Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer. Ever since independence, land reforms have been a major instrument of state policy to promote both equity and agricultural investment.…

Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer.
Ever since independence, land reforms have been a major instrument of state policy to promote both equity and agricultural investment. Unfortunately, progress on land reforms has been slow, reflecting the resilience of structures of power that gave rise to the problem in the first place.
The main instrument for realising more equitable distribution of land is the land ceiling laws. These laws were enacted by several states during the late 1950s and 1960s, and the early 1970s saw more stringent amendments in the laws to plug loopholes in the earlier laws. But the record of implementation has not been satisfactory. Around 3 million hectares of land has been declared surplus so far, which is hardly 2 percent of net sown area in India.
About 30 percent of this land has not yet been distributed as it is caught up in the litigations.
Besides, a number of Benami and clandestine transactions have resulted in illegal possession of significant amounts of land above ceiling limits. There are widespread reports of allotment of inferior, unproductive, barren and wasteland to landless household, many of whom have been forced to sell it off, in the absence of resources to make it productive. In many instances, lands allotted to the rural poor under the ceiling laws are not in their possession. In some cases, Pattas were issued to the beneficiaries, but possession of land shown in the Pattas was not given, or corresponding changes were not made in the records of right.
The balance of power in rural India is so heavily weighed against the landless and the poor that implementing land ceiling laws is difficult. It is clear that without massive mobilisation of the rural poor and depending on democratic governance in rural India very little can be achieved in this direction. Although half of India's population continues to depend on agriculture as its primary source of livelihood, 83 percent of farmers operate holdings of less than 2 hectares in size and the average holding size is only 1.23 hectares. This is often in fragments and unirrigated. There are also those who are entirely landless, although agriculture is their main source of livelihood. They have inadequate financial resources to purchase and often depend on leasing in small plots, on insecure terms, for short periods, sometimes only for one season. Hence, many face insecurity of tenure and the growing threat of land alienation and pressure from urbanisation, industrialisation and powerful interest.

One of the reasons of selling off the lands by the allottees is that the lands were