LAND MARKET AND THE RURAL POOR - nirdpr.org.in

SR SANKARAN CHAIRResearch on Rural Labour Matters Through the Prism Equity Matters

S. R. Sankaran Chair (Rural Labour)

National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj(Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India)

Rajendranagar, Hyderabad - 500 030www.nird.org.in

SRSC Seminar Proceedings

LAND MARKET AND THE RURAL POOR

PROCEEDINGS AND POLICY BRIEF

● The vision of NIRD&PR is to focus on the policies and programmes that benefit the rural poor,

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OBJECTIVES

PROCEEDINGS AND POLICY BRIEF

National Seminar

on


January 18-19, 2018

S. R. Sankaran Chair (Rural Labour)NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF RURAL DEVELOPMENT AND PANCHAYATI RAJ

(Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India)RAJENDRANAGAR, HYDERABAD - 500 030.

www.nird.gov.in

SRSC Seminar Proceedings

May, 2018

© National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj

Published by S. R. Sankaran Chair (Rural Labour)NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF RURAL DEVELOPMENT AND PANCHAYATI RAJMinistry of Rural Development, Government of IndiaRajendranagar, Hyderabad - 500 030. IndiaTelephone : 040 - 24008516www.nird.org.in

Printed at : VAISHNAVI LASER GRAPHICS, Ph. 040 - 27552178

Foreword

Ownership and control of land by the rural poor is essential not only for enhancinglivelihood, food security and social status, but also for improving access to creditmarkets and security in the event of life contingencies. In India, a large segmentof rural households, including the marginalised groups, has little access to land.Hence, the pertinent issue is: how to enable land governance so as to provideimproved access to land rights to such groups.

The National Institute of Rural Development & Panchayati Raj (NIRD&PR), underthe auspices of S.R. Sankaran Chair (Rural Labour), organised a two-day nationalseminar on “Land Market and The Rural Poor” during January 18-19, 2018 tounderstand the structure and dynamics of land market with a view to improvingaccess to land for the rural poor.

The seminar brought together policymakers, social scientists and members ofcivil society organisations to discuss the functioning of land market, landgovernance and to find a way forward for improving access to land rights for theland-poor households. I thank and richly compliment my colleagues at NIRD&PR,both faculty and staff, for the success of the seminar.

I have no doubt that the deliberations of the seminar offer wide rangingrecommendations in a number of areas to strengthen the governance of land andother programmes relating to land resource in rural India.

This publication is placed in public domain for wider dissemination and discussion.I am sure it will prove to be a valuable document in guiding different stakeholdersworking on land-related issues in rural areas.

Dr. W.R. Reddy, IASDirector General,

NIRD&PR

Acknowledgements

Ownership and control of land by rural households is crucial for reducing povertyand ensuring food security. In tribal areas, land is a critical source of livelihoodand a part of the identity and culture of Adivasi communities. Provision of assuredland rights to households would bring social benefits by facilitating proper useof land, incentive for hard work and access to credit for investment. However,despite a number of measures undertaken by the States over the years,landlessness is very high and more than half of the rural households in India relyon their labour as an important source of livelihood. In such a situation, it willbe a daunting task to improve access to land for the land-poor households.

In order to gain a holistic understanding of the functioning of land market inrelation to rural poor, the S.R. Sankaran Chair, NIRD&PR, Hyderabad, organised atwo-day national seminar during January 18-19, 2018. The main objectives of theseminar were to assess the progress, identify the bottlenecks and explore ways ofimproving access to land resources for the rural poor in order to empower them todeal with different stakeholders/institutions and improve their well-being.

We are grateful to Professor R. Radhakrishna, Chairman, S.R. Sankaran Chair,Advisory Committee, Professor Y.K. Alagh, Chancellor of Central University ofGujarat, and Professor T. Haque, Chairman, Land Policy, NITI Aayog for acceptingour invitation and delivering the inaugural lecture, keynote address and valedictorylecture respectively.

The seminar was graced by a number of eminent scholars, civil society personneland policymakers. There were six technical sessions. We thank Professors AlakhNarain Sharma, D.N. Reddy, Sucha Singh Gill, Deepak K. Mishra, Judith Heyer,M. Thankaraj and G. Nancharaiah for chairing various sessions of the seminar.More than 30 delegates, including distinguished scholars, Professors Ritu Dewan,Vikas Rawal, G. Omkarnath, S.S. Sangwan, Geethakutty, Rajkishore Meher andShri C.R. Bijoy, and professionals working on rural land issues participated in thedeliberations of the seminar. We thank all of them for their valuable contribution.We specifically thank Shri C.R. Bijoy and Professor S.S. Sangwan for improvisingthe earlier draft of the document.

We have received generous support and encouragement from NIRD&PRauthorities. We are grateful to Dr. W.R. Reddy, IAS, Director General, for his keeninterest in the activities of S.R. Sankaran Chair and for this seminar. We arethankful to Professor R. Radhakrishna and other Advisory Committee membersfor their continuous guidance and support for the activities of the Chair.

We would sincerely like to acknowledge the contributions of Dr. Ch Radhika Rani,members of the faculty and staff of Centre for Agrarian Studies, other Centresand technical staff of NIRD&PR, who helped us conduct the seminar smoothly.We thank Shri A. D. Manikandan and Mrs. B. Supraja for their contribution to theseminar and Ms. Puja Mehta for editing a part of the document.

We hope that this booklet will be useful to researchers, policymakers, civil societyorganisations and all those interested in improving access to land for the ruralpoor.

(Kailash Sarap)Professor, S.R. Sankaran Chair

CONTENTS

S.No. Title Page No.

I. Background 01-04

II. Inaugural Session 05-09

III. Access to Land and Land Rights 10-16

IV. Gender and Land Rights 16-21

V. Land Market and Regional Scenario 21-28

VI. Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation in Tribal Areas 28-34

VII. Land Rights and the Rural Poor 34-39

VIII. Digitalisation of Land Records in India 39-42

IX. Valedictory Session 42-45

X. Policy Brief 46-50

List of Key Participants 51

Programme Schedule 54

S.R. Sankaran Chair, NIRD&PR

Proceedings of the National Seminar on Land Market and The Rural Poor 1

I. Background

Access to land is crucial to eradicaterural poverty and food insecurity.Inadequate rights of access to land andinsecure tenure of those rights oftenresult in entrenched poverty and aresignificant impediments to ruraldevelopment and the alleviation of foodinsecurity. Secure access to land oftenprovides a valuable safety net as asource of shelter, food and income intimes of hardship, and a family’s landcan be the last available resort in theinstance of disaster (FAO, 2007). Landis an important asset for the survival ofsocially vulnerable groups such aspastoralists, farmers and othervulnerable groups, food insecure andmarginalised groups. Many depend onland for their overall well-being - foraccess to food, sustaining theirlivelihoods and their cultural and socialidentity.

Secure land rights provide the ownersthe incentive for hard work. It helps theowners internalise the costs of improvementof land and protect the land fromencroachment by outsiders. It also


facilitates access to credit from lenders withland as collateral in credit transactions. Allthese, in turn, raise the productivity of landand efficiency in land use.

The landless and near landlessresource-poor households are compelledto enter into exchange relation withresource-rich parties which are mostlyunequal and unfavourable to them. Thisunequal and dependency relations inexchange arise due to the insecurity oftheir access to land. In such a situation,the stronger party would have somecontrol over the weaker party’slivelihoods. In view of this, land andtenurial reforms could work as a firststep in breaking the hegemony of thestronger party. Even seemingly smallamount of ownership of land can meanthe difference between hunger and self-sufficiency to them. The properfunctioning of land market is crucial forachieving efficiency and equity in thecontext of development of agricultureand hence, improving the livelihoods ofthe rural people.

There is a direct relationshipbetween women’s right to access land


2 Proceedings of the National Seminar on Land Market and The Rural Poor

and gender equality, economicempowerment, food security andpoverty eradication. A gender approachto land rights can enable shifts in genderpower relations and assure that allpeople, regardless of sex, benefit from,and are empowered by developmentpolicies and practices to improvepeople’s rights to land. Women do nothave adequate representations inproperty rights, including right to land.For instance, about 35 per cent of ruralhouseholds in the country are de factofemale headed, from widowhood,marital breakdown or male migration(Government of India, 2008). Householdsdepend on women for managing farmsand bearing the burden of familysubsistence arises as more men migrateto urban or non-farm rural livelihoodincreases.

