Table of Contents

LAND TENURE SYSTEM

Relevant for Sociology Paper-II : Rural & Agrarian social Structure

Land is held all over the world under different tenure situations. Holding of land depends on different reasons. Ownership or exclusive control by an individual is not the only concept under which land is held and used. If we look from Indian point of view, ownership of land is a western idea. In our country. Ownership of land, before the Permanent Land Settlement, always rested with the community. However, in western world, individual ownership of land was recognised both by the state and the community.

Land as a Factor of Production

Land is viewed as a traditional economic factor of production including labour and capital. In this broad classification, land is defined to include all natural properties but to exclude invested capital. Capital is unrealistic: same capital is so firmly blended with land that it is impossible to separate the two. The important fact to bear in mind is that no factor is productive alone, each requires some or the others in order to be productive.

Land alone is not productive. It includes a number of other inputs. In contemporary times science and technology have resulted in the vast array of new production functions, which have largely transformed the productivity and use of land. It is this general conception of land tenure system that we have included technology and improved agricultural inputs for an all-round analysis of agriculture.

Peasant Proprietors and Tenants

It is the land which constitutes the major source of livelihood for the village people. But all the peasants who live in villages do not own their individual land. According to one estimate nearly three-fifths of world people derive their livelihood from agriculture. Out of this, most do not own land on which they live and work. The reality is that many of the peasants purchase rights of cultivation and occupancy from others. In return, from hired rights in land, these people pay the landowners or their intermediaries a share of the produce, a fixed amount of the produce or personal services or some combinations of these. Those people are the tenants. It is said that throughout the world tenants and their families probably constitute as many as two-fifths of the population engaged in agriculture.

Most of the tenants aspire to ownership of their lands. Therefore, tenancy may well be appraised in terms of how well it provides tenants with opportunities to gain experience, acquire capital and make decisions in the process of acquiring landownership. On the other hand, many tenants are not likely to become owners in the foreseeable future.

Emergence of Tenants during the British Period

A tenant is one who cultivates the land on certain conditions. Most of the agriculturists in our country are tenants. The emergence of tenant goes back to the British period when in 1793 the Permanent Land Settlement was made. The jamindari system which emerged from land settlement was an intermediary system. The system created the class of tenants who suffered from operation at the hands of the jamindars. It was a historical emergence found for the first time in Indian agrarian history. In the native states, also known as princely states, the jagirdar worked as an intermediary between the tenant and the central princely rule. In these states jagirdar was the counterpart of jamindar. The status of tenant in pre-independent India was highly deplorable, A.R. Desai very aptly sketches the oppressive condition of tenants during this period:

In course of time, a series of intermediaries developed between the jamindar and the cultivating tenant, whose condition, thereby, increasingly deteriorated. The Bengal Tenancy Acts of 1859 and 1885 aimed at ameliorating the position of the tenant. However, the legislation did not accomplish much. The mass of tenants continued to live in an increasingly worsening condition.

Desai very sympathetically traces the conditions of the peasant proprietors in India. The peasant proprietors were actually the landowners. Their condition also worsened during the British period. The landowners were sub-divided into upper landowners, middle landowners and the lower strata of landowners. AlI these categories of landowners or peasant proprietors, quiet like the tenants, suffered considerably during the colonial period.

The observations made by A.R. Desai:

As a result of the operation of factors like heavy land tax, small holdings, fragmentation of plots, growing heavy indebtedness, this class had been increasingly impoverished since it came into existence. It had been in a state of permanent disintegration.

The woes of the peasant proprietors during this period were altogether new. These land proprietors suffered from their disintegration. The woes of the peasant proprietors during this period were altogether new. These land proprietors suffered from their disintegration.

However, a few of them who owned larger patches of land rose to the level of rich peasants while a large number of them were reduced to the status of poor peasants, tenants of absentee landlords or land labourers. This process of differentiation of the peasant proprietors grew at an accelerated rate since the rate of impoverishment of the peasantry increased. The colonial period witnessed, on one hand, the impoverishment of the tenants and, on the other hand, differentiation and disintegration of the peasant proprietors. As a result of this process, there emerged, in rural India, the class of absentee landlords, on one hand, and the lower peasantry and agricultural labourers, on the other.

