonetheless, it can be argued that the price of land can be regulated through legislation: but such attempts at price controls can easily be thwarted because of the type of tenurial arrangement prevalent in Indian agriculture. ... Assuming, therefore, that tenants are risk averse it can be seen that tenants should prefer a sharecropping contract to that of a fixed-rent contract as such a contract minimises the possible spread of returns from the expected return of cultivating a plot of land. ... The above analysis has therefore shown that as a result of the concept of risk-aversion landlords offer contracts which are of sub-optimal efficiency There is much evidence to suggest, therefore, that government land reform policies should be implemented to bring about a more egalitarian distribution of land in Less Developing Countries. ... It is also reported that frequently the landlords style themselves as cultivators for purposes of land records and enter into a servant’s deed with the cultivators, although the servants in effect contribute both labour and capital. ... Proceeding emancipation, of the two-thirds of the land that was tenanted by blacks, two-thirds was sharecropped. ... Since the ex-slaves had few marketable resources aside from labour, and with the landowner receiving a fixed share of the total crop, the more intensively the land is worked.
If the price of land cannot be effectively controlled, the alternative is to ration the asset among the rival claimants to it. A policy of rationing would obviously involve fixing the maximum amount of land that can be owned by the large landowners and households, and redistributing the surplus land above the maximum amongst other claimants to it. Principle amongst such claimants would be the tenants who are at present cultivating the land, for it is they who have contributed their labour and capital to the production process, and paid disproportionately high rents. Such a policy of rationing and redistribution of land on the grounds of equity, however, should pay heed to considerations of productive efficiency. The issue here is the level at which the ceilings may render farms uneconomic in size and impair productive efficiency, and too high a ceiling may not provide enough surplus land for redistribution. The relationship between size of farms and productive efficiency in the context of land reform policies in India has been a much discussed issue.
|
|
|
To link to this page, copy the following code to your site:
|
|
Paper Information
|
|
|
Title: Land Reform
Words: 4008
Rating: None
Pages: 16
submitted by: nikkipopat
If you think this paper shouldn't be here then
|
|
|
|
|
Signup & Login
|
|
|
If you don't currently have a login then Signup here
|
|
|
|
|
Pre-Written Papers
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Custom Papers
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