Land has serious efficiency andequity implications when women ownand control lands. According toAgricultural Census (Government ofIndia, 2014), women own only 7 per centof the total agricultural land. In theabsence of land right, women have thedisability to cultivate land efficientlybecause they lack access to institutionalcredit facilities for lack of collateral.Even though the Hindu Succession Acthas been amended in 2005, which givesequal rights to men and women inmatters of inheritance of both self-

acquired property and joint familyproperty, the injustice done during thepast several years cannot be washedaway as the law does not have anyretrospective effect. One has to know asto whether the law has beenimplemented effectively in differentStates.

Similarly, in the case of redistributiveland reform laws, the women did not findmuch place. Some States have passedexecutive orders to give joint titles toboth husband and wife. But, in practice,no substantial change took place. As aconsequence, rural women, in general,continue to be deprived of secure accessto land. This is one of the pertinentreasons for persistence of poverty, poormanagement of land and exploitation ofwomen in the country.

Land acquisition by either theCentral Government or Stategovernments for various purposes,including infrastructure development,industrial projects, etc., has drawn lot ofattention by social scientists andpolicymakers. Both governments canacquire private lands for development ofinfrastructure. But, a lot of issues haveemerged while acquiring private land.The issues pertaining to land acquisitionare not new. It begun since the Britishgovernment enacted the first landacquisition legislation in India in 1824.



A number of legislations have been madeduring the pre and post-independenceperiods. Recent one was the Right to FairCompensation and Transparency in LandAcquisition, Rehabilitation andResettlement Bill, 2015. This Act not onlyenables land acquisition, but also therehabilitation and resettlement in caseof displacement due to land acquisition.It has been noticed that the rural poor,especially the Scheduled Tribes (STs) andmarginal and small farmers, wereseverely affected due land acquisitionby the State. It is in this context, there isa need to analyse the status of theimplementation of this Act and itsimpact on the current socio-economicconditions of the affected households.

Alienation of land in tribal areas hasbeen an important phenomenon. Overthe years, a large number of schemeshave been implemented to improve theliving conditions and emancipation ofthe tribal people. Land alienation in tribalareas is still persisting in some parts ofthe country, even though; the Stategovernments have adopted the policy/law of prohibiting the transfer of landfrom tribals to non-tribals and forrestoration of alienated tribal lands tothem.

The PESA Panchayats (Extension toScheduled Areas) Act is one of theprogressive Acts for tribal welfare in thecountry, providing for self-governance

and recognising the traditional rights oftribal communities over resources aroundthem. The PESA gives powers to thepanchayats at appropriate level and theGram Sabhas to prevent alienation ofland of tribals. As per the Act, GramSabha or Panchayat at the appropriatelevel should be consulted or discussedwith local or tribal people before theacquisition of land in Scheduled Areasfor development projects. But, due totardy or non-implementation of PESA inall PESA-governed States and also thenon–empowerment of tribals inunderstanding the Act, there ispersistence of land alienation in tribalareas. There is a need to discuss thefactors contributing to the low progressin this regard.

Customary practice of resourcegovernance and management ofcommon property resources have beenin practice in tribal areas in all countries,including India. It is collectivelymanaged by tribals. Collective tenurerefers to a situation, where a group ofpeople holds secure and exclusivecollective rights to own, manage and/oruse land and natural resources, referredto as common-pool resources, includingagricultural lands, grazing lands, forests,fisheries, wetlands or irrigation waters(Anderson, 2011). Under this regime,several or all land rights are held bycollectives, whether they are extended



families or communities. A commonfeature among traditional pastoralsocieties around the world is that landtends to be treated as a common-poolresource that is accessed, managed,used and controlled collectively(Damonte, 2017). It enabled socialharmony, secure livelihoods,conservation of resources, by and large,and prevented land alienation. How arethese resources governed in differentareas and what are its implication fortribals’ livelihood situation?

Land resources are also managed bywomen self-help groups (SHGs) in someregions of India. Lease farming by SHG/neighbourhood groups is gainingimportance in poverty eradication. InKerala, lease farming by neighbourhoodgroups of women is a part ofKudumbashree. Both government andprivate land were leased in. The SHGswere engaged mainly in the cultivationof banana, pineapple and vegetables. InAndhra Pradesh, lease farming by self-help groups of women started as part ofa project on ‘Sustainable DrylandAgriculture by Mahila Sanghams’, called‘Samatha Dharani’. SHGs were engagedin the cultivation of maize, paddy andsoya. Lease farming has helped inregenerating fallow and degraded landfor cultivation which providessupplementary income to poor womenand also improved their socio-political

status. This has been possible becauseof their heightened bargaining power asa group in Kerala and Andhra Pradesh(Haque, 2011). This is also a kind ofcollective tenure.

Proper governance of landadministration is important in ruralareas. It should be transparent to provideunencumbered and secure rights to landowners. Land records consist of differenttypes of information (property maps, saledeeds) and are maintained acrossdifferent departments at the district orvillage level. Attempts have been takento improve the quality of land recordsand make them accessible to differentstakeholders. The Government of Indiahas been implementing various schemesfrom time to time. The computerisationof land records started during 1988-89,was followed by the strengthening ofRevenue Administration and theUpdating of Land Records schemes. In2008, all these schemes were mergedinto a Centrally-sponsored schemeknown as the National Land RecordsModernisation Programme (NLRMP). Thescheme has now been renamed as theDigital India Land RecordsModernisation Programme (DILRMP) andis a part of the Digital India initiative.

Clear provision of secure andunencumbered land rights to owners ofland, improving access to land (both for



livelihood enhancing and for homesteadpurpose) for land poor households ingeneral, and women in particular, arecrucial to improve their well-being.Further, land acquisition in general, andin tribal areas particular, fordevelopment purposes has been in thecentre of debate among differentstakeholders. The crucial issues are asto how to minimise the hardship facedby the poor in the process of landacquisition through proper rehabilitationmeasures and adopting pro-poorapproach. Thus, there is a need to havea holistic understanding of the aboveissues and suggest appropriate policiesfor improving access of land to poorpeople, including women, protect theirexisting land resources and improve theirlivelihood.

Keeping in view the above issues,the S. R. Sankaran Chair at NationalInstitute of Rural Development andPanchayati Raj (NIRD&PR), Hyderabadorganised a two-day National Seminaron “Land Market and the Rural Poor”during 18-19 January, 2018. The mainobjectives of the seminar were to assessthe progress, identify the bottlenecksand explore the ways of improving theaccess to land resources to rural poorthat aims at empowering them whiledealing with different stakeholders/institutions and to improve their well-being.

II. Inaugural Session

Professor R. Radhakrishna,Chairman, S. R. Sankaran Chair AdvisoryCommittee, presided over the inauguralsession. It was followed by a briefintroduction about the themes of theseminar by Dr. Kailash Sarap, Professor,S. R. Sankaran Chair. The inauguraladdress was delivered by Professor Y. K.Alagh in absentia. Professor T. Haquedelivered the valedictory address.

Chairman’s Opening Remarks

Professor R. Radhakrishna said thatthe seminar assumes importancebecause land prices have shot up andhave become beyond the purview ofsmall and marginal farmers. There areseveral constrains for the emergence ofa well-functioning land market in Indiadue to some inherent problems with land(see Robin Mearns, 1999). The legal andeffective regulatory framework can, tosome extent, overcome these problems.Despite some progress in land reforms,the land market continues to be highlydistorted due to several factors. Landrecords are inaccurate and outdated.There are widespread disputes relatingto land titles. Transaction costs are alsohigh which discouraged formal landtransactions. Initiatives, which couldhave made the market function better,have not been taken and someregulations, particularly relating to



tenancy, are counterproductive. India’srich farmers who blocked reforms,industrialists who took the advantage ofland scarcities and land bureaucrats whoinvolved in rent seeking, have a stronghold on the land market.

There is a significant transfer of landfrom farmers to the project proponents,which became a source of socialdiscontent. Estimates show that during1991 to 2003, 2.1 million hectares of landwas acquired for non-agriculturalpurposes. A large area of land has beenacquired for SEZ purpose, of which amajor part remained vacant. Lands givenat subsidised rates were mortgaged tobanks after land prices shot up and loansused for purposes other than for industryin SEZ. Undivided Andhra Pradesh,Gujarat, Maharashtra and Tamil Naduaccount for 70 per cent of land acquiredfor SEZ. Amit Bhaduri (2015) has shownhow incentivising the corporate sectorby governments by giving land and othernatural resources at subsidised ratesand forcefully disposing the poor fromtheir livelihoods have led to politicalcorruption.

