Social Change through Land Reforms

The strategy of land reforms in India could not bring the desired change in the agrarian relations. The failure was lying in the various lacunae in the provisions of land reform laws. The politics of social change manifested through successive modifications in these laws. This involved a time span during which certain provisions of the land reform laws became irrelevant. However, in the present era of liberalization and globalization, land reforms have occupied a back seat. In the backdrop of such a development in which political economy of land reforms is not the major concern of scholars and policy makers, the present work argues for the need for land reforms. India continues to be pre-dominantly an agrarian, inegalitarian and developing society and there is still a lot to be done for land reforms in most of the states in the country. With the help of qualitative data presented through cases studies of five states, this work not only identifies the mechanism of land reform laws but also underlines the successful strategies.