QUITE unmistakably, it is the extension of the capitalist mode of production in agriculture that has been the single most dominant motive behind all land reforms and rural development measures adopted by the government in post-independence India. And to accomplish this aim, ‘betting on the strong’ has been the consistent approach of the government right from the days of the celebrated “zamindari abolition” to the ongoing application of the strategy of so-called “green revolution”. Consequently, under the cumulative impact of all these measures, the rural ‘society’ has been going through a process of growing internal differentiation.

To understand this process in the specific conditions of Bihar, let us start with the famous “zamindari abolition”. The declared aim, in this case, was to encourage the resumption of land by proprietors for the purpose of ‘personal cultivation’. The whole thing culminated in the consolidation of the position of the majority of erstwhile zamindars, moneylenders and other ex-intermediaries as well as ex-occupancy raiyats, a sizeable section of whom had already turned into de facto zamindars, while the vast majority of the working peasantry, who were non-occupancy raiyats or under-raiyats, suffered eviction on a gigantic scale or continued as tenants-at-will under still more onerous conditions. Detail informations regarding such evictions or ‘transfers’ are naturally not available. However, different organisations and scholars have tried to estimate the incidence of this well-known and widespread phenomenon. The Fourteenth State Conference of the All-India Kisan Sabha, held in Muzaffarpur in August 1954, reported that in the six years following the introduction of the Zamindari Abolition Bill, evictions occurred from no less than 1 million acres of land throughout the State, affecting 7 million people.

The following case-study of a Muzaffarpur village, made by F Tomasson Jannuzi in 1956, provides a typical illustra­tion of how ‘zamindari abolition’ promoted the landlord path of capitalist development in Indian agriculture.

        Prior to the act “abolishing” intermediary in­terests in Bihar, a single zamindar held an exclusive intermediary right over all land (six hundred acres approximately) in village A. This zamindar, though a nonresident, had exercised full authority through his agents over the people who lived in the village and tilled his lands. Apparently because he was numbered among the leading zamindars of Bihar (having gross annual income from his several estates, in this case his holdings in village A as well as elsewhere in North Bihar, in excess of Rs. 50,000), he was among those whose interests were first vested in the state in September 1952. … In December 1956, more than four years after the zamindar’s in­terests were said to have been vested in the state, the situation in village A was as follows.

         First, the ex-intermediary had lost roughly 100 acres of his pre-abolition holding when some of his “tenants” were able to retain at least temporary possession (subject to the outcome of pending litigation) of lands they had tilled. These former tenants, representing sixty-one house­holds, considered themselves to be “occupancy raiyats”, and had begun to pay rent directly to the state. Their self-classification as occupancy raiyats did not eliminate the harsh reality that few among them were in possession of viable holdings; the size of an average holding per household was 1.65 acres.

         Second, in accordance with the “saving provi­sions” of the Bihar Land Reforms Act, 1950, as amended, the ex-zamindar retained (either “rent-free” or under nominal rents not exceeding Rs. 7.00 per acre) 500 acres of land together with his “village residence” (in fact the home of his estate manager).

         Third, whereas the villagers’ total holding of 100 acres was divided into 361 separate units for cultivation, the ex-zamindar’s homestead holding of 500 acres was unitary — comprised of contiguous plots.

         Fourth, twelve households, formerly tenants of the zamindar, had been evicted from his “home­stead lands” and had become landless labourers with no option but to till the zamindar’s lands for wages.

         Fifth, neither the sixty-one landed nor the twelve landless households in the village had managed to achieve economic independence of the zamindar. It remained necessary for both groups to work for some portion of their incomes as wage labourers on the homestead lands of the ex-zamindar. Moreover, daily wages for men had been lowered from 1 rupee, 2 annas (the rate prior to zamindari abolition), to 10 annas since the enactment of the reform legislation. Where daily wages for wowan had been 12 annas in 1952, they were 8 annas in 1956, And wages for child labour had been reduced from 6 annas to 3 annas.

         Sixth, whereas, prior to 1952, some portions of the zamindar’s holding had been used for the production of rice and wheat, in 1956 the  ex-zamindar’s entire holding was cropped in tobacco and sugarcane —favoured cash crop in that period.

    ( Agrarian Crisis in India : The Case of Bihar, pp 51-2).

In majority of the cases, however, land continued to be leased out to tenants with the only difference that their status was universally degraded to that of “tenants-at-will”. Cashing in on the built-in safeguards, ex-intermediaries not only retained tight control over their holdings, but further consolidated them through large-scale eviction of tenants, including occupancy tenants, and then went on to acquire modern implements like tubewells, tractors etc. The whole process was greatly facilitated by the power of money, caste solidarity at government level, and of course, guns which were freely used.

The process of eviction was further stepped up in the wake of ceiling legislation in the early ’60s. According to G Ojha, in a single year, in 1962, the year in which the Ceiling Act was effected, over 0.7 million transfers of raiyatwari holdings were recorded all over the State.

Since early 1950s, the government also undertook many rural development projects, initiating development blocks, launching co-operative institutions, introducing village self-government and so on. Apparently, the idea was to foster decentralisation of administration and decision-making, but in real life all these steps only served to centralise more power in the hands of those who were already powerful in the countryside. In addition, the peasants also came to face the pressure of a huge army of thoroughly corrupt and bureaucratic government officials working hand in glove with the landlords and the kulaks. And finally there came the strategy of green revolution in the mid-60s. The government wanted everybody to believe that the results of this development would trickle down to the rural poor as well, but as government sources themselves had to admit later, landlords with a holding of 24 acres or more had turned out to be the major beneficiary of green revolution in Bihar while raiyats with holdings of five acres or less, raiyats with insecure rights in land, under-raiyats, sharecroppers and agricultural labourers could simply derive no benefits worth the name.

Urban ex-intermediaries in Bihar are increasingly engaging in commercial farming, though in comparison to their counterparts in Punjab, Haryana and Western UP they are still numerically insignificant. In the districts of Patna, Gaya, Bhojpur and Rohtas the rate of agricultural develop­ment has proved to be a little faster and production for the market appears somewhat widespread. In these areas junker-type capitalist landlords as well as kulak-type capitalist farmers have emerged as two powerful rural strata.

In short, the entire process of land reforms and rural development has culminated in the emergence of a new section of landlords comprising erstwhile zamindars, naibs, rent-receiving farmers, moneylenders, traders, and sections of better-off occupancy raiyats at one pole and huge expansion of bataidars—poor and lower-middle peasants—and agricul­tural labourers on the other. Sizeable sections of occupancy raiyats have consolidated themselves as middle and rich peasants, sections that once constituted the leading core of the old Kisan Sabha movements. However, in today’s Bihar a considerable number of these rich peasants are found to behave like a veritable kulak lobby in politics as well as in the structure of state-power.

In caste terms, landlords generally come from upper castes and in some pockets one also comes across landlords belonging to the upper layers of certain backward castes like the Kurmis and the Yadavas. Certain sections of Awadhia Kurmis, who have gone up on the social ladder, are a new entrant in the category of landlords. Rich peasants belong to both upper castes and upper layers of certain backward castes, while middle peasants are made up of upper castes, upper layers of backward castes and in some cases, scheduled castes and tribes as well. And as far as the poor and lower-middle peasants and agricultural labourers are concerned, they have in their ranks the great majority of the backward castes and almost the entire harijan and adivasi population.