Successive rounds of NSS haveshown downward sliding of largeholdings. They have also shown that themedium and small holdings with 4-10hectares of land, have not only survivedbut also comparatively showed better

performance than large holding(V.S.Vyas). If there are no imperfectionsin the land markets and research,extension credit and marketinginstitutions are supportive to small andtenant farmers, it would lead to theexpansion of the small and mediumholdings which is desirable from bothgrowth and equity point of view. Theexpansion of income from non-farmsector may induce unviable marginalfarmers to sale or lease out the land. Butthe preconditions required for thetransition are rarely met. In rural India,markets are highly incomplete, imperfectand interlinked resulting in persistenceof marginal and sub-marginal holdings.If the land market is efficient and creditflow to small and tenant farmers areensured, the expansion of rural non-farmsector would lead to more equitable andefficient agrarian structure in the long-run, either through purchase or leaseinthe land from large-scale farmers.

There has been feminisation ofagriculture due to the shift of male labourfrom farm to non-farm work. ProfessorCh. Hanumantha Rao (2016) suggests“strong policy initiatives, right from thenational level, for dealing with publicissues such as strengthening landinheritance rights for women,endowment of property rights on housesbuilt with public assistance, …, andsensitising the agricultural support



systems, including credit institutions, tothe needs of women farmers and, inparticular, inducting women in largenumbers in the agricultural extensionsystem to assist women farmers.”

Land, under the Constitution of India(Seventh Schedule), is predominantly aState subject. Indian land markets,therefore, are heterogeneous. A seriesof land markets exist in States withdifferent levels of rights over landownership, usage and revenue. Sinceeach State is able to frame policies tomanage its own land markets, the rulesand regulations that govern agriculturaland urban land differ across States.State-specific issues relating to thefunctioning of land markets may bediscussed in this seminar.

The implications of land poolingmethod of acquiring lands from farmersas adopted by the Government ofGujarat for construction of roads and thenew State of Andhra Pradesh forconstruction of its capital city may alsobe discussed in the seminar.

Inaugural Address

Prof. Y.K. Alagh, in his inauguraladdress, talked about several issues,including agriculture labour, landscarcity, cooperatives and urbanisation.Agricultural labour cannot be separatedfrom land in rural India. If we look at the

statistical base, the NSS Usual Statusdefines an agricultural labourer as aperson offering labour or looking forwork for defined periods in a year or aweek as the case may be. On the onehand, labour time disposition data areaggregated in terms of time and notindividuals, and works with half days ina week. Some half days could be spenton farmland or in a kitchen garden inhomestead land. Census definitions, onthe other hand, approximate the UsualStatus definitions.

Indira Gandhi recognised theimportance of homestead land forhousing programmes; her successorscontinued that tradition. In the largerpolicy context, special provisions weremade to protect landless labourers incase of land acquisition for non-agricultural purposes. As we move overto non-agricultural growth as anoverriding priority, these nuances of‘protecting’ the rights of landlesslabourers become diffused, if notignored, in policy objectives. The ventfor surplus models of growth has littlescope for such concerns.

Land scarcity is going to be perhapsthe single greatest constraint todevelopment in India and has been seenas so. Local bodies were, traditionally,the repositories of what are called‘common resources.’ Those who work or



live off a resource are obviously the firstto be affected and need to be consulted.We need to build models of cooperationrather than clash. These are not simplematters and while best practice casesexist, we do not as yet have workingsystems. The idea that land is not aneconomic good in the market which liesbehind the tenancy legislation isirrelevant in practice. It is because thegreatest change that has taken place inrural India is that land was voluntarilytransferred from very small peasants tomiddle peasants, in what was called’reverse tenancy.’

Private organisations areincreasingly exploiting groundwater, asseen in places like Kaira district inGujarat where there are small waterstorage tanks in private plots. Aneconomic interest in land and water hasto be at the heart of any reform process.Groups of stakeholders, including thesmallest peasants, can cooperate forwell-defined, limited purposes of landdevelopment and water projects. Farmerlevel irrigation management systems,watershed development projects andgroundwater cooperatives are allthriving, and there are many morepromising possibilities out there.

At present, there are differentagricultural diversification models. Amulis a classic example of a cooperative.But corporates work with different

models. Some work with producerassociations of farmers; for example, theDCM Hariyali model works with theproducers’ association and does not getinto farming, as also the Tata Khet-se.However, other corporates follow thefarm-to-fork philosophy. This modelemerged during a Committee ProfessorAlagh chaired on introducing companystructure for cooperatives. An advantageof this model is its operation on the ’onemember, one vote ‘principle of thecooperatives as it imparts transparencyto a company. But the traditionalcorporate always looked at it withdistrust and an effort was made by theIrani Committee of the Chambers ofCommerce to eliminate it from theCompany Act of 2012. The Confederationof Indian Industry (CII) lobbied that theSection relating to the producers’associations in the Companies Act[second amendment (2002)] should beabolished. It was correctly argued thatproducers’ associations do not followcorporate profit maximising principlessince they are based on the ’one share,one vote‘ principle. In principle, nothingsays that we have to blindly copyimported models of corporategovernance. This argument is at presentin flux and we have lobbied with thePrime Minister to allow producers’associations to continue. We lobbied tokeep it in the Corporate Affairsgovernance set-up but it is very



uncomfortably located and is again beingswitched back to the Ministry ofAgriculture which does not have thetradition of company governance.

The central principle we have towork on is whether the small farmer and/or the landless labourer stakeholder willbe a part of the institutional processesof organising agriculture or not. Suchstakeholder participation is efficient, thatthis is a concept of dynamic and notshort-run efficiency.

Tenancy records have to bestraightened so that tenants who farmnearly two-fifths of the land can leveragetheir assets in bargains with thecorporates. While some want to operatefrom farm-to-fork all by themselves ifallowed to, which is seldom, others spanthe whole range but do not enter thefield or the last line retailer. In fact, withlarge foreign tie-ups, some have explicitstrategies of strengthening producercompanies as also the mom-and-popstores.

Urbanisation is gobbling up land. InGujarat, ‘large villages’ have actuallybecome towns as per Census definition,if we take into account the double urbangrowth from 2.87 per cent annual to 5.06per cent, which is close to double theearlier estimated change and makes abig difference to land use and forecasturban needs. Barbara Harris’s work has

shown that informal sector agro-processing and distribution in urbanareas are now under great stressbecause of the privatisation of landearlier used by the “commons.” TheAndhra Farmers Commission chaired byProf. R. Radhakrishna went into theseissues in some detail and its report isthe standard policy document on thesubject.

Even if distribution is corporatised,as proposed now by FDI in retail trade,there will be a need for the kinds ofstrategic policies followed in China tointegrate informal sector distribution andartisan-based urban activities withsupermarkets. The growth strategy of theNDA Government is clearly stated. It isboth unequivocal and unconditional. NITIAayog’s Vision Statement has given arefreshingly new focus on thinking onindustrial policy. It has repeated aclassical perspective on themanufacturing sector as an engine ofgrowth and the need to remove manycobwebs from the industrial policyenvironment. It begins its analysis of themanufacturing sector by underlining thatIndia’s manufacturing sector is lowproductivity and low wage. It points outthat China’s industrial productivity perworker is three times that of India. Smallfirms employing less than 20 workersaccount for 72 per cent of employmentbut 12 per cent of output in the



manufacturing sector. “Our workers areoverwhelmingly employed in lowproductivity and low wage employment”(NITI Aayog, 2017, p. 31). The NITI Aayogis clear that cobwebs must be removedand we need more formal sector jobs.Recent trends bring out the underlyingtext.

There is a clear-cut case for pre-empting urban land for informal sectordistribution and artisan-basedprocessing and industry in the brave newworld of the mall culture. The Food andAgriculture Organisation (FAO) is correctin saying that penetration ofsupermarkets in India is the lowest in theworld and so is the Commission onEnterprises in Unorganised Sector iscorrect in saying that the employmentconsequences of substitution of thedistribution trade by the organisedsector can be numerous. At the least, astrategic policy is needed to integrateboth. There is a need for broad-basedcivil society and policy initiatives to keepthe issue alive.

III. Access to Land and LandRights

The first technical session waschaired by Professor Alakh NarainSharma and there were threepresentations. The paper by VaishaliBansal and Vikas Rawal discussed thechanges in incidence of tenancy in India

over the last two decades (1991–92 to2012–13). The analysis was based ondetailed unit-level data collected fromthe 48th, 59th and 70th rounds of theNational Sample Survey (NSS) on Landand Livestock. The surveys involve twovisits to sample households in each ofwhich detailed plot-by-plot data onhousehold ownership and operationalholdings in different seasons arecollected. The author pointed out thatthere have been changes in the form inwhich information is collected indifferent rounds of the Land andLivestock surveys. Using data from theserounds require use of a consistentmethod for computing householdoperational holding. A detailedexamination of the plot-by-plot data fromthe three rounds also showed that therewere many errors in recording ofinformation between the two visits formany households. For a significantproportion of sample households, plot-by-plot data had to be corrected toensure consistency of information acrosstwo visits of each round.

