Land reforms in India: trends and perspectives

A survey of research on land reforms in India can be prepared in several ways depending on the objective of the survey. The present survey forms part of the Research Survey Programme sponsored by the Indian Council of Social Science Research. A review of trends and perspectives and an identification of unexplored problem areas in specific fields within each discipline were the broad objectives of these research surveys. Each scholar was, however, given freedom to determine the scope of research survey in the field allotted to him. While conforming to the main objectives of the ICSSR programme, the scope of this research survey has been broadened in the following respects.

In the first place, this survey explores not only the development of scienti fic knowledge in the field of land reforms in India, it also explores how this knowledge has been ideologically conditioned. This survey has thus evolved also into an essay in sociology of knowledge and in the methodology of agrarian research.

Second, even though the subject of land reforms was treated as a branch of agricultural economics in the scheme prepared by the ICSSR, it has been treated here as one of those fundamental problems which require an interdisciplinary treatment. In his History of Economic Analysis, Schumpeter indicates that an economist unwilling to draw upon other disciplines is not getting away from the need for a multi-disciplinary orientation. He is in fact continuing to employ a primitive sociology or a primitive political science or a primitive social psychology in his economic analysis. The study of the land problem provides abundant proof of this profound observation. This survey attempts to emphasise that the gaps in land reforms research cannot be filled up by economists without the assistance of other disciplines.