THE STATE AND THE ECONOMY,
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myth of a pre-colonial rural India made up of independent, self-
sufficient
and self-governing
village
republics, and to the Gandhian
ideal of the moral integrity of the vast mass of rural society. The
programme was
given
a high political profile and continued to be
well
funded, with almost half of the total expenditure on agriculture under
the Second Plan being devoted to community development and
co-ops,
but in reality it achieved little either in increasing agricultural
output or minimising social conflict. The
effective
units of social
organisation in most Indian
villages
were hierarchical in structure,
based both vertically on patron-client relationships and interlinked
markets for credit and labour, and horizontally on bonds of common
social,
ritual or economic status. As a result, group-based and interest-
based competition for resources within the
village
undermined the
integrative purpose of the CD programme, and also weakened the
impact of
village-level
service co-operatives and the new institutions of
panchayati raj (village administration)
that
the planners hoped would
be the instruments of a wholesale reorganisation of rural
life.
By the
mid 1950s the objectives for agricultural management embodied in the
First Plan were not being pursued very energetically. No legislation
enabling the promotion of Co-operative
Village
Management had yet
been passed in any state, no registration system for 'economic' farms
had been set up, and fewer
than
1500 co-operatives had been formed by
the end of the Plan period. Land reform legislation had been directed at
the primary aim of removing intermediaries between the cultivator and
the state, but many
tenants
had not yet achieved security of
tenure
or
regulated rents. In states where there had been a zamindari system in
force,
the home-farm lands of intermediaries were still let out to
tenants-at-will, and cultivators with permanent rights (tenants-in-
chief)
were also able to lease out to sub-tenants and sharecroppers. Few
of
these subordinate cultivators acquired security of tenure, and their
rents
could still be oppressive. Problems of sub-tenancy and share-
cropping existed in ryotwari areas, too, where a good deal of the land
was
also leased out by rent-receivers and superior cultivators.
The
first round of land reforms largely failed to
live
up to the
planners' expectations. One major problem was
that
of ensuring fair
treatment for
under-tenants
and sharecroppers, who found it hard to
assert themselves even where they had the backing of the law. In
several
States - Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu for example -
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