Agrarian Reform and Land Markets: A Study of Land Transactions in Two Villages of West Bengal, 1977-1995
Author(s)
Rawal, Vikas
Abstract
Land-reform legislation typically is concentrated on providing security of tenure to tenant cultivators and redistributing land to the poor. In India, land reform also helps change the social and economic status of people who belong to oppressed castes, particularly those that have traditionally been excluded from the ownership and control of agricultural land. Although provisions for land reform have been on the statute books in India since the 1950s, these laws have not been implemented in any substantial way except in two states, Kerala and West Bengal. The implementation of land reform in both these states has been the result of action by governments and mass organizations of peasants and agricultural workers. In this article, the author has attempted to analyze the effects of agrarian reform on land markets and on the pattern of transactions in land markets.