The study reported that there was asignificant increase in the incidence oftenancy between 2002–03 and 2012–13.While the proportion of tenants amongrural households and proportion ofleased-in land in total operated area fellslightly between 1991-92 and 2002-03,both these ratios saw a significant



increase in the next decade. At the all-India level, proportion of tenants amongrural households increased from 11.4 percent in 2002–03 to 15 per cent in 2012–13. In 2002–03, about 6.7 per cent oftotal area under operational holding wasleased; by 2012–13, this had increasedto 11.1 per cent. Another trend thatstands out at the all-India level is theincrease in fixed-rent tenancy, andwithin that, an increase in tenancy forfixed-rent paid in money. In 2012–13,only 30.8 per cent of the leased-in landwas on share rents. The share of arealeased-in on fixed money rent in totalleased-in land increased from 13 percent in 1991–92 to 29 per cent in 2002–03 and to about 40 per cent in 2012–13.

While there has been a significantincrease in incidence of tenancy at all-India level, there are considerablevariations in levels and trends ofincidence of tenancy across States and,where information is available, acrossdifferent regions within States. AndhraPradesh, Punjab and Bihar stand out asthe States with highest incidence oftenancy. In these States, leased-in landaccounts for more than 20 per cent oftotal operated area. These Stateswitnessed an increase in incidence oftenancy from 2002–03 to 2012–13. WestBengal, Orissa and Telangana, with over15 per cent of operated area undertenancy in 2012–13, also saw a

significant increase in reportedincidence of tenancy. Tamil Nadu,Haryana and Chhattisgarh are Stateswith moderate levels of incidence oftenancy where the proportion ofoperated area that is leased-in rangesbetween 10 per cent and 15 per cent.Maharashtra, Karnataka, Gujarat,Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Jharkhandand Uttar Pradesh are States with lowlevels of agricultural tenancy.

Professor Sucha Singh Gill’s paperexamined the changing nature oftenancy and operation of land leasemarket in Punjab. In order to understandthe working of land lease market, thepaper focused on the size of the landlease markets and its direction over time.The players in the contemporary landlease market are identified as both wholease in land and also who lease outland. The terms of lease in terms of leasecontracts, payment of rent andperiodicity of rent have been identifiedboth on the public/panchayati land andprivate (owned) land. The paper alsoexamined the process of crowding outthe poor in land lease market.

The land lease market hasundergone a major change in Punjab inthe recent period. Earlier in 1950s, theland was leased out by the big andmiddle owners to small owners andlandless tenants. It was also negotiated



on crop sharing basis largely 50:50 shareof land owner and the tenant. Theproportion of leased-in area to total areaunder cultivation declined from nearly 40per cent in 1953-54 to 16.1 per cent in1981-82. But, it increased slowly in 1980sand 1990s and was recorded at 18 percent in 2002-03. It has experienced asharp rise to 24 per cent in 2012-13.During this period, the nature of tenancyhas also undergone a change. Now it hasbeen transformed into reverse tenancy,a type of tenancy where the farmers withownership of means of production (largeand medium) lease in land from thesmall and marginal owners. The leasingof land is contracted in cash. Half theamount of rent is paid in advance duringthe finalisation of lease contract and therest is paid after six months, when thefirst crop is harvested. The leasingcontracts are fixed every year andcontracts are oral in nature. In the recordof official papers land leased in/leasedout is very small but actual level is highand rising. Some studies have estimatedit to the range of 37-40 per cent of thetotal operated area. As agriculture in theState is highly commercialised and mostof the operations like planting, sowing,harvesting and eradication weedicidesare mechanised, the land is largelymoving out of hands of those who lackmodern means of production liketractors, harvester combines, tube-wellsand other implements operated with

power. The poor are practically beingcrowded out of the land lease market.

The relationship is also worked outbetween land lease market and creditmarket in the State. The availability andcontrol of credit is one of the essentialfactors for successful operation in theland lease market. The availablepreliminary information point out that theupper caste small owners are acceptingtheir crowding out without any organisedresistance. But the Scheduled Castelandless groups are resisting thisprocess in organised way in some areasof the State, especially on thepanchayati land.

Based on field observation, M.Mohan Rao has critically examined thefunctioning of the lease market in AndhraPradesh. Access to and controls of landare considered crucial for ruralhouseholds and in particular to thelandless for gaining secured andsustainable livelihood in rural areas. But,this largely depends on the land policiesof the government, the agrarianstructure and the dynamics of land andland lease markets. The functioning ofland and land lease markets are in thegrip of market forces. In such a situation,to what extent they provide access tothe landless deserves attention. It is inthis context, the paper has discussed theland and land-lease market in Andhra



Pradesh with special focus on landlessrural labour based on primary andsecondary data.

The study has noted that theavailable evidence does not support thecase for landless being part of organisedagriculture sector. Though the lease-market has increased overtime in India,this is not uniform across the States asconcentration indices in around sixStates have increased overtime. This isalso true in respect of access to landrelated to leased-in land to the landlessor pure tenants. In view of this, landrelations should not be totally left tomarket forces, but call for properinterventions and effective monitoringand implementation. Similarly, mereliberalisation of tenancy legislation,without taking cognizance of myriadtypes of tenancies in the country is notgoing to be useful. Such legislationshould be properly tuned to the localrealities and practices. The paper hasalso noted that equitable access to thelease market becomes a reality if onlythere are limits to the extent one canlease in, similar to the norms prescribedunder ceilings on land holdings.However, there are many bottleneckspoor have to face in gaining access toleased-in land and enjoy the fruits fromsuch land. The paper concluded with thecall for policy changes at official level

and sound organisational structures ofthe beneficiaries to fight for what is dueto them in a given policy framework.

The paper presentation wasfollowed by comments from thediscussant Professor S.S. Sangwan. Hesaid that the incidence of reversetenancy which started in the 1980s inPunjab has increased in recent years andit is also found in other regions of India.Farmers with machinery and otherimplements and access to workingcapitals are able to lease in land. Further,the sharecropping arrangement has beenrapidly giving rise to fixed tenancy andthat the payment of rent is in cash ratherthan in produce. In many cases, thetenant has to pay the rent in cash inadvance to the extent of 50 per cent ormore before taking possession of theland. The amount of rent per hectare hasalso gone up exorbitantly in recent years.In such a situation, land poor householdswithout access to fix and working capitalare rationed out in the land lease market.Of late, the corporate sector has showedinterest in leasing of land from thefarmers. In this situation, the poor landowners would be further rationed out inthe land lease market. After theobservation made by the discussant, thefloor was opened for discussion. Severalclarifications were sought from thepaper presenters. These include thereasons for absence of group farming in



Punjab, especially among womenfarmers, implications of divergence ofland ownership and possession of landby households, profitability of cultivationof tenants due to exorbitant amount ofrent per hectare, sustainability ofagriculture at present, nature of reversetenancy, terms and conditions of tenancyin different regions and so on.

Replying to the questions fromparticipants, Professor Gill said that tosustain agriculture and save the smalland marginal peasants, a lot of support,including subsidy of inputs, agricultureextension, training and guiding thefarmers and persuading them to movetowards group cultivation have to begiven. Then only they would take up avariety of activities, includingproduction, marketing and processing ofthe crops. By doing so, a substantial partof income, which goes out of agriculture,can be retained in the rural areas. But,over the years the support to agriculturalsector has declined substantially. Thedominant view now believes that thecorporate sectors have to play animportant role to organise, manage andfoster growth of agriculture. In such asituation, the corporate sector wouldcompete for getting access to land offarmers.

Professor Gill believed that as thetenurial contracts in Punjab are mostlyoral in nature and there is no written

document the farmers cannot submit anydocument relating to possession of landto formal credit institutions. In such asituation, the NABARD scheme may notbe applicable. He said that though thetenants, who are in temporarypossession of land, are excluded fromgetting any facility, including access tocredit and compensation for loss ofcrops from the State.

