LAND REFORMS 63 1 These facts were disclosed by the Central Land Refers Committee at its meeting on 24 October 1977. 2 Quoted by the National Commission on Agriculture (1976), pp 27-28. 3 Ibid, p 40. i Ibid, p 75. The Task Force Report, p 9. Indira Gandhi's statement was reported in The Hindu, Madras, 9 April 1971. 6 The National Commission an Agriculture (1976), p 8. 7 Report of the Committee on Land Reforms (1978), p 4, 8 There are several instances of land grabbing by wealthy landlords, politicians and bureaucrats. They are too numer ius to be enumerated here. To give only a few instances; In Andhra Pradesh a former Chief Minister who now holds an important portfolio in the Union Cabinet owns 1140 acres in Adilabad and other places, and another prominent politician owns 1120 acres in East Godavari. In the Nainital area, in Uttar Pradesh, the Prayag Farm, owned by a businessman, extends over 3000 acres, a retired army General owns 1500 acres, a retired Lieutenant Governor has a farm extending over 1000 acres, a high police officer and an Indian Administrative Service official own 500 acres each. Besides there are big dairy and livestock breeding farms. 9 See G Parthasarathy and B t* Rao, Implementation of Land Reforms in Andhra, Calcutta, Scientific Book Agency, 1969, pp 190-194. 19 The most popular explanation of inaction in the matter of redistribution of land is the lack of political will. This is the heading of a section of the Repoft of the Task Force on Agricultural Relations (1673), p 7. Wolif Ladejinsky advanced this diagnosis at least as early as 1965. See his appendix to David Mapgood (cd), Policies for Promoting Agricultural Development: Report of a Conference, Cambridge (Massachuset-tes), 1965. Also see H C Hart and RJ Herring, "Political Conditions of Land Reform: Kerala and Maharastra", in R E Frykenberg <,ed), Land Tenure and Peasan1 in South India New Delhi, Oriet Longman, 1977, pp 283-285. 11 Ibid, pp 275-282, 12 Report of the Committee on Credit (1963), p 78. See also Report of the Committee on the Working of Large—sized and Credit Cooperatives (1959). 1J D Thorner, Agricultural Cooperatives in India, Bombay, 1963, p 44. H Ibid, p 76, 15 This has produced a curious result in Uttar Pradesh. Herring points out: "The net effect of the U. P. land reforms was to simplify the multiplicity of pre-independence tenures but to retain the crucial distinctions; these distinctions are then translated into the credit hierarchy: bhumidars have superior rights in land and can use these rights to gain superior access to credit; sirdars have fewer rights and can be evicted for a number of reasons, but have the rights to mortgage land, and thus inferior access to credit. Various unorganized sub-tenants and sharecroppers fall at the bottom of th^ credit and land tenure hierarchies while landless labourers may be considered virtually outside these systems^, RJ Herring, "Land Tenure and Credit-Capital Tenure in Contemporary India", in Frykenbeg {ed}, op cii, p 136. H Report of the Committee on Cooperative Credit {I960), p 85. 17 N SJodIia, "Land-based Credit Policies and Investment Prospects for Small Farmery, Economic and Political Weekly, 25 September 1971. 18 Manual for Cooperative Societies in Madhya Pradesh, Land Mortage Bank, Indore, 1963, Vol3, p 137. 19 K S Gupta, The Gujarat Cooperative Societies'Act, 1961, with Rules, Poona, 1963. 20 Report of the Committee on Taccaui Loans and Cooperative Credit, Delhi, 1962, p 4. 21 From statistical point of view it is possible to adjust asset groups, keeping holding sizes as they are in table so as to make the two distributions conform to each other. What is asserted here is household mapping, that is, households satisfying two