Land reform and its impact on the existing land tenure system

Beginning the discussion with the first category of land laws, this chapter introduces an expansive and politically volatile concept of land reform. Being one of the first policy decisions taken by the newly independent government, the concept hovers over the structures of Indian landscape even today. At that point in time, reform of land was a political ideology that was expected to conduct a widespread social transformation of the country. It was believed that by legally forging ownership rights to the cultivator of land, the face of Indian economy could be transformed – a belief that still occupies some of the social and legal intellectual spaces. The chapter begins with an attempt to decipher the concept of land reform in its sociological and economical aspects and thereafter assess the process through which it was converted into implementable statutes. This exercise of examining the details of conversion of an ideological concept into a law unearths the manner in which core concepts are lost in translation.