The post-independent India, thus, found a tenancy highly settled and disintegrated.

Variations in Tenancy

It must be observed that in India the agricultural sector, constitutionally, is the subject of the state. Land taxation, thus, is determined by the state government. Because of this statutory position, there is much variation in agricultural tenancy in the country. Yet another important aspect of tenancy in India is that it is shaped by the historical and cultural forces of a particular region or part of the country. For instance, we have certain castes which are actually agricultural castes; e.g., Patidars of Gujarat, Jats of Haryana and Sikhs of Punjab. This is purely a cultural phenomenon. It also affects the size and pattern of agricultural practices.

Historically, variation in tenancy could be explained by the fact that the colonial forces in British India and feudal forces in princely states also determined the form and extent of tenancy. However, at a broader plane, it could be said that there are five variations of tenants in the country:

Cash tenants: They pay a fixed cash rent for the use and occupancy of their land.
Share-cash tenants: They pay part of their rent in cash and part in the share of crops.
Crop-share tenants: They pay a share of the crops only.
Croppers: They pay a share of the crops but usually work under the close supervision of landlord or his agent.
Other and unspecified tenants.

As a matter of fact, the sharecropper is both a tenant and also landowner of a patch of land. K.L. Sharma, who has worked on the problem of feudalism and peasant movements in Rajasthan, argues that there has been much variation in the realm of tenancy in Rajasthan itself He says that all through the country the number of tenants has been increasing. Leaving aside a some, in Kerala, the agricultural labourers have increased over the last two decades.

On a broader plane Laxmi Narayan, Tyagi and Sharma find four kinds of tenancies in different parts of the country. These types may be categorized :

crop-sharing tenants,
paying cash-rent tenants,
paying fixed product or kind tenants, and
unspecified tenants other than the above three.

A.R. Desai has studied, historically, the rise of new social classes of peasantry in India. His approach to the study of tenancy or tenants is based on Marxian perspective. He has taken into consideration the tenancy variations in India on a broader plane. Historically, as a result of the creation of jamindari and ryotwari system a new class of peasant proprietors emerged in India. While the jamindari system was a. link between the tenant and the state, the ryotwari system included the peasant proprietors who were themselves owners of the land. Desai has made three divisions of the class of peasant proprietors:

Upper class landowners having big patches of land.
Middle class landowners having landownership at the intermediate level.
Lower strata including marginal and small farmers.

The member of lower classes of peasantry increased. A large number of them were reduced to the status of agricultural labourers and paupers. What is important here is that tenancy variation is not new to rural India. It has been in operation since the period of Mughal Empire.

The issue of tenancy variation in contemporary times could be seen from the empirical studies made by Jan Breman, Andre Beteille, Denial Thorner, and others.

Jan Breman has worked in Surat district of Gujarat He has made intensive study of three talukas, namely, Bardoly, Palsana and Valod of Surat district. His focus is on the landowners, tenants and sharecroppers. He observes that the agrarian population has three categories of tenancy as under:

Marginal and small farmers (owning less than 5 acres of land)
Middle farmers (owning 5.15 acres of land and below 15 acres)
Large farmers (owning more than 15 acres of land)

The tenancy variations found in Surat district are not exclusive.

They are only factual because at empirical plane there is much variation in the access to land. Pointing to this elaborate variation Breman observes:

The limitations imposed on classification by this three-way division still retained in much of the literature, nevertheless-are rather arbitrary given the great variation in access to land, soil fertility, intensity of cropping, availability of labour power and other factors of agronomic or social-economic nature which influence farming productivity.

Breman has drawn attention to the fact that tenancy variation should not be considered on the size of landholding only. In any scheme of tenancy variation we should also take into consideration the nature of soil, its productivity, irrigation facilities and infrastructure for marketing. Given all the productivity of land, the absence of marketing also puts the landowner or tenant to a perpetual loss.

