Answer to Question 1
India is still, despite increasing industrialization and urbanization, a
predominantly rural society, with around 60 percent of the population relying on
agriculture to some extent. Before independence, much of the country was dominated
by large landlords called zamindars but in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Congress
state governments carried out politically very popular large-scale land reforms that
broke up the largest estates, and redistributed land to many middle peasants who had
previously been smallholders or rented land from the zamindars. These middle
peasants, not the very poorest farmers and landless laborers, were generally the main
beneficiaries of the land reforms.
Answer to Question 2
False
