Vol. 1 · pages 476–480

SMALL HOLDINGS IN INDIA AND THEIR REMEDIES 461 value of his old small and scattered field. In this way the previous subdivisions together with their attendant evils totally disappear.” 7 Regarding consolidation, Prof. H. S. Jevons says: “The principles which should guide the choice of a method of carrying out the re-organization of villages on the lines above described are the following. In the first place compulsion should be avoided as far as possible and the principle adopted that no charge should be imposed upon any area unless the owners of more than one-half of that area desire the change. Should this condition be satisfied for an area……. .it would seem expedient that legal power should be taken to compel the minority to accept the redistribution of holdings under the supervision of Government. In the second place………….the expense of the operation should be kept as low as possible………In the third place considerable elasticity should be permitted in the methods of carrying through the re-organization in the different places during the first few years, as the whole undertaking would be in an experimental stage so that different methods might be tried, and the best be ultimately selected for a permanent set of regulations. Fourthly, the possible necessity for a considerable change of the existing tenancy law in the re-organised villages must be faced………. .. .For the sake of completeness I may add as a fifth principle the obvious condition that redistribution of land must be made upon the most equitable basis possible, and that liberal compensation should be given to those, if any, who may be excluded from a former cultivating ownership.” 8 As for procedure in the compulsory consolidation of holdings both Prof. Jevons and the Baroda Committee propose the appointment of Commissioners to hear applications for consolidation and to carry it out, leaving to any objector the right to petition the Court to stay the proceedings in case he felt that an injustice was being done to him. The problem of perpetuating such a consolidated holding will next demand the care of the legislator. It is accepted without question by many that the law of inheritance that prevails among the Hindus and the Mohomedans is responsible for the sub-division of land. On the death of a Hindu or a Mahomedan his heirs are entitled without let or hindrance to equal shares in the property of the deceased. Now a consolidated holding subject to the operation of such a law of inheritance will certainly not endure for long. It will be the task of Sisyphus over again if, after consolidation, the law of inheritance were to remain unaltered. 7. R. B.C. . p. 35. 8. The Consolidation of Agicultural Holdings in the United Provinces, 1918, pp. 45-46. The author is grateful to Prof. Jevons for a copy.

462 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES But how is the existing law of inheritance to be changed ? If it is not to be the law of equal sub-division shall we have the law of primogeniture. 9 The Baroda Committee thanks that,— “It is not necessary that it should be introduced. All that it wanted is, that there should not be sub-divisions of land beyond a certain limit, which may be fixed for the sake of good agriculture. There is no objection to a holding being sub-divided, so long as by so doing each of the parts does not become less than the limit fixed for the subdivision of land. But when a holding reaches a stage to render further sub-division uneconomic, the other members of the family may not be allowed to force further sub-division of the holding. Instead of being sub-divided, it may be either cultivated in common or be given to one of the members of the family as a whole, and that member made to pay amounts equal to the value of their shares as compensation to the other members.” 10 The principle of not dividing immovable property among the heirs, when division would result in inconveniently small shares, but of giving to the highest bidder among the sharers or in case none of them is willing to have it, to outside bidders, and dividing the money realized in proportion to the recognized shares, has been accepted in the Indian Partition Act, No. 4 of 1893, section 2 of which runs thus : “Whenever in any suit for partition, in which, if instituted prior to the commencement of this Act, a decree for partition might have been made, it appears to the Court that, by reason of the nature of the property to which the suit relates, or of the number of the shareholders therein or of any other special circumstance, a division of the property cannot reasonably or conveniently be made and that a sale of the property and distribution of proceeds would be more beneficial for all the share-holders, the Court may, if it thinks fit, on the request of any such share-holder interested individually or collectively to the extent of one moiety or upwards direct a sale of the property and a distribution of the proceeds.” Granting the advisability of thus changing the law of inheritance it only requires to amend the Civil Procedure Code so as to make it obligatory on the Courts to refuse partition whenever it would reduce a field beyond the economic limit fixed in advance. 9. Besides these two systems of inheritance there is a third which allows a father liberty to do as he likes with a part of his estate provided he leaves sufficient for his heir to constitute what is called pars legitima. Under it the Germans have enacted a permissive law of Anerbenrecht designed to obviate the effects of the law of inheritance in causing unnecessary sub-division of land. In some aspects it anticipates the proposals of the Baroda Committee; in others those of the Hon. Mr. Keatings. For a description of it see Prof. N. G. Pierson’s Principles of Economics, Vol. II, pp. 286-90. 10. R.B.C., p. 26.

