Questions
- Examine the various phases in the evolution of the land policy of India since independence. 20
- Write a note on the idea of an Indian village. 10
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Model Solutions
1. Examine the various phases in the evolution of the land policy of India since independence. 20
Model Structure
Introduction
- Land is an important asset that determines social status, economic prosperity in general.
Main Body
- J. C. Kumarappa committee recommended comprehensive land reforms
- From 1950s to 1970s: Land reforms - initiated at first (elaborate these points in detail)
- Zamindari abolition (Abolition of intermediaries)
- Tenancy reforms
- Ceiling limits fixed
- Re-org and consolidation of land holdings
- Green Revolution in mid-sixties and seventies
- 1972 - 85: Bringing uncultivated land under cultivation
- Digitalization of land records
- 1980s - Mid-90s: land quality improvement; Village commons maintenance.
- Mid-90s:
- Land to landless emerge again
- Wasteland reclamation etc.
- Panchayat raj institutions to maintain land
- From 2010s:
- Govt - plan to create land banks
- For affordable housing to the poor population.
- To lease GOVT lands in urban
Conclusion
- Tommaso S Briccoli - recent re-study of Jamgod village, MP - shows Land is still a predominant asset in rural India
1. Write a note on the idea of an Indian village. 10
Model Answer
Introducion
- Reference to Indian villages is found in many Indian texts since Vedic times, but during British rule, a systematic attempt was made to create the unique image of an Indian village.
Main Body - Charles Metcalf treated the Indian Village community as an autonomous sociological isolate. He treated the village community as a little republic, a self-sufficient community.
- The idea of colonial administrators about Indian villages was of an inner world with communal ownership of land, social harmony, patriarchal in governance and surrounded by hostile other villages.
- Indian villages were described as closed, isolated systems and unchanging entities.
- The orientalists (Book view) described the Indian village as an Idyllic social reality with Varna system of caste hierarchy and complete functional integration between different occupations groups (castes).
- The stereotypical image of the Indian village as a self-sufficient community was contested by Anthropological studies in the 1950s and 1960s. The findings of these village studies based on extensive fieldwork concluded that the Indian village was never self-sufficient; rather it always maintained links with the larger society and centres of Indian civilization. Migration and movement for work and trade, village exogamy, administrative linkages, inter-regional markets, inter-village economic ties, caste networks, fairs, festivals and other activities always served as the bridge with neighbouring villages and the larger society.
- Scholars like M N Srinivas (Indian Villages), Mckim Marriott (Village India), D N Majumdar (Rural profiles), S C Dube (shamirpet) etc carried out field study. M N Srinivas advocated that Indian Villages were always a part of a wider entity and maintained social, political, economic ties at the regional level.
- S C Dube argued that social differentiation was observed in village structure and hence they are not having monolithic structure .
Conclusion
- Though some feminist like Uma Chakravarty criticized village study for not including gender angle, field view of village study reflected empirical reality in contrast to ideological category propounded by colonial administrators and orientalists.