ABSTRACT
At the time of Independence, in the middle of the twentieth century,India could firmly be classified as a peasant society.The rural-based mode of existence had remained dominant from generation to generation, and the large majority of the population continued to live in the countryside and work in agriculture. A series of village monographs, most of which were published between the 1950s and 1970s as the outcome of anthropological research, showed that the habitat of peasants included a wide variety of non-agrarian households and that, moreover, the peasantry was highly differentiated. A major point of departure in the populist course steered by the nationalist leadership was the restoration of a social order which had been eroded under colonial rule. The owner-cultivator, reported to have steadily lost ground in the transition to a market economy, was to be shored up as the backbone of agricultural production. Solving the agrarian question stood high on the political agenda of the Congress movement, which came to power at both central and state level. In preparation for the takeover of government a national planning committee (NPC) was set up under the chairmanship of Jawaharlal Nehru, with the task to frame the
main outlines of economic policy after decolonization.Radhakamal Mukerjee drafted a paper on the land issue which was first discussed in his working group on agriculture and then endorsed by experts and politicians in a plenary meeting of the NPC at the end of June 1940. Landlordism was to be abolished and ownership rights transferred to the actual tillers of the soil. The family farm would remain the main unit of cultivation and its size should be neither larger nor smaller than an economic holding. It should provide adequate employment and income for the family without making use, at least not permanently, of outside labour.
