ABSTRACT
The forces of custom and tradition still reigned supreme in the Indian countryside for many years after India gained freedom from the United Kingdom. The powers and prerogatives of the landholding elite within the various land systems of rural India continued to be recognized by those over whom they exercised traditional authority. Legislation for agrarian reform and land reform, even legislation designed specifically not to alter significantly the existing hierarchy of interests in land, gradually disrupted whatever equilibrium of mutual obligation and dependence that had existed among members of India's rural hierarchy. In sharp criticism of the entire program of agrarian reform since independence, the conference organizers suggested that the reform measures that had been enacted into law in the states had been designed and undertaken in isolation from other programs of rural economic development.
