T. Chiranjeevulu, IAS(Ret), Founder and President BCIF (BC Intellectuals Forum)
To understand Telangana's history, one must understand the history of its land. Nearly every major social, economic and political development in Telangana has been tied to land in one form or another. It runs from the Jagirdari, Inam and Sarf-i-Khas systems under the Nizam to the Telangana Armed Peasant Struggle, from the abolition of jagirs to tenancy reforms, from land ceiling laws to the distribution of government lands, and from the Koneru Ranga Rao Committee to Dharani and Bhu Bharati. Telangana's land history is not merely a history of revenue laws. It is a history of struggle for land, for the right to the produce (bhukti), for freedom from bonded labour (vetti chakiri), for property rights, liberty, self-respect and social justice.
The recent wide-ranging debate in the Telangana Legislative Assembly on Section 22-A prohibited lands has brought this old question forward once again: "Who owns land in Telangana? Who holds the legal right to it? Who actually enjoys it?" To answer this, we must go back not just to 1948 but to the time of the Nizam.
Land, Farmers and Bonded Labour in Nizam's Hyderabad, up to the Land Reforms
Telangana had one of the cruelest feudal systems in the world. When we remember Telangana's land history today, a song from the film Maa Bhoomi, written by Cherabanda Raju, comes before our eyes: "Yetiketham betti eyiputlu pandinchi, ganjilo methukeragananna..." ("Working the well-sweep, I grew a thousand putlu of grain, yet I never saw a grain in my gruel"). This is not just a song. It is a farmer's tearful history, from a time when the man who ploughed the land had no right over it. He grew a thousand putlu of grain yet had not even a grain in his gruel. It tells of a situation where the crop he grew was plundered by middlemen in the form of taxes.
1. How much land was there in Hyderabad State in 1948?
The Hyderabad princely state covered about 82,698 square miles, or 5.29 crore acres. This included Marathwada and Kalyana Karnataka. Telangana's area was 2.33 crore acres, of which about 1.66 crore acres was gross cultivable area.
- Sarf-i-Khas lands: the Nizam's personal/crown estate. About 52 lakh acres (9.9%).
- Jagirs/Paigahs/Samsthanams: land systems tied to various feudatories and service-based families. 1.68 crore acres (30.9%).
- Diwani/Khalsa: areas under direct government revenue administration. These were lands cultivated directly by farmers. 2.17 crore acres (41.03%).
- Assessed waste: 18.78 lakh acres (3.55%)
- Unassessed waste/Poramboke: 63.28 lakh acres (11.96%)
- Inams/Maktas: 8.70 lakh acres (1.64%)
Total: 5.29 crore acres (100%)
In other words, land was not under a single system of ownership. Rights over land, the right to collect revenue, the right to cultivate and village authority were held at different levels.
2. The real problem was not just ownership, but power over the land
Even when a farmer cultivated land in a village, he often faced the following:
- No absolute right over the land
- Payment of rent (kaulu)
- The risk of being evicted at any time
- Various levies collected through village officials
- Loss of land if he fell into debt
- For castes at the bottom of the social order, obligations of free labour such as vetti
Thus, in many areas the relationship became: "The one who cultivates is the farmer, but the one who decides is the landlord."
3. The Dora–Deshmukh–Jagirdar system (a cruel feudal system)
In Telangana's rural power structure, intermediary powers such as the Deshmukh, Deshpande, Jagirdar, Zamindar (a big landlord), Patel and Patwari were important. In some areas a single family could influence everything: land, revenue collection, village administration, debt, and police/official relations. There are many examples of land concentrated in the thousands, even up to a lakh of acres, in the hands of big landlords. Records say that Suryapet Zamindar Jennareddy Pratap Reddy held 2 lakh acres, and Visunoor Ramachandra Reddy about 40,000 acres.
4. What is vetti chakiri?
Vetti is work extracted by force without wages or pay. It was not merely "working one day for free." In some regions it had become a caste-based social obligation. The most backward communities, especially Dalits, had to do household work, agricultural work, cattle care, cart/transport work and various other services for the dominant families of the village. Although a law banning vetti existed as early as 1927, it was not actually implemented. That is why seeing the Telangana peasant struggle only as a "fight for land" is incomplete. Led by the Communists, it was a struggle for land + produce + abolition of vetti + dignity + freedom.
5. Why did the Telangana peasant struggle arise?
By the 1940s conditions had become severe. The problems farmers faced can be put in three words: land – livelihood – liberation. That is, a movement for the right to land, the right to the crop, freedom from forced labour, freedom from high rents and illegal levies, and freedom from the landlord's tyranny. It was a glorious revolutionary chapter even in world history.