He believed that liberalisation oftenancy to protect small owners is awelcome step but giving it to thecorporate sector is not an acceptablemove. Citing example from Punjabwhere corporate sector and othersinterested in land have got land on long-term lease on easy terms and conditionsand generate income from cropproduction, he said they need not paytax on such income. In contrast, the poortenant farmers are unable reap any profitfrom the crop production and in case offailure of crop many of them facehardship and fall into debt trap. Onlyfarmers with large holdings are able togenerate some surplus due to economiesof scale in the use of machinery and bulkbuying of inputs.

Professor V ikas Rawal said thatreverse tenancy is rather a smallproportion tenancy in India and the bulkof the tenancy relates to poor tenants.Further, fixed tenancy as a form hasincreased in recent years and a major



proportion of such tenements pay rentin cash. It is noteworthy that a significantproportion of such tenants are those whodo not have own land and smalloperators. He pointed out that Punjabhas a bit of exception in that respect asbulk of leasing is done by largecultivators. It is rather lateral tenancyand not reverse tendency as land ownerswith substantial amount of land leasingout to such large tenants.

Professor Rawal said that when thepoor are in distress they do not leaseout land, they sell out land. Due to asituation created by tightening labourmarket and increasing landlessness, thepoorest farmers are leasing in land onvery harsh terms and conditions,including fixed cash rent. He hasobserved this situation in the villages ofthe coastal Andhra Pradesh, Haryana andWestern Uttar Pradesh. Among manysuch tenant households, the rentaccounts for anything like 70 per cent ofthe total produce. This kind of tenancyis not happening among the large landowners leasing in land.

He pointed out that we do not havea situation, where tenancy marketliberalised is opening opportunities forthe poor to benefit from tenancy. Rather,we have a situation where lack oftenancy regulation is making large landowners to lease out land to poor tenantson onerous terms and conditions. It is a

situation of distress for the land poorhouseholds and it reflects the collapseof tenancy regulation.

Concluding the session, ProfessorAlak Narain Sharma thanked the paperwriters and the participants for theinteresting and lively discussion. He saidthat there is difference in the situationof tenancy in Punjab as compared tobackward regions of Odisha and Bihar.The very high average amount of rentpaid per hectare by the tenants in Punjabcannot happen in Odisha or Bihar, wherethe productivity of land is low. He agreedwith V ikas Rawal’s argument thatreverse tenancy was taking place foreconomic reasons, because poorpeasants do not have sufficientproduction assets. But, during his fieldresearch in Bihar villages, he hasobserved some reverse tenancy inirrigated areas. The reasons are that thepoor peasants want to diversify theirlivelihood opportunity. They want tolease out their land and migrate to otherregions in search of better livelihood.Least migration is found among middlepeasants. So, middle peasants areleasing in the land from the poorpeasant. So, there are very divergentforms of tenancies found in backwardand advance regions. One finds landpoor households leasing in land on harshterms and condition; reverse tenancy isfound among middle and large-scale



farmers and now the corporate sectorhas also leasing in land. These diversesituations throw us many challenges inpolicy front.

IV. Gender and Land Rights

The second technical session waschaired by Professor D.N. Reddy andconsisted of four presentations. RituDewan’s paper highlighted the lowaccess of land rights among the womenin general, and marginalisedcommunities in particular. Citing theConvention on the Elimination of AllForms of Discrimination against Women(CEDAW), 1979 especially Articles 14, 15,and 16, she said that right to own andadminister property withoutdiscrimination, and equal treatment inland and agrarian reform are important.Both spouses must have equal rights in‘ownership, acquisition, management,administration, enjoyment anddisposition of property’ becausediscrimination against women toacquiring and securing land is a violationof human rights. Accordingly, the Stateneeds to amend or repeal laws andpolicies that encourage discriminatorycustoms and traditions in acquiring andsecuring property by women. The paperreviewed India’s policies and five yearplans (FYP) as well as the relevant andappropriate policies and agrarian rightsfrom the point of view of gender crucial

signposts identified, including thegroups and individual distribution of landrights to women, distribution of surplusland to women under the Land CeilingAct, and enhancing women’s land accessfrom the three major sources of directgovernment transfers, purchase/leasefrom market and inheritance. The paperalso looked at the land laws andlegislations in Maharashtra beginningwith first-ever such legislation which isthe Muslim Personal Law (Shariat)Application Act, 1937, recognised andaccepted the fundamental right ofwomen to property. Likewise, theamendment of Maharashtra RevenueAct of 1966 gave the right for women toregister their names along with men onproperty ownership 7/12 records as co-owner.

While analysing the share of landpossessed by women in Maharashtra vis-a-vis to all-India level, it has found thatit has declined between 2001 and 2011.An important trend to note is theincrease in percentage of marginal andsmall landholders among women from79 per cent to 83 per cent during thisperiod. Besides, the operational holdingof women varies between SCs and STs.It is to be noticed that the number offemale land owners increased by two percent only. However, the area operatedby women owners decreased by two percent. Also noted was a clear divide in



land operated based on size oflandholdings, particularly between thesmall and semi-medium holdings, thelarger farms actually witnessing adecline in the share of women over thelast decade, implying that the richer andnon-marginalised sections do not permitgender equality. Also noted was thatsocial inclusion of both SC and ST womenin relation to land had risen more sharplyin the poorer States, thus bringing to thefore the debate on the prevailing patternof growth and development being anti-women’s equality. This was also true toall districts of the State of Maharashtra,women gaining land rights primarilywhere their movements and struggleswere stronger.

This paper concluded with someimportant policy suggestions, includingrecognition of women as farmers (not asfemale cultivators). There is need toprioritise land distribution - singlewoman, female-headed households,landless, farm suicide affectedhouseholds, beggars, manualscavengers, and other such sociallyvulnerable and marginalised groups.Gender disaggregated data base atmacro, micro levels, consisting of public,private and institutional holdings acrossall castes and communities,enumeration of all groups of landlessand land leasing women peasants haveto be prepared.

Shyamal Kumar Jana’s paperoutlined the avenues to address the gapbetween the reality of rural women andtheir entitlements in the programmes ofland, land reforms departments and ofother departments for sustainableutilisation of the allotted micro-plotunder government land allocationprogrammes. The analysis is based on300 sample plot holders drawn fromdiversified geographical regions of WestBengal.

The emphasis in most governmentland administration activities hascustomarily been on the technical andlegal components, rather than on thesocial, economic or environmentalimpacts of these activities. There is alack of understanding of the diversity andcomplexity of tenure and a belief thatgender issues can be solved easilythrough joint-titling or employing womenon the land reforms programmes. In viewof this, the paper discussed a number ofissues relating to the present methodsand approaches of ways of distributionof government land to the land poorhouseholds, identified the existing gapsin reducing gender inequality in suchprogrammes and discussed way forwardfor reducing the gender gaps in suchprogrammes.

The author has found that due toignorance of the government laws and



lack of sensitisation of the land officials,women’s names are not included in theland titling programmes and are alsoexcluded from the post-title benefit fromthe government because they are notconsidered as farmers. It also found thatwomen, who own land and participatedin the agri-extension trainingprogramme, are significantly more likelyto have their final say in householddecisions regarding utilisation of theallotted plots in the areas of agricultureand allied activities.

Anju Helen Bala’s paper discussedthe access to land through genderperspective. She said access to landdefines and structures the relations ofpower within the society, notably in thegender relations. Gender is a vitalcomponent in deciding the division oflabour and the various role of “who playswhat” in the production andreproduction process within and outsidethe household. Daughters, wives andmothers have always played crucial rolein the upkeeping of the household andthey bind a family. But when it comes totheir rights and access of property, theyare denied and shun away. Land for themis not merely a matter of property; ratherownership of land is a matter ofempowerment. In most of the academicliterature related to gender and land, itis being asked as to why land rights areimportant for women. Gender studies

have raised the issue of the genderdifferences and subordination of womencreated due to the patriarchal societalstructures and norms. One of the majorcauses for the women subordination hasbeen the control over land. Men andwomen play different role in forestconservation and livelihooddevelopment. In forestry sector, womenare the primary actors engaged incollection of forest products. But theglobalisation and urbanisation forceshave drastically changed the villagetribal landscape of India. Unlike theprevious times, now men are mostlymigrating to cities in search of betteropportunities and women are left behindin the villages to look after theirhouseholds. The families aredisintegrating and it has mostlyimpacted the fate of widows, unmarriedgirls and old age women. Earlier, theywere a part of larger families, but nowthey are left alone. These changes haveleft women in poverty and destitution.

Given this backdrop, the paperdiscussed the tribal women and theirland rights with special reference toOraons of Gumla district. The study isbased on the oral history and primarydata collected from interview schedule.Since there are many tribal groups whoare staying within the vicinity of forestsand for them land rights also comesunder Forest Rights Act (FRA), the



respondents have been taken mainlyfrom two groups - those staying withinor near the forests areas and those whoare in the settled agriculture in the non-forested regions. Through this analysis,this paper tried to understand thecondition of tribal women in the contextof production, ownership and control ofland, livelihood and life.

