4 SOCIAL SCIENTIST party supported the demands of the Kisan Sabha and got an absolute majority in the Assembly. Hopes of kisans were raised with the assumption of power by the party. The BKPS brought out an election manifesto besides the Congress manifesto. It recognised the Congress party as the main spokesman of the masses. The 'Congress is the only political organization that can speak in the name of the Indian masses*.1 They pleaded with the Congress party to keep agrarian reform as the core of the Programme*. They further emphasised that *if Congress wishes to serve at the same time the interests of other classes, it may do so, but it may never do this at the cost of the interests of the starving millions of the pesantry'^The BKPS wanted a moderate agrarian programme to be implemented by the Congress Government. 'Pasants must get all that is possible within the framework of the present economic and political regime and on the other hand they must prepare for the removal of the basic obstacles in their path and for the realization of their fullest well-being*.3 The BPKS recognised that the balance of forces was not in favour of the kisans. Their understanding of the agrarian situation was this: 'the misery of the Indian peasantry is due not so much to seasonal or local or petty causes but fundamentally to the nature of land tenure and revenue and credit system and the merciless exploitation of imperialism'.4 Tenancy reform was kept as the mainstay of the minimum agrarian programmes, which is as follows: (1) Conferment on tenants of fixity of tenure (right to free transfer of holdings and unrestricted use of their land and its products. Abolition of salemi). (2) Abolition of all systems of rent in kind. (3) Exemption of all uneconomic holdings from rent and taxes. (4) Immunity from arrest, imprisonment, as well as attachment or sale of all holdings, homestead, dairy or other cattle, homestead necessaries, stables, in execution of civil decrees and rent demands. (5) No certificate powers to landlords. (6) Stiffening of provisions of the Tenancy Act regarding rent receipts and of the Private Irrigation Act to prevent landlords, as also of the sections concerning illegal executions, begari etc. (7) Cancellation of arrears and enhancement of rents and canal rates generally at a maximum of 50 per cent and stopping of further enhancement of rent and canal rates. (8) Enactment of legislation cancelling all such previous debts as the peasants were unable to pay without hardship, fixing rate of interest. (9) Provision by legislation of free common pastures in any village and for free utilisation by peasants of forest products such as