Agricultural Policy:
1. At the time of Independence, agriculture in India was beset with many problems.
2. In general, productivity was low.
3. The total production of food grains was not enough to feed the country,so that a large quantity of food grains had to be imported.
4. Nearly 80 percent of the population depended on agriculture for their livelihood.
5. This automatically reduced the income of each person to very low levels.
6. This is a situation described as 'disguised unemployment'.
7. That is, even if many people shifted to other occupations, total production levels would remain the same,because this surplus population was not really required to sustain the activity, and was, in effect, unemployed.
8. Given the high level of poverty among the rural population, most of them were heavily indebted to moneylenders.
9. The backwardness of agriculture could be attributed to two factors: institutional and technological. Institutional factors refer to the social and economic relations that prevailed,particularly between the land- owning classes and the cultivating classes.
10. Technological factors relate to use of better seeds,improved methods of cultivation, use of chemical fertilizers, use of machinery like tractors and harvester combines,and provision of irrigation.
11.The government decided to tackle the institutional drawbacks first and began a programme of land reforms to improve the conditions in agriculture.
12. The basic assumption was that such measures would improve the efficiency of land use or productivity, apart from empowering the peasants by creating a socially just system. 

A series of Industrial Policy statements were adopted to promote these objectives. policy statement was made in 1948. It classified industries into four categories:
(i) Strategic industries which would be state monopolies (atomic energy, railways, arms and ammunition);
(ii) 18 industries of national importance under government control (heavy machinery, heavy chemicals, defense equipment, etc..);
(iii) Industries in both the public and private sectors;
(iv) Industries in the private sector the most definitive policy statement was the industrial Policy Resolution of 1956 which classified industries into three categories;
(i) Schedule A industries were under the monopoly of the state;
(ii) Schedule B industries, the state could start new units but the private sector could also set up or expand their units;
(iii) Schedule C were the remaining industries.
1. The Industrial Development and Regulation Act of 1951 was an important instrument for controlling the private sector.
2. This Act stipulated that no new industrial units could be set up, nor the capacity of existing units expanded without a licence or permit from the government.
3. The Policy Statement of 1973 encouraged large industrial houses to start operations in rural and backward areas to reduce regional imbalances in development.
4. The Policy Statement of 1977 was framed by the short- lived Janata government which was aimed at promoting rural, village and small scale industries.
5. The Policy Statement of 1980 was announced by the congress government which also aimed at promoting balanced growth.
6. Otherwise all these statements continued the ideology of a strong public sector owned by the state and control over the private sector and especially the large business house.

Industrial policy Statement 1991:
1. Finally in 1991 the Indian government announced a shift in its industrial policy to remove controls and licences, moving to a liberalised economy permitting a larger role to the private sector.
2. The share of the public sector was to be reduced through a policy of disinvestment and closure of sick units.
3. This created a sea change in the economic outlook of the country, particularly from the point of view of the consumers.
4. It is not merely that the aspirations of the growning middle class for a better standard of living in terms of availability of goods and services have been met.
5. Even the lower income families could now buy such goods.
On the positive side:
1. Liberalisation has certainly made India a more attractive destination for foreign investment.
2. State governments are keen to advertise that they are relaxing restrictions to improve the ease of doing business in their state.
3. All this has created a general air of prosperity which is reflected in the growth statistics of the economy as a whole.
On the negative side:
1. Liberalisation and globalisation have resulted in a significant increase in income disparities between the top income groups and the lower income groups.
2. The removal of ceilings on corporate salaries has widened the disparities between the salaried class of corporate executives and wage earners.
3. The formal sector has very limited potential for additional employment and most of the new employment is generated in the informal sector, and disparities have also increased across these two sectors.

Under the Constitution of India, agriculture was a 'state subject', that is, each state had to pass laws relating to land reforms individually.
Thus, while the basic form of land reforms was common among all the states, there was no uniformity in the specific terms of land reform legislation among the states.
Abolition of Zamindari was part of the manifesto of the Indian National Congress Party even before Independence.
1) The government passed two amendments to the Constitution for abolition of zamindari system,
2) The First Amendment in 1951 and the Fourth Amendment in 1955, which removed the 'right to property' from the fundamental rights guaranteed under the Constitution and preempted the right of zamindars to question the expropriation of their land or the value of the compensation.
3) Finally, zamindari abolition was completed by 1956, and was possibly the most successful of the land reforms. About 30 lakh tenants and sharecroppers gained ownership of 62 lakh hectares of land. The total compensation actually paid to the zamindars amounted to Rs.16,420 lakhs
4) In sum, however, the reform only achieved a very small part of the original objective.
5) Many zamindars were able to evict their tenants and take over their land claiming that this land was under their 'personal cultivation'.
6) Thus, while the institution of zamindari was dismantled, many landowners continued in possession of vast tracts of land.
(b) Tenancy reform - Most large landowners in India tended to belong to the upper castes - Brahmin and non-Brahmin.
1) It was common for them to lease out the land to tenants. Usually these tenancy arrangements continued for long periods of time.
2) The rents received by the landowners generally amounted to about 50% or more of the produce from the land, which was very high.
3) Tenancy was a customary practice and agreements were rarely recorded.
4) Tenancy reform legislation was passed in the states regulating the rent at one-fourth to one third of the produce. But this could never be implemented successfully. The agricultural sector had a surplus of labour whereas land was a resource in short supply.
5) Price controls did not work in a situation when the demand exceeded the supply. All that happened was that rent rates were pushed under the table without any official record.
6) Tenancy agreements were made orally, and were recorded. The tenant thus always had to live with the uncertainty that their land could be resumed by the landlord any time.
7) When tenancy reform laws were announced many landowners claimed to have taken back their land for 'personal cultivation' and that tenants were only being employed as labour to work the land.
8) Tenancy reform was bound to be ineffectual in the absence of a comprehensive and enforceable land ceiling programme.
(c) Land Ceiling:
1) Laws were passed after the 1950s to enforce Land ceiling it.
2) Until 1972, there was a ceiling on the extent of land that a 'landholder' could own.
3)  After 1972, the unit was changed to a 'family'. This meant that the landowners could claim that each member of the family owned a part of the land which would be much less than the prescribed limit under the ceiling.
4) Deciding the extent of land under land ceiling was a complex exercise, since land was not of uniform quality.
5) Distinctions had to be made between irrigated and unirrigated dry land, single crop and double crop producing land.
6)  As all these issues were being debated in the policy forums, the landowners had plenty of time to manipulate the land records and create fictitious and fraudulent partition ot the land among relatives or trusts.
7) Further, many categories of land were not subject to ceilings. These included orchards, horticultural land, grazing land, land belonging to religious and charitable trusts, and sugarcane plantations.
8) These exemptions were also used to evade the land ceiling acts.
9) But the end results were disappointing, since the land thus surrendered was usually. unproductive land.