ABSTRACT
But the land reforms, by abolishing landlordism, also abolished the established modes of surplus extraction. Peasants, freed from obligations to pay rent and tributes, naturally increased self-consumption. Agricultural output, moreover, declined quite sharply in the immediate aftermath of the land reforms. The result was that marketed output of food declined sharply and this had disastrous consequences for urban income distribution. There was an urgent need to increase the marketed output of food, but at the same time consumption of the peasants could not be squeezed further, for this would have defeated the very purpose of the land reforms. It was in response to this situation that the state farm sector was expanded very rapidly during 1979-81, primarily by bringing fallow land into cultivation. Meanwhile, efforts were also made, with some success, to develop co-operatives in the peasant sector.
