Feeding the Dragon and the Tiger: A Study of Agrarian Reforms in India and China

India and China together feed nearly one third of the global population, and both nations have built that capacity on the back of agrarian reform programmes that could hardly be more different in philosophy. This paper undertakes a legal and historical study of agrarian reform in the two countries, tracing the evolution of land law from the colonial and red past through mid-century chaos to the present day. India’s experience is one of gradual, decentralised, rights-based reform conducted largely at the state level and anchored in constitutional guarantees of property and federalism. China’s experience is one of centralised, state-directed transformation, beginning with the forcible redistribution of landlord holdings, passing through collectivisation, and arriving eventually at a hybrid system of collective ownership coupled with individual use rights. The paper examines the constitutional and statutory architecture underlying each model, the market institutions that have grown up around them, the recurring legal and administrative failures each system has produced, and the reforms that scholars and policymakers have proposed to address them. It concludes that neither model offers a template that can simply be transplanted onto the other; each carries distinct trade-offs between efficiency, equity, and individual liberty, and each continues to evolve in response to pressures the original reformers did not fully anticipate.