Objectives and Goals of Bhoodan and Gramdan
- The Gramdan attempted to persuade landowners and renters in each village to abandon their rights to their land, with all properties becoming the property of a local association for equal redistribution and cooperative cultivation. Gramdan is declared when at least 75% of its population with 51% of the land show their support in writing for Gramdan. The first hamlet to be included in Gramdan was Magroth in Haripur, Uttar Pradesh.
- It had widespread political backing. Several state governments passed laws against Gramdan and Bhoodan. The movement reached its pinnacle in 1969. Gramdan and Bhoodan fell out of favour after 1969 as a result of the transition from a fully voluntary movement to a government-sponsored programme. After Vinoba Bhave dropped out of the campaign in 1967, it lost popular support. Landlords afterwards typically gave property that was in dispute or unfit for cultivation. Instead of integrating with existing institutional structures, the entire campaign was considered separate from the larger development effort. This departure from the mainstream plan has a substantial impact on the policy’s capacity to continue.
What do you understand by “Bhoodan” and “Gramdan”?
Vinoba Bhave’s Bhoodan and Gramdan campaigns attempted a “non-violent revolution” in India’s land reform programme. These integrated groups aimed to enact land reforms by encouraging the landed classes to voluntarily give up a portion of their land to the landless. Acharya Vinoba Bhave, an Indian religious icon, founded the Bhoodan movement. While studying Sanskrit in Varanasi, he became a fan of Mohandas K. Gandhi. Bhave broke British Wartime regulations in 1940, at Gandhiji’s request, and spent nearly five years in prison.
Following Gandhi’s death, Bhave was widely regarded as his heir. In 1951, he founded the Bhoodan Movement, or land-gift activism, since he was more interested in voluntary land reform than politics. He travelled hundreds of kilometres in order to collect land donations for redistribution to the landless. By 1969, it had gathered over 4 million acres (1.6 million hectares) of land for distribution.