Vandana Upadhyay investigated thetransformation of land rights andchanging gender distribution of work andemployment in rural Arunachal Pradesh.The land tenure system in the hill areasof India’s north-east region, inhabitedmostly by tribal population, issignificantly different from the systemthat is prevalent in the plain areas of theregion. Like most other parts of India, inthe plains of north east region alsoindividual rights over land holdings aretransferable and buying and selling ofrights are normally not restricted.However, this is not the case in the hillareas where individual rights over landhas not taken the form of full propertyrights in the sense that there are certainrestrictions imposed on the transfer ofthese rights, if not practically possible.The non-transferability of holding rightsmakes the land unsuitable as collateralfor the purpose of securing institutionalcredit to land holders, which in turn actsas a constraint on extension ofinstitutional credit in the hill economies

of the region. Using both the secondarydata obtained from population censusand agricultural census and primary datacollected through various rounds ofhousehold surveys this paper arguesthat commercialisation of agriculturehas led to a situation where informalprivate property rights regime overagricultural land has emerged in theState. This transformation in land rightsis not merely a substitution of collectiveownership by private ownership overland; rather it has led to a process ofgendered dispossession, where in thewomen peasants have lost their rightsover land, as privatisation usually meanstransfer of land rights to the male headsin the households. Potentially, womencan obtain or acquire land through theState, the family and the market. Thepaper basically argues that the State hasplayed an extremely ambiguous roleduring this period of transition, byallowing and even encouraging thegendered privatisation of land inpractice, while formally recognisingcollective, community ownership overagricultural land. The emergence ofinformal land-leasing involving migranttenant households and local landownershas introduced another class of invisiblewomen farmers and children, who simplywork as family labour in leased-inholdings. There has been a gendereddiversification and increasingfeminisation of work force in the State



in recent years. Simultaneously, theprocess of privatisation andcommercialisation of agriculture is alsohappening in a big way mainly by therich and the powerful people in the State.The analysis of two rounds of time usepattern of rural women in the plaindistrict of East Siang, and the hill districtsof Changlang and West Kameng inArunachal Pradesh clearly points outthat on an average women are spendingmore labour days in farm operations thanmen and the weekly average time spentby them in primary agricultural activitiesare found to be more than men in recentyears. The burden of maintainingsubsistence agriculture isdisproportionately shared by the womenand they end up doing those tasks whichwere earlier performed by the men folk.Thus, the data collected from the 18districts of Arunachal Pradesh point tothe fact that the male-centric privateproperty rights over land has emergedand expanded specifically during aperiod of increasing feminisation ofagriculture and higher work burden ofwomen in crop farming as men move outfrom farm to non-farm activities. Thispaper looks into the question as towhether there exists a more egalitariangender relation in the society and arguesthat the political economy of agrariantransition provides a better structure tounderstand the gendered transformationof land relations in Arunachal Pradesh.

The presentation was followed bycomments by discussant, Professor VikasRawal. While commenting on RituDewan’s paper, Professor Rawal saidthat one has to be careful about the datarelating to operational holdings beingmanaged by women or men as providedby Agricultural Census. In most casesand in most States of India, it is repetitionof land records. There is no idea howland records, which are in individuals’names, are identified into household’sland title by the enumerators. Further,there is neither any guideline nor anyclarity on how it is being done. In thatcontext in particular, he is not even surewhat it means if you say it is a femaleoperational holding or male operationalholding, mostly both may be working.Perhaps in many more holdings womendo more labour than men which are notactually recognised.

In the context of West Bengal,Professor Rawal said that there has beenat least much larger scale of distributionof land titles to women. The decision toprovide joint titles and single title of landto women in West Bengal has a longerhistory and this has been possible dueto the result of strong women’smovement and political struggles in theState. It started around 1990s and byaround 2003, there were about five lakhtitle of joint land holdings given towomen in West Bengal. Of course, the



completion of giving patta to thebeneficiaries was incomplete and it hasbeen accomplished later throughadministrative process.

Professor Rawal found the papers byAnju Helen Bala and Vandana Upadhyayinteresting. The message conveyed byboth the papers is that it is not very usefulto do uncritical verification of tribaltraditions. One has to critically examineas to whether the functioning ofinstitutions are non-democratic andhierarchical and not women-friendly. Butit is all democracy among men. Womenare completely excluded from thedemocracy and all the terrible things ofcaste in the society, in terms ofpatriarchal attitudes, particularly seen inthe society, both, in terms of the house,property and also inheritance of land.Commenting on Vandana’s paper, he saidthat we have the situation, where onedid not have the history of individualproperty rights, but you had lack ofdemocracy in decision making. Now, thesituation is that where penetration ofindividual property rights actually bringsin all the problems, including exclusionof women in property rights and indecision making. Similar studieselsewhere have also found feminisationof workforce, women being restricted tothis kind of work and their exclusionfrom access to land titles. Heappreciated the paper writers for

focussing on these issues. The floor wasthen opened for discussion. Severalparticipants posed questions to thepaper writers on different issues relatingto women’s access to property rights,laws on inheritance of property bywomen, the factors contributing forchanges in taking place from communalproperty to individual property rights andthe role of different actors in suchprocess. The paper writers clarified thepoints raised by the participants. TheChairperson, Professor D.N. Reddy,thanked the paper writers, thediscussant and the participants for thefruitful and lively discussions.

V. Land Market and RegionalScenario

In many low developed areas, theland market is imperfect and has notbeen functioning well and it has beenconstrained by a number of factors,including the fragmented nature of landright system systems and culturalreasons. Further, in recent years pricesof land have been rising rapidly. Thissession was devoted to these issues ingeneral and in regional context. Thesession was chaired by Professor S.S.Gill and there were six presentations.

The session began with the paperon Land, Caste and Gender in India, byM. Thangaraj. He discussed the factorscontributing for lower access to



livelihood enhancing resources such asland among the Scheduled Castecommunities in historical perspective.He stressed that despite severalameliorative measures taken by theColonial government in India, Christianmissionaries and the post-independencegovernment in India for their upliftment,there is no marked improvement in theirsources of livelihood and occupationalstatus. Majority of them continue to workin the agriculture sector as wage labourand other occupations such as casualwork, scavenging and menial labour.These communities have beensubjected to discrimination andoppression from time immemorial andthey are not treated on par with othersby the upper caste people. Land is thebasic source of livelihood for most of thehouseholds in rural India. But, theobserved pattern of land distributionamong different social group exhibit thatScheduled Castes (SCs) have been, byand large, excluded from gettingadequate access to land ownership.

Eleventh five-year plan hasemphasised on inclusive growth and itwas adopted during the Twelfth five-yearplan. The concept of inclusive growth isbroader than welfare programmesimplemented by the government.Inclusive growth demands that all socialgroups in India should have equal accessto the services provided by the State and

equal opportunity for their upwardeconomic and social mobility. It is alsonecessary to ensure that there is nodiscrimination against any section of thesociety. There is a need for an in-depthstudy covering all issues of the socio-economic factors inhibiting for rapidimprovement of Scheduled Castecommunities. The author suggestedseveral measures, including provision ofland for them to improve their livelihoodconditions and to eliminatediscrimination against them.

Deepak K Mishra’s paper highlightedthe changing agrarian relation and landstructure in Arunachal Pradesh. He saidthat land governance in ArunachalPradesh is marked by a great deal ofinstitutional diversity as access to landis mediated through the ‘traditional’community institutions and customarylaws. In this mountainous State,community rights over forests andagricultural land have been protectedunder the law, notwithstanding theambiguities and overlappingjurisdictions of various State and non-State authorities over agricultural andforest land. With restrictions in placeover entry of outsiders to the Statethrough the inner-line permit system aswell as the prohibition of land ownershipby those who do not belong to theindigenous communities of the State,denned as Arunachal Pradesh Scheduled



Tribes (APST), the scope for landalienation from tribal to non-tribalpopulation has been severely curtailed.Such relatively robust institutionalsafeguards, however, have not been ableto ensure an equitable or sustainableaccess to land and forests. Drawing uponmultiple rounds of field surveys invarious parts of the State, during 1999-2016, this paper attempts to examine thetransformations in community rights overland in Arunachal Pradesh, as part of theon-going agrarian transition.

