In News:

• • The people’s movement Ekta Parishad cut short its march of 25,000 landless and tribal people from Gwalior to Delhi last Saturday after the Centre promised to reconstitute the National Taskforce on Land Reforms. The march had been launched on October 2.

About- time line of EKTA Parishad:

• Ekta Parishad’s 2007 padayatra, which resulted in the setting up of the National Land Reforms Council, chaired by the Prime Minister. But the Council has not even met once.
• Six years ago, in October 2012, the movement had mobilized more than 60,000 landless people from across the country for a similar padayatra from Gwalior to Delhi.
• They disbanded at Agra after then Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh promised homestead land of ten cents for all landless rural poor households and a draft National Land Reform Policy, as part of a ten-point Agra agreement.
• To enforce the agreement, the Centre set up a 15-member task force on land reforms
• The government set up a task force headed by the rural development minister Jairam Ramesh and Tribal Affairs minister V Kishore Chandra Deo.
• The constitution of the 15-member task force on land reforms was one of the decisions of the Agra agreement.

Land reforms Policy,2013.

• At last the land reforms policy of government of India was brought out

Five goals:

• Distribute land to all rural landless poor
• Restore land unjustly taken from vulnerable communities such as the Dalit’s (untouchables) and Tribal
• Protect the land of the Dalit’s and Tribal including the Commons that they depend on going forward
• Liberalize leasing laws
• Improve land rights of women

Reason for land Reforms:

• The main characteristics of the agrarian structure which independent India inherited were:
• Absentee land ownership;
• Exploitation of tenants through high rents and insecurity of tenure;
• Unequal distribution of land;
• Tiny and fragmented holdings; and
• Lack of adequate institutional finance to agriculture.