The 1946–51 Telangana armed peasant struggle spread to about 3,000 villages. About 4,000 people were martyred. Under the Nizam's Razakars and the military ruler Gen. Vellodi, a massacre unseen and unheard of in the world continued. Even so, the people did not step back. It was finally withdrawn in 1951. In movement-affected areas, vetti and illegal levies stopped. As a result of the movement, it is said that about 10 lakh acres of land were distributed to the poor and landless. However, this is not an official report.
6. The first major change after 1948: abolition of jagirdari
One of the most important steps after Hyderabad merged into the Indian Union was the Jagir Abolition law, the Hyderabad (Abolition of Jagirs) Regulation, 1949. Under it, jagir lands came under government control from 15 August 1949. The jagirdar's old political/revenue rights over land were replaced by compensation/maintenance rights. About 995 jagirdars were removed, about ₹18 crore was fixed as compensation, and the process of granting patta rights to cultivators began.
This was a great structural change. The foundation was laid for the shift to "rights for the cultivator."
7. What happened to the Nizam's Sarf-i-Khas lands?
Sarf-i-Khas lands were the Nizam's personal estate. In 1949, through a farman (5 February 1949), the Nizam merged them into the government's Diwani system. The Nizam's personal estate became government land/revenue system. Later, the rights were converted into rights for cultivators and the land was distributed to the landless.
According to historical records, after deducting administrative costs, the Nizam received a net income of about ₹1.24 crore a year from Sarf-i-Khas lands. In its place the government fixed an annuity of ₹25 lakh per year. That is, ₹25 lakh annually in place of ₹1.24 crore of net income.
The Privy Purse paid per year was ₹50 lakh, plus ₹25 lakh in lieu of land income, plus ₹25 lakh for maintenance of palaces and similar costs, a total of ₹1 crore. These were abolished in 1971 through the 26th Constitutional Amendment (Privy Purses abolition). They were paid until 1971.
8. The Tenancy Act, 1950 (Hyderabad Tenancy Act): "the right to the one who cultivates the land"
From here began the second phase of real land reforms. The Hyderabad Tenancy and Agricultural Lands Act, 1950 introduced the key concept of the "Protected Tenant." Provisions were made to grant protected tenancy rights to a tenant who had personally cultivated a piece of land continuously for a specified period. Later, through Section 38, the protected tenant got the right to purchase the landlord's share. Under this, in areas notified by the government, a mechanism arose by which ownership of land cultivated by a protected tenant was transferred to him. In the true sense, this was the legal foundation for the change "tenant → owner."
About 1,06,965 protected tenants obtained ownership rights over 5,95,280 acres (MCRHRDI). That is, on average about 5.56 acres per protected tenant.
9. The Inam abolition law
The Hyderabad Inam Lands Abolition Act came. A process was carried out to remove the old special rights over inam lands granted for reasons of service, religion, charity and so on. This was another important step that changed rural land relations. According to later Telangana government land-governance material, pattas for inam land of over 6 lakh acres were issued to about 1.18 lakh people (MCRHRDI).
10. Land ceiling: the second revolutionary phase
Even after jagir abolition and tenancy reforms, one problem remained: "Can a big landlord keep as much land as he wants?" Land ceiling came as the answer. The Andhra Pradesh/Telangana Land Reforms (Ceiling on Agricultural Holdings) Act, 1973 imposed a maximum limit (ceiling) on large agricultural holdings and showed the legal way to hand surplus land over to the government. This was a very important structural measure and a very bold one. For doing this, the then Chief Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao had to lose his chief ministership.
3,14,981 acres of ceiling-surplus land was distributed to 1,85,202 landless poor families (MCRHRDI). That is about 1.70 acres per family on average. This was real redistribution.
11. How much land distribution actually happened?
According to the Telangana government's MCRHRDI land-governance material, under past land reforms:
- 3,14,981 acres of ceiling-surplus land was distributed to 1,85,202 landless poor families;
- Pattas were given to 1.18 lakh people for about 6 lakh acres of Inam land;
- 1,06,965 protected tenants obtained ownership of 5,95,280 acres;
- 99,155 acres of Bhoodan land was distributed to 36,236 landless poor families;
- 16,56,150 acres of government land was distributed to 12,34,552 landless poor families;
- Under the SC Land Purchase Programme, 41,065 acres were given to 31,032 SC families.
This suggests that about 33 lakh acres of land came into the hands of the poor. But the Koneru Ranga Rao Committee in 2006 concluded that land distribution had happened only on paper and not physically on the ground.
Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006: Under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, rights over forest land were recognised in the form of pattas for tribals and other eligible forest dwellers in Telangana. How much land so far? According to Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs figures as of 31 May 2025, rights over about 11.27 lakh acres of forest land have been recognised and pattas issued. Of this, about 6.70 lakh acres are under individual rights and about 4.58 lakh acres under community rights.
12. Why did land reforms not fully succeed?
Here a great contradiction appears in history. When the law said one thing, the social power in the village said another. Big landlords had economic power, connections with local administration, legal knowledge and political influence. The tenant, on the other hand, was poor, barely literate, had no documents, and had no money for legal battles. That is: the law came, but it took decades for the legal right to become actual ownership of land.
13. Land struggles in Telangana
The armed peasant struggle of 1946–51, the Sircilla–Jagtial peasant struggle of 1977, the Naxalite/Maoist movements (1973–2014), land reform laws, and the Koneru Ranga Rao Committee reports. Despite all these, land even today remains largely in the hands of dominant castes.
According to the SEEEPC Survey 2024, Reddys are 4.8% of the population but hold 13.5% of the land. Velamas are 0.4% but hold 1% of the land. Kammas are 1% of the population but hold 2% of the land. That is, these three dominant castes are 6.2% of the population but hold 16.5% of the land. This is Telangana today.
14. But today's situation is also not one of complete equality
Based on the 2021–22 Agriculture Census, Telangana has:
- 70.60 lakh agricultural holdings; of these, 68.7% are marginal holdings, 22.7% small, 7.1% semi-medium, 1.4% medium, and only 0.1% large.
- In terms of share of area: marginal holdings 32.8%, small 35.4%, semi-medium 20.5%, medium 8.7%, large 2.6% (Ecostat Telangana).
That is, land has been divided into small pieces. But another question arises: in the hands of which social groups are those small holdings? There the caste dimension comes forward again.
15. What does the latest SEEEPC Survey say?
The SEEEPC Survey-2024 conducted by the Telangana government, and the Independent Expert Working Group Report-2025 that analysed it, also examined land ownership by caste/social group. According to the report:
| Social group | Households with small landholdings |
|---|---|
| SC | 90.5% |
| BC | 85.0% |
| ST | 80.1% |
| General/OC | 69.1% |
That is, even where SC and BC families own land, it is mostly in the form of small holdings. Among General/OC groups, the proportion of families with medium/large holdings is higher.
For families with more than 20 acres, the SEEEPC report states:
- SC: 1.0%
- ST: 2.0%
- BC: 2.9%
- OC/General: 4.4%
An important historical conclusion follows: Land reforms strongly reduced big landlordism, but the socio-economic inequality created through land has not completely disappeared.
16. Why does the caste–land relationship still matter?
Land is not just property. Land means income + economic security + capacity to borrow + social respect + bargaining power in the village + political influence.
"Land has come into the hands of the Bahujans" is also not entirely true. Many families who received land got very small plots unfit for cultivation, dry (khushki) lands without irrigation, fragmented holdings, debts, and family partitions, so no great economic power was created through land.
On the other hand, among families of social groups that historically held large estates, some land continued across generations, and through urbanisation and real-estate conversion, land became wealth in another form.
17. Finally, the real lesson Telangana's land history teaches
When Nizam rule ended in 1948, political power changed. In 1949–55 the process of legally dismantling the feudal land system began. In the 1950s–70s, through tenant rights and distribution of surplus land, an attempt was made to bring land to the wider population. Finally, as a result of the Naxalite/Maoist movements, thousands of dominant-caste people left villages and migrated to towns, selling their lands cheaply or abandoning them. As a result, some land came to many big families. But in 2018 the then KCR government abolished the Pahani and, through the Dharani portal, put thousands of acres on the side of landlords. Big farmers again faced severe difficulties.
That is why Telangana's land reform history should not be seen as the simple story of "the doras' land went to the poor." The real story is:
"Feudal land relations collapsed in law; lakhs of cultivators got rights; big landlordism reduced significantly; but the inequalities between land size, land quality, water sources, capital, caste, market and political power have not been completely eliminated."
Land is not merely a property right (Hissa). It is the key foundation of self-respect (Izzat) and of rural power relations (Hukumat).
In this part, we have so far learned about the feudal land relations of the Nizam's time, and then the land reforms brought in independent India under united Andhra Pradesh and in Telangana State. In the second part, we will discuss the records that reflect ownership rights over land, in particular the Kasra Pahani, the Record of Rights Act 1971 and the changes of 1989, passbooks, title deeds, and the digitisation of land records, Dharani and Bhu Bharati.
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