Judith Heyer discussed the impactof Changing Land Markets in Tiruppur/Coimbatore villages and noted thecontrast between the impact of landmarket changes in peri-urban areas withthe impact on rural areas such as thosein Tiruppur district. The paper contraststhe village land market in the 1980s and1990s with the village land market in the2000s and 2010s and argues that theland market of the 2000s and 2010s hasexacerbated the decline in the area ofland under cultivation and has also beenassociated with quite significantchanges in the nature of the villagecommunity as outsiders have gotinvolved. Thus, rural areas, in which theland market changes have had much lessof an impact than in areas closer tourban conurbations. The trends noted inthe paper can only get worse as the landmarket encourages black money and

other funds to find their way into landownership on an increasing scale.

Agricultural land sale prices in India,contrary to past, has exponentiallyincreased during post liberalisationperiod. The higher prices are bound tohave implication on the allocation,equity, efficiency and sustainability ofthe agriculture sector. Ch. Shankar Raodiscussed these issues in the context ofhis study relating to land market for theagricultural land sales in AndhraPradesh, India. The study is based on sixvillages - two each from three regionsof Andhra Pradesh. Villages are selectedbased on the proximity to urban centres,covering both near and far villages. Bothsecondary and primary data were usedfor the analysis. Secondary data onagricultural land sales since 1991 in thevillage were obtained from theDepartment of Stamp and Registration,Government of Andhra Pradesh. Primarydata were obtained from the householdsurvey administered by the schedules/questionnaire and personal interviewsfrom key informants. The survey covereda total of 600 households in the State,100 from each village, containing bothbuyers and sellers of agricultural landduring last two decades. The householdswere selected based on stratifiedrandom sampling method from the totallist of land transactions. The study isboth empirical and analytical in nature.



Basic statistics are used to analyse thequantitative data.

The results revealed that there hasbeen a fast changing nature ofagricultural land from agriculturalproductive factor to non-agriculturalcommodity (like gold) that has multipleuses. Land as ever fixed factor withincreasing scarcity but with multipleuses is seen as asset that gives scopeto speculative demand to play major rolein its price determination, which couldalways be much above the stream of netreturns equal to marginal productivity oreconomic rent. Sellers, who are mostlythe owner cultivators, often motivatedby distress factors in the agriculturalsector coupled with increasing generalconsumption expenditure on social andeducational needs. On the other hand,buyers who are mostly rich non-cultivators with huge stocks of surplus(money) earned from high growth drivennon-farm sectors (either legal or illegal)are motivated often by speculation thatincluded store of value and tax benefits.At this typical nature of commodity andmotivation for demand and supply, theresultant market output (high sale price)is bound to have implications on thesector in terms of allocation of landresources that complicate issues ofequity and efficiency in agriculturalsector as whole. This kind of speculativemarket for agricultural land, though it

benefits the sellers but completelyexclude cultivators from buying,increases role of the non-cultivators.This in turn led to rise in tenancy whichhas many problems in terms of risk andefficiency in cultivation at current legalsystem.

This paper concluded that thecurrent developments in agriculturalland markets with increasing entry ofrich non-cultivators with high offeredprices with the non-productive motiveslike store of value, speculation, taxheaven, etc., have implications onresource (land) allocation and equitythat are unfavourable to real cultivators.This also leads to inefficiency in land usein agriculture of Andhra Pradesh, India.

Dinesh Kumar Nayak and ParthaPratim Sahu analysed the dynamics oflandholding structure in the context ofOdisha. In the tribal and rural basedState of Odisha, where the agriculturalland is important as a primary source oflivelihood, income and employment formajor proportion of population,agriculture plays a crucial role in theoverall development and transformationprocess. It needs to be inclusive andsustainable due to its extensive net croparea coverage of about 35 per cent tototal geographical area of the State.Further, more than 60 per cent of State’stotal workers population depend on



agriculture for their sustenance. But, theland available for agricultural purposeshas been declining in the State. A majorchallenge of the Indian (agriculturalsector) is the shrinking of average-farmholding size. It has been estimated thatthe average farm-land, which was 2.28hectares in 1970-71, declined to 1.15hectares in 2010-11.

Land cannot be expanded endlessly.As the multiple demands for landincrease, less land is devoted toagriculture and allied sub-sectors.Therefore, intensive cultivation ofavailable cultivable lands, whereverfeasible, seems a viable strategy forincreasing the gross area undercultivation and augmenting foodproduction.

This paper attempted to study adetail analysis on changes in landholdingstructure with different aspects and toestimate the trend, magnitudes changesand pattern in Odisha at quinquennialintervals over the time. It also discussedthe implications of corporate landholding, special economic zone, mining;how the existence land reform and landdigitalisation should be re-framed in theState Agricultural policy in order toincrease the productivity of crops andincome of farmers.

Jeetendra Kumar examined thechanging land structure in rural Madhya

Pradesh by taking a single village -Dikhatpura village in Morena district -over the years as a case study. The studyemployed households listing schedulesto collect the primary data. He said thatthe development of land market hasbecome quite complex in Dikhatpuravillage due to interplay of several factorsin recent years. The village was azamindari village till 1951. But due toimplementation of ‘Zamindari AbolitionLaw,’ the land had been distributedamong different social groups. Further,green revolution, technologicaltransformation, indebtedness amongpoor households, changing consumptionpattern, tendency of possession of landand growth of population played majorroles in bringing the change in the landstructure. The study has found thatamong four social groups (i.e. Brahmin(GEN), Gujar (OBC), Kumhar (OBC) andJatav) only Jatav land owners have beenselling the land to the Gujars andBrahmins since they have got the land.Because this community was a servicedoer, had no land and used to besubtenant of zamindars. Even afteracquiring tenancy rights, some of thehouseholds from this community couldnot overcome from their age oldindebtedness. Accordingly, they kept onselling the land over time which led tolandlessness among the community. TheBrahmins and Gujars who werezamindars of this village have not sold



land. On the other hand, Kumharhouseholds depended on theirtraditional occupation for theirlivelihood. Of course, individuals ofsome households were in governmentjobs and because of that they could ableto meet social and economicexpenditures without selling the land.Further, cultural factors also playedsome role in avoiding the sale of the landamong the Kumhar, Gujar and Brahmincommunities. Sale of land is considereda sign of social and economic regressamong these communities. However,many households belonging to differentcommunities bought tiny pieces of landfor construction of houses for dwellingpurpose. This has resulted into activationof land market to some extent in andaround the village.

The paper presentations werefollowed by comments and suggestionsby discussant, Dr. G.Vijay. He observedthat one has to be careful while drawingcertain observations on the basis oflinking the land distribution structuresto the social structures. Given the factthat the existing agrarian economy isbeing in crisis to read land as if it has asimilar kind of social status as it mayhad during 1970s, would be quiteproblematic. The overall agrarianeconomy is under pressure and thereforemany farm households want to quitagriculture. So, without talking about

other complementary inputs andreasonable prices for crops, etc., torelate distribution of land ownership orsimple entitlement of land by or ofparticular social groups to directlyconnecting to well-being or mobility ofany kind of the group or individuals willbe problematic.

Dr. G. V ijay appreciated thearguments of Deepak Mishra. But, hepointed out that one has to consider thefact is that there would be certaininterested groups, which would like topreserve the community. Hence, it isalways a dialectical process in whichinterest groups that are trying topreserve those communitarian modes donot come out as clearly as the otherdominant kind of mode, where the Stateelites and the market seem to be pushingthe whole thing into one particulardirection. What is the countervailingforces working in opposite direction?There is a need to understand as to whatis happening to those processes and theways the different forces are behavingand its consequences.

With respect to Professor JudithHeyer’s work, Dr. Vijay said that it wastrue that financialisation of the landmarkets and the kinds of modes it hascaused with respect to changing natureof village community. But, perhaps onecould also look at how or what are the



consequences of this entire process tothe way that links to new modes ofurbanisation. He believed that the linkhas huge bearing on the way that thereis a disconnect of slots between thediversification of land use and the wholeclassification of farm and non-farm, asbeing significant to classifying the spaceas in the urban or rural. But, there isgreat disconnect between the publicutilities that ought to be provided by localgovernment and what is happening to itand its use. As public utility is beingdriven by the private investment, one hasto know about its consequence. Perhapsthere is also need to look its link to thesubsistence economy of the largersections of poor people.

