To realize the objectives of land reforms, the government took three main steps:
1. Abolition of Intermediaries
Under this step, the age-old exploitative land tenure systems of the Zamindari; Mahalwari; and Ryotwari were fully abolished.
2. Tenancy Reforms
Under this broader step, three inter-related reforms protecting the land-tenants were effected:
(i) Regulation of rent, so that a fixed and rational rate of rent could be paid by the share-croppers to the land owners;
(ii) Security of tenure, so that a share-cropper could feel secure about his future income and his economic security; and
(iii) Ownership rights to the tenants, so that the landless masses (i.e., the tenants, the share-croppers) could get the final rights for the land they plough— “land to the tillers”.
3. Reorganization of Agriculture
This step, again, has many inter-related and highly logical provisions in the direction of rational agrarian reforms:
(i) Re-distribution of land among the landless poor masses after promulgating timely ceiling laws—the move failed badly with few exceptions, such as West Bengal, Kerala and partially in Andhra Pradesh.
(ii) Consolidation of land could only succeed in the regions of the Green Revolution (i.e., Haryana, Punjab and western Uttar Pradesh) and remained marred with many loopholes and corruption.
(iii) Co-operative farming, which has a high socio-economic moral base, was only used by the big farmers to save their lands from the draconian ceiling laws.
The whole attempt of land reforms in India is considered a big failure by the majority of experts.
In 1951, the Bhoodan Movement or the Land Gift Movement, a voluntary land reform movement, was initiated by Acharya Vinoba Bhave at Pochampally village, which is now in Telangana and known as Bhoodan Pochampally.
In 1953, Jayaprakash Narayan withdrew from active politics to join the Bhoodan Movement
The Bhoodan Movement had two components:
• Collect land as gift from zamindars and rich farmers.
• Redistribute that gifted/donated land among the landless farmers.
In 2008, the Digital India Land Records Modernization Programme (DILRMP) was launched.
The main aims of DILRMP are to usher in a system of updated land records, automated and automatic mutation, integration between textual and spatial records, inter-connectivity between revenue and registration, to replace the present deeds registration and presumptive title system with that of conclusive titling with title guarantee.
