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India: Land reforms and human development

📌 *Land reforms and human development*

Excerpt from article https://www.fortuneindia.com/budget-2023/budget-2023-what-gives-china-immunity-from-extreme-poverty-but-not-india/110924

To start from the beginning, the massive transformation of China since 1980, it says, could be possible as it “inherited” equitable distribution of land among its rural peasantry – beginning in 1949 (the year of the communist revolution) when “more than 300 million landless peasants gained access to land”; then in 1953 their land was transferred to “the commune” and “with the 1978 reform, the land was again distributed to each household equally”. Commenting on this, agricultural scientists Shenggen Fan and Ashok Gulati wrote in their 2008 paper “The Dragon and the Elephant: Learning from Agricultural and Rural Reforms in China and India”, that land reform ensured that in China “landlessness is virtually absent”.

*In India, the opposite happened*. It tried land reforms in the 1950s and 1960s, but it failed as most states, except Jammu and Kashmir, West Bengal and Kerala, *“did not implement (it) in the true spirit”.* Land is a state subject. _Now land reform is absolutely a “no-go” area, neither in politics nor in economics. So, it shouldn’t come as a shock that 55% of India’s total agricultural workforce is landless (2011 Census, the next decadal Census is to begin only in 2024) and 86% of farmers are small and marginal with less than two hectare (5 acre) of landholdings (Agriculture Census of 2015-16). Nor when told that 45% of rural households (of 167.9 million, as per the 2011 Census) worked as menial labour with less than statutory minimum wages under the MGNREGS in FY21, 43.2% in FY22 and in FY23 (up to December 18, 2022), 32.2% have already done so._

*China also began with another advantage: a “relatively high level of human capital”*. It was better in education, health and relatively (lower) fertility rate than other transitioning and developing countries like India at the time. Even today, it is far ahead of India and many others. *The UN’s HDI report of 2022 shows China improved its rank from 82 in 2020 to 79 in 2021, while India’s slipped from 130 to 132.*


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https://www.fortuneindia.com/budget-2023/budget-2023-what-gives-china-immunity-from-extreme-poverty-but-not-india/110924


Sure, India too has lifted millions out of poverty in the past few decades. But there is no denying that Indians remain very vulnerable to a crisis and the economic fundamentals are not as strong as it is often claimed. And its economic policies are highly questionable. *Trying to answer why inequality stopped growing in China in the mid-2000s but continued in India, Chancel and Piketty said in the book quoted earlier: “Differences in national policies, rather than mechanical forces are likely to account…”*

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