SOCIAL SCIENTIST
A closer look at the provisions of the 1961 Act makes it clear that the 'success' of the Act did not necessarily imply any significant change in rural Karnataka. Each of the above provisions were so defined that they did not have to affect any of the dominant sections of the State. In the case of tenancy, land could be resumed for personal cultivation, and personal cultivation was so defined thai any one even supervising the cultivation was considered to be personally cultivating land. In addition, if a tenant defaulted in the payment of rent, did not cultivate for two years or sublet the land, the landowner could take back his land. Perhaps most interestingly, if a landowner required the land for non-agricultural purposes he was entitled to take it back. Further, certain categories of persons such as widows, minors, unmarried women, armed services personnel and small holders were exempted from the legislation,
The ceiling legislation was also so framed that even the largest landholders need not have lost any land. A former land reforms adviser to the Government of Karnataka points out that a family of 10 could hold land upto 432 acres.3 What is even more astounding is the exception made out for sugarcane production by sugar factories. This ceiling was supposed to be one-sixth of the total land required by the factory. Since the amount of land required was open to manipulation, any amount of sugarcane land could be cultivated by simply overstating that amount six times. The same land reforms adviser quotes the case of a sugar factory which, in 1971, was permitted by the ceiling legislation to retain 25,000 acres of sugarcane land!4 It was thus the grossest of understatements when it was held that "in actual operation the law revealed a number of imperfections".5
By the early 1970's the situation in India in general and in Karnataka in particular was such that the word socialism came into common usage in political circles. Land reforms, it was stated, had to be implemented. As a consequence the land legislation had to be made 'implementable'. The Act was drastically overhauled by the 1974 legislation which was termed the 1974 Amendment Act.
The 1974 Amendment Act, we shall argue, had to serve the dual purpose of being implementable while at the same time not attacking in any major way the dominant classes in rural Kama taka. This purpose was served by bringing about changes in favour of the already dominant classes. By aggressively advocating their interests, the legislation could be easily implemented. In other places where the idea of reform required these interests to be strongly attacked, changes were made in such a manner that while the Act sounded more radical, the real effects were negligible. This basic character of the 1974 Amendment Act becomes quite clear when we analyse the changes brought about in the Land Reforms Act.
The most talked about change brought about in the 1974 Amendment Act was the removal of all but one of the exemptions from the