On Shankar Rao’s paper, he felt thatthere is need to look also on the otherside of the land sale by poor people.Because, after the appreciation of theland prices there is increase in theincome of sellers. How to theorise that?In what ways they use the large amountof money received from sale of land.What happens to that kind of economyand how one really looks that mode ofdiversification? Of course, one set offindings suggest that there is long-termunsustainability in such types oftransactions because these people donot have the ability immediately todetermine how to really use the finances.But in coastal economy of Andhra

Pradesh, it may be slightly different frombackward areas in Telangana or otherplaces given that there isentrepreneurship and larger kind ofnetworking among people. Could it bepossible that it might lead to sustainablediversification of assets among thesellers of land? There is a need to askthese questions while analysing theimplication of land transactions. Whilecommenting on the paper on changingland structure among different socialgroups, he suggested that one has tolook at the agrarian crisis and theninterpret the value that connect welfare/well-being or mobility of different socialgroups. With these comments by thediscussant, the floor was opened fordiscussion. The paper presentersanswered several questions posed tothem..

While closing the session, ChairmanProfessor Gill observed that he washappy to see papers coming fromdifferent regions of the countrydiscussed in the seminar. It brought outlot of regional variations. Differentregions are at different rates of changeand they are behaving in different ways,some of them are fast and others areslow. While discussing the issues ofaccess to land and land relation, thegeographical variation must be takeninto account. He also said that whiledealing in land-related issues, the



interest of the small land owners haveto be protected. He thanked all the paperwriters, commenters and participants forfocussing on the broad and regionaldimensions of land issues for providinginputs for policymakers.

VI. Land Acquisition andRehabilitation in Tribal Areas

The fourth technical session waschaired by Professor Deepak Mishra andconsisted of five presentations. C.R.Bijoy’s paper analysed the ways throughwhich appropriation of lands take place.Land is appropriated in many ways suchas appropriation through recognition ofprivate property rights with thewholesale takeover of the remaining landby the State, acquisition of the privateproperty through land acquisition laws,acquisition of land by notifying hugetracts of land as forest lands, and large-scale change of land use toafforestation. The methods adopted arenon-recognition, partial or incompleterecognition, acquisition and denial ofrights by the government, and bygovernment collusion and failure toprevent appropriation of land as well.The customary and traditional rights toland, particularly in tribal areas, areindividual rights as for homestead andagriculture, collective or communityrights as usufructuary or use rights suchas for water, pasture, minor forest

produce, shifting cultivation, etc,, andterritorial rights or rights to ancestraldomain or ancestral lands. These rightsare both material and relational, andtemporal and spiritual. Some of them aretransient while others are long lasting.These rights span their historical,political, social, emotional, sacred andexistential terrains over generations andnot merely a source of livelihood or atradable commodity in the market placewhich can be compensated on marketterms. Land is appropriated when theserights are not recognised, partiallyrecognised, acquired or expropriated,manipulated or denied, whether bygovernment or private actors. All thesesquarely fall within the domain andscope of ‘land acquisition’ by acts ofomission or commission by thegovernments. In fact, land is acquirednot just through the use of the laws onland acquisition for public purpose, butalso through various other land laws,both regulatory and reform, as well asby the absence of laws to recognisecertain dimensions or realms of landrights. This is so simply because theconstitution explicitly necessitates theprotection of tribal lands. This paper alsodiscussed the paradigm shift fromprivate property to tenurial rights overland and resources, and governance oftenure of land internationally and in thecountry. The PESA, FRA, and the LARR2013 are laws that mark this paradigm



shift where land rights go beyond privateownership rights to collective,community and resource use rights,including community governance of landand its resources. All discourses on landacquisition therefore requires to moveaway from mere acquisition of privateland to include the larger process ofappropriation of land by the Statethrough multifaceted instrument of lawsto make visible the real scale of actualland acquisition.

Rajkishor Meher examined thefunctioning of Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in LandAcquisition, Rehabilitation andResettlement (RFCTLARR) Act, 2013 inthe context of Odisha. The mainstreamLiberalisation Privatisation andGlobalisation (LPG) development modelof post reform years in India by puttingemphasis on many mega projects suchas large mineral-based industries,thermal power plants, multipurpose riverdams, urban centres, townships, etc., toaccelerate the process of economicdevelopment in terms of increase ingrowth of the economy. It has beenalleged that this model has beenresponsible for large-scale displacementof human populations and decimation ofthe sustainable subsistence ofecosystem people in the country. It hasnow taken the shape of a conflictbetween the ecosystem people and the

omnivores. The ecosystem peopleinvoluntarily displaced from their meansof sustainable subsistence by thepromotion of modern mega developmentprojects fail to cope with the suddenchanges in local economy and society.The traditional cash compensationmeasure coupled with land-based andjob-based rehabilitation of the displacedfamilies does not help much in improvingtheir living condition. Lack of emphasison development of local human capital,ad hoc rehabilitation and resettlementmeasures for the displaced familiesfurther marginalise the living of their pro-genies and pauperise them in the longrun.

In this light, the present paperexamined the Right to FairCompensation and Transparency in LandAcquisition, Rehabilitation andResettlement (RFCTLARR) Act, 2013,which has been enacted to replace theold Land Acquisition Act, 1894, framedduring British colonial rule and was inforce until the end of 2013 with minormodifications. It may be mentioned herethat the new RFCTLARR Act,2013 envisages social impactassessment of land-affected as well asproject-affected people by anindependent agency before acquiringland for any development project, be itgovernment initiated, public sector,



public-private partnership or privatesector project meant for nation’sdevelopment. The new Act clearlyspecifies the way of determinationof cash compensation for the land losers,rehabilitation and resettlement(R&R) benefits of displaced families andsocial impact management plan tomitigate the negative impacts of theproject on project-affected people andregion. However, how far the law is likelyto be enforced in words and spirit andthe social impact studies carried out byvarious agencies for variousdevelopment projects now underimplementation in a poor and backwardState like Odisha have been discussedin this paper. Finally, the paper seeks toevolve out a consensual and inclusivedevelopment model by makingdevelopment-induced displacement lesspainful and more beneficial for theproject-affected population in the Stateof Odisha in particular and in the countryin general.

Animesh Ghosh discussed the issuesof rehabilitation in the context of IndiraSagar (Polavaram) project located onriver Godavari in Polavaram mandal ofWest Godavari district in AndhraPradesh. The emergence of this projectwill submerge forest land as well as tribalhabitations in East Godavari and in WestGodavari districts. This project will lead

to submergence of 65,000 hectares offorest land and will affect nearly two lakhtribal families in Andhra Pradesh.

In order to provide the best packagesto project-affected families and toimplement a sound developmental plan,Government of India has formulateddetailed guidelines in the form of “TheRight to Fair Compensation andTransparency in Land Acquisition,Rehabilitation, and Resettlement(Second Amendment) Bill, 2015”.However, there are many issues ofconcern which have not been reflectedin the Bill. While drawing the LandAcquisition, Rehabilitation, andResettlement Plans, it is imperative toconsider all facets of the projects andshould be linked with the people,environment and socio-economicattributes of those areas. Landacquisition process involves significantimplications towards health,employment, livelihood, culture andsocial structure. In this background, thepresent paper has critically analysed theland acquisition, rehabilitation, andresettlement process adopted by theGovernment of Andhra Pradesh atRampachodavaram mandal in EastGodavari district by using ParticipatoryRural Appraisal (PRA) and Focus GroupDiscussion (FGD) and based on a mix ofsecondary data (compiled fromIntegrated Tribal Development Agency



(ITDA), Rampachodavaram) and primarydata collected from the affectedhouseholds.

Shri. Mohan Kumar’s presentation(co-author with Dr Sarmistha Patnaik)discussed the nature of land acquisitionthat has been taking place in the Stateof Odisha and its adverse implicationson the livelihood condition of affectedpopulation in general and tribal,including female members. There hasbeen a rising concern in understandingthe land use conflicts due toaccumulation of land and landacquisition through capitalisticexpansion and local people’s ownunderstanding of environmental changeand degradation due to thisaccumulation and acquisition process.To this end, the land acquisition issue inIndia has become more controversial andconflicting recently since itsamendment. Scholars have argued thatin its 117 years of existence, the LandAcquisition Act, 1894 (LAA 1894) hasinfluenced the expansion of the powerof the State to acquire and take overland. Premised on the doctrine of‘eminent domain’, it presumes a priorityto the requirements of the State which,by definition, is for the general good ofthe public, over the interests oflandowners and users. The doctrine ofeminent domain invests power in theState to acquire private land for public

purpose on payment of compensation.For several decades, developmentprojects in India have expropriated anddisplaced scores of people, and muchmore worst has been done under thedoctrine of ‘eminent domain.’

Apart from acquisition, alienation ofland has also been understood as aconcept in the form of‘depeasantisation’. The problem of landalienation is a much deeply connectