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ts from land he had not been 'personally cultivating' but now wished to 'personally cultivate,' and the legislation allowed the ex-intermediaries to select the land they wanted to retain. Only West Bengal and Jammu & Kashmir simultaneously adopted land ceiling limits to restrict the total amount of land ex-intermediaries could own. The legislation protected the interests of ex-intermediaries and did little for their former tenants. Most significant, the laws purposefully did not confer rights upon tenants-at-will and sharecroppers. The combination of these and other shortcomings in the substance of the laws opened the door for ex-intermediaries to gain ownership over much or even all of the land for which they had an intermediary interest.10 M.L. Dantwala, one of the foremost authorities on India's land reforms, estimates that more evictions occurred in the first ten years after Independence as a result of the laws to abolish intermediaries than occurred in the previous one hundred years.11

The lengthy processes of adopting and implementing the laws, coupled with administrative indifference and judicial delays, frequently allowed zamindars to use other illegal and extra-legal methods to evade the law including: (1) fictitious partition of properties; (2) influence of the village officials for manipulative changes in land records; and (3) registration of tenants as farm servants or wage laborers.12

The states generally compensated the ex-intermediaries more than adequately for the rights they did lose, at a substantial burden to the state exchequer. According to the National Planning Commission Report, the compensation paid to the lowest slab of ex-intermediaries reached as high as 15 to 30 times of their annual net income.13 Frustratingly, most did not repay the favor: the ex-intermediaries were generally disinclined to invest their compensation in industry or other worthwhile economic activities.14

Finally, while state laws often granted tenants the right to purchase lands from willing landlords at set rates, these provisions had serious shortcomings that precluded any significant change in landownership patterns. Prices fixed for land were high, particularly given the limited nature of the landlord's rights, and installment payments spaced within too limited a period of time.15 The end result: an opportunity for tenants to become owners slipped by.
In sum, the legislation abolishing intermediary rights gets mixed reviews. Most informed observers praise the beneficial impacts; the legislation reduced (and in cases entirely extinguished) the feudal nature of agrarian relationships in many parts of India. Observers also note that despite the deficiencies of the legislation, the states implemented this phase of India's land reforms more successfully than the land ceiling and tenancy reforms that were to follow. However, flawed legal provisions and less-than-effective implementation resulted in obvious weaknesses that led to large-scale evictions and missed opportunities to protect and empower other tenants. This phase of India's land reforms would likely have better realized its objectives if the state governments had taken simultaneous steps to limit the size of home-farms and extend protection to the non-superior tenants, especially those on the home-farms.

The assessments of three international land reform experts who studied the impact of th本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。