SMALL HOLDINGS IN INDIA AND THEIR REMEDIES 463 Another method of dealing with the problem is advocated by the Hon. Mr. G. F. Keatinge, Director of Agriculture, Bombay Presidency. In the Statement of Objects and Reasons appended to his draft bill he says : “4………………. . The object of this bill is to enable such landowners as may wish to do so to check the further sub-division of their lands and to enable them, when it is otherwise possible, to effect a permanent consolidation of their holdings; and also to enable the executive government to secure the same results in respect of unoccupied land. The legislation proposed is purely enabling, and it will be operative in the case of any holding only upon the expressed wish of any person possessing an interest in that holding. “5. The scheme embodied in this bill for securing these objects is briefly as follows. In order to be constituted an economic holding a plot of land must be entered as such in a register prescribed by rules. If the land is occupied, it will rest with some person having an interest in the land to make an application to the Collector to have the land registered as an economic holding…………. . Unless the Collector considers that there are sufficient grounds for rejecting the application, he holds a careful enquiry in which he follows a procedure similar to that prescribed in the Land Acquisition Act, 1894. If the proceedings show that all persons interested agree, the land is registered. Land vesting absolutely in Government may be registered without inquiry. The holding must in any case be registered in one name only, and the act of registration annuls all the interest of all other persons, except the registered owner, in the holding. Thereafter the owner cannot divide the plot but must so long as he owns it, keep it entire. He may sell, mortgage or otherwise dispose of it as an entire unit, but not dispose of part of it or do anything that might result in splitting up the holding. On the death of the holder, if he has not disposed of the land by will it will devolve upon a single heir. If the provisions of the bill are contravened (for instance if the holder mortgages a part of his holding and the mortgagee obtains a decree for possession), the Collector is empowered to send a certificate to the Court, and the Court will set aside its decree or order. The Collector may also evict a person in wrongful possession. When a plot has been once constituted an economic holding, the registration cannot be cancelled except with the consent of the Collector; the grounds on which cancellation will be allowed, will be laid down by rule and it is proposed that it shall be permitted chiefly in cases where economic considerations indicate that it is expedient.” Summing up this discussion of the two issues of consolidation, it must be said that the problem has not been viewed as a whole by all its advocates. The Baroda Committee alone endeavours to consolidate as well as to preserve

464 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES the consolidated holding. Prof. Jevons makes no provision to conserve the results of consolidation. Mr. Keatinge does not deal with consolidation at all. He is concerned only with the prevention of further fragmentation. But fragmentation, there will be in a holding even after it is entered as an economic holding. By his measure he will only succeed in preserving the holdings as they will be found at the time of registration, i.e., he will not allow them to be reduced in size. But they will be small and scattered all the same. Mr. Keatinge, notwithstanding his legislation, leaves the situation more or less as it exists. Real consolidation is, however, aimed at by Prof. Jevons and the Baroda Committee. The principles they advocate for the purpose are almost the same ; and so are their procedures for carrying it out. As for the preservation of consolidated holdings Mr. Keatinge as well as the Baroda Committee establish the one-man rule of succession. The Baroda Committee would adopt this rule only when division of land would result in uneconomic holdings and then too would compel the successor to buy off the claims of the other dispossessed heirs. Mr. Keatinge would let the dispossessed heirs off without compensation. A more serious criticism against these projects of consolidation consists in the fact they have failed to recognize that a consolidated holding must be an enlarged holding as well. If it is said that Indian agriculture suffers from small and scattered holdings we must not only consolidate, but also enlarge them. It must be borne in mind that consolidation may obviate the evils of scattered holdings, but it will not obviate the evils of small holdings unless the consolidated holding is an economic, i.e. an enlarged holding. The Committee as well as Mr. Keatinge have entirely lost sight of this aspect of the question. Prof. Jevons, alone of the advocates, keeps it constantly before his mind that consolidation must bring about in its train the enlargement of holdings. IV ENLARGEMENT Granted that enlargement of holdings is as important as their consolidation we will now turn to the discussion of regulating their size. It is desired by all interested in our agriculture that our holdings should be economic holdings. We would have been more thankful to the inventors of this new, precise and scientific terminology had they given us a precise and scientific definition of an economic holding. On the other hand, it is believed that a large holding is somehow an economic holding. It may be said that even Prof. Jevons has fallen a victim to this notion. For when discussing what the size of a holding should be he dogmatically states that in the consolidated village the mode

SMALL HOLDINGS IN INDIA AND THEIR REMEDIES 465 should be between 29 and 30 acres. 11 But why should the mode be at this point and not at 100 or say 200 ? We might imagine Prof. Jevons to reply that his model point is placed at that particular acreage because it would produce enough for a farmer to sustain a higher standard of living. Raising the general standard of living in India is the one string on which Prof. Jevons harps even to weariness throughout his pamphlet. 12 The error underlying this doctrine we shall consider later on. It is enough to say that he does not give any sound economic reason for his model farm. The case with the Baroda Committee is much worse, Prof. Jevons at least sticks to one definition of an ideal economic holding; but the Report of the Baroda Committee suffers from a plurality of definitions. While comenting on the size of an average holding in the state as is summarized in the above table, it should be noted that the Committee, though it desired consolidation, was perfectly satisfied with the existing size of the holding as is clear, from the following: “If the average holding of a Khatedar was a .compact field of those figures, the situation would be an ideal one and would not leave much to be desired.” 13 But absent-minded as it were, the Committee, without any searching analysis of the question it was appointed to investigate and report upon, lays down that: “An ideal economic holding would consist of 30 to 50 bighas of fair land in one block with at least one good irrigation well and a house situated in the holding.”14 If the size of existing holdings is an ideal size why should they be enlarged ? To this, the Committee gives no answer. But this is not all. The Committee does not even adhere to the quantitative limit it has already set down to its ideal economic holding. When it comes to discuss the project of re-arrangement of the scattered fields of the village on the principle of “Economic unit” it presents a third ideal of an economic holding. To realize this ideal it says : “Each of these new plots must be of such a size, as having regard to the local conditions of soil, tillage, etc., to form an Economic field, i.e., a parcel of land necessary to keep fully engaged and support one family.” 15 Thus with perfect equanimiy (1) the Baroda Committee holds, not too fast, to three notions of an ideal economic holding. No wonder then that the Report of the Committee is a model of confused reasoning though it is a valuable repository of facts bearing on the subject. 11. Opt. Cit. chart on p. 38. 12. Opt. Cit. Introduction. 13. Ibid., p. 4. 14. R.B.C., p. 31. 15. Ibid., p. 53.