Agrarian reform and rural development.

The papers included in this volume were presented to a Seminar on Implementation of Land Reform in Rajasthan held at The HCM State Institute of Public Administration, Jaipur from 21 to 25 June 1976. This seminar was organised to bring the administrators and scholars together for a discussion on administrative problems involved in carrying out the land reform programme.

Land reform is not an altogether new thing. Peasants have always fought for more secure rights to the land they till. But what perhaps is new is that it is the government which now are initiating action to push through the land reform measures. As an explicit development issue, land reform has certainly only now acquired a new importance. Most governments favour land reform because it is seen capable of serving both as a redistributive instrument and a vehicle for achieving increased productivity.

In the agrarian societies of the Third World the urgency of land reform is apparently very great. There has been a decline in agricultural productivity and a rather rapid increase in population growth in most countries. Consequ ently the job opportunities in rural areas bave rapidly been declining, forcing populations to move from rural to already congested urban areas. The urge ncy of land reform further arises from the fact that the "Green Revolution" has produced some unintended consequences in the countrywide particularly for the poor.

The increase in yield has resulted in abrupt rise in land values, encoura ging big farmers to hold on to their lands and buy as much land as possible from the small holders. When the poor are unable to retain the lands which now yield so much more their frustration grows. In some places tenants are also being evicted by big farmers in order that they alone benefit from the "Green Revolution". These processes are only swelling the rank of the landless labour force. Tensions which thus build up in rural areas can later have rather serious repurcussions.