Andre Beteille has worked authoritatively on the problem of agrarian society. He dwells at length on landowners, tenants and agricultural labourers. Andre restricts his study to Sripuram village which is situated in south India (Tamilnadu state). He finds that in Sripuram the agricultural population is divided into two classes of peasants: (i) owners of land or peasant proprietors, and (ii) non-owners of land.

In the village Sripuram majority of people are non-owners of land who are engaged in agricultural work. They actually work on land owned by others. And this constitutes the basis of economic and social ties between the different classes of people in the village. His observation is that landowners and tenants constitute distinct entities only as conceptual categories, and not as concrete groups of individual.

The variations in tenancy as given by Breman, Sharma, Beteille and others could be summarised in some categories. For instance, tenancy on a broader plane has two divisions. And more or less it includes most pans of the country. These two divisions are:

(i) owners of land, and (ii) non-owners of land. The sub-divisions of owners of land consist of (i) large landowners, (ii) middle landowners, and (iii) lower landowners.

This third sub-division is further divisioned into small landowners, and (ii) marginal landowners. The second division of tenancy, i.e., non-owners of land, do not have any land in their possession. In this category too there are further sub-divisions, such as (i) share-cash tenants, (ii) crop-share tenants, (iii) cash tenants, and (iv) agricultural labourers.

Thus, the tenancy as a whole is divided into two divisions, which are further divided into several sub-divisions. It very clearly shows variations in agricultural tenancy. Tenancy had its beginning during the colonial period when the British Raj introduced Permanent Land Settlement. Tenants constitute a heterogeneous group. Interestingly enough, some of the tenants are also landowners. Actually, there are variations among the tenants.

Landlord-Tenant Relations

Social anthropologists and sociologists have dealt with the problem of relations between Landowners and landless peasants or tenants. Historically, the relations between the two assumed seriousness all over India after impendence. The problem of tenancy was taken up as an agenda for land reforms. Tenancy bas two aspects: (i) landlord-tenant relations; and (ii) landlord-agriculture labourers relations. In the case of labourers the problem of wages assumed importance. Commenting on the relations between tenants and wage labourers Andre Beteille observes:

Although, tenants and wage labourers were both landless, their interests were by no means always identical, and where tenants themselves employed wage labourers they would even become contradictory.

Actually, the relations between landowners and tenants are three- fold: (i) landowner and tenant; (it) landowner and agricultural labour; and (iii) tenant and agricultural labour. The issues relating to this relationship were raised by left-wing political parties in the fifties. The agitations of the peasant associations also centred round this issue. The land reform legislation of the fifties was directed mainly towards the problem of tenancy. If we see the peasant unrest today we would find that the issues emerging out of the relations between landowners and non-landowners have been lost in oblivion. They are no more raised. It is owing to the reason that the landless labourers arc solely dependent on the big landowners and on the other side the former always remained unorgnised. Actually, the interests of the tenants and the labourers are by no means identical.

Andre Beteille has extensively discussed landlord-tenant relations. On the strength of empirical data, observes that in India’s eastern and southern parts sharecropping is not uncommon, despite the legislation on land reforms. He estimates that in most parts of the country the class of landless labourers sometime constitutes as much as on third of village. He further observes that in larger parts of the country tee landowner continues to be known as malik or manib. These words denote ‘owner’ or ‘master, and by tradition the malik has mastery not only over the land but also over the men who work on it. It should be emphasised that land reforms and economic change notwithstanding, these traditions are a part of the living reality in many villages in India. One aspect of this difference is reflected in the huge support. Such landowners are often able to master in national elections even after they have lost their estates.

Referring to the situation of landowners and tenants in north India, Daniel Thorner informs that in western Uttar Pradesh large areas of land for long had been under peasant proprietorship. Thorner had the following observations to make after the abolition of feudal states:

At the top are the bhumidars,, below them the sirdars and still further down the asamis. At the bottom of the heap remain the mass of sharecroppers and landless labourers.

