Independent India 

• After independence, Nehru embarked on a policy of planned development that focussed on agrarian reforms as well as industrialisation. 
• The agriculture scenario was very grim with low productivity, dependence on imported food grains and intense poverty of a large section of the rural people. They felt a major reform in the agrarian structure and especially in the landholding system and the distribution of land was necessary. 

Land Reforms 

• Abolition of zamindari system which removed the layer of intermediaries who stood between the cultivators and the state. Of all the land reforms passed, this was the most effective for in most areas it succeeded in taking away the superior rights of the zamindars over the land and weakening their economic and political power. This did not happen without struggle. Although, it did not totally remove landlordism or tenancy or sharecropping system but did away with the top layer of landlords in the multi-layered structure. 
• Tenancy abolition and regulation acts. They attempted either to outlaw tenancy altogether or to regulate rents to give some security to the tenants. In most of the states these laws were not implemented effectively. In West Bengal and Kerala, radical restructuring of agrarian structure gave land rights to tenants. 
• Land Ceiling Acts. These laws imposed an upper limit on the amount of land that can be owned by a particular family. The ceiling varies from region to region, depending on the kind of land, its productivity, and other such factors. Very productive land has a low ceiling while unproductive land has high ceiling limit. According to these acts, the state is supposed to identify and take possession of surplus land (above the ceiling limit) held by each household, and redistributes it to landless families and households in other specified categories such as SCs and STs. 

But, in most states these acts proved to be toothless. There were many loopholes and other strategies through which most landowners were able to escape from having their surplus land taken over by the state. While some very large estates broke up, in most cases landowners managed to divide the land among relatives and others, including servants, in so-called ‘benami transfers’ – which allowed them to keep control over the land. In some families, some rich farmers actually divorced their wives (but continued to live with them) in order to avoid the provisions of land ceiling act, which allows a separate share for unmarried women but not wives.