Caste Context in the Landowner-Tenant Relations

When we look at the relations between landowners and tenants in agriculture caste relations between the two classes. Empirical data available on this account and generated by K,L. Sharma, Jan Breman and Andre Beteille indicate that most of the landowners belong to the Brahmin and the Rajput castes. Beteille, on the strength of his data generated in Sripuram, says that landowners in the village are Brahmins. The Brahmin mirasdars, ritually, are prohibited to use the plough and, therefore, cultivation has to be done by the tenants and agricultural labourers who generally belong to lower castes. The cultivation of paddy everywhere in the country requires arduous work. And, therefore, both the Brahmin and non-Brahmin non-owners try to get the rough and heavy work done by others whenever they can afford to.

Beteille’s finding is that in Tamilnadu there was much leasing out of land among the Brahmins. There are reasons for this. Normally, the educated members of a Brahmin family when get settled in cities for taking up professional jobs, such as lawyer, engineer or doctor, they lease out the land to lower castes. It all indicates that, by and large, the landowners belong to higher castes and the tenants and agricultural labourers generally belong to lower castes.

The caste system is also found operating in regard to the relations with the agricultural labourers. For labourers, sharecroppers and even petty cultivators the landlord is the malik par excellence, but the pattern of difference is also extended to others, notably to government officials. To conclude, the relations of tenants, sharecroppers and agricultural labourers to the landowners it could be said that the status of non-owners of land all over agricultural India is that of subordination.

Tenancy and Agricultural Backwardness

To what extent the relations between landowners and tenants are responsible for India’s agricultural backwardness. The question has been examined by social anthropologists and sociologists. Actually, Laxmi Narayan and Tyagi pinpointed the issue when they ask as to who leases in the land and who leases out the land, This explains the situation of tenancy in India. It is found that in most of the cases tenancy arrangement discourages tenants from making investment in improving production in agriculture. The bargaining position between tenants and landlord is generally such that additional productivity flows to the landlord. And even if the tenant has some entrepreneurial zeal, he hardly has any operating capital.

Agricultural empiricists have given some data to explain the lease out land to the tenants. In Sripuram, according to Andre Beteille, some of the landowners find it difficult to be in touch with the land, they find the city life more involving and, therefore, they lease out the land to the tenants. The tenants on their part do not do anything substantial for increasing the productivity. In the village Sripuram the leasing out of land took three phases. The explanation provided by Beteille runs below:

The first phase was one in which it (the landowning class) was tied more or less firmly to the village and relations between landlords and tenants were of a fairly close and durable character. In the second phase, which commenced towards the beginning of the first century, the old landowners began to look beyond the frontiers of rural society and many of them moved out, becoming absentee landlords. A third phase seems to have set in recently, in which the old landowning families, already much depleted, have become keenly aware of their insecure position and are gradually beginning to dispose of their land.

The above three phases of leasing out land by landowners clearly show that the issue of agricultural production has fully been left to the efforts of tenants.

The study of rural sociology, in fact, is the study of agrarian social system. The social and cultural life of a village is largely determined by the relations of people to the land. It is in this broader context that we have discussed the tenancy system prevalent in our country. In doing so we have examined the status of landowners, their types and the status of tenants including their variations. On a broader plane it should be said that a larger portion of land is cultivated by tenants who are not the owners of land. The relations between landowners, tenants and labour are crucial in the process of production from the farm. The reality is that agriculture is the main source of employment and income in rural society.

Much depends on the production achieved in agriculture. Rural sociology basically studies the relations between the landowner, sharecropper, labourer and above all the market system where the farm produce is exchanged. Ironically, the land owned by the people is not in equal size for all the cultivators. The land size varies from peasant to peasant. There are peasants who own larger chunks of land, and at the same time there are peasants who are marginal only. In other words, land in not equally distributed. The unequal distribution of land creates sharp stratification in the rural society. Gunnar Myrdal very rightly observes in Asian Drama:

Inequality among individuals is largely a question of landownership. Rural income has been functionally related to landholdings, the poor are more likely to be landless than owning land.

In a rural society, land is the prime productive asset which determines the income, employment, status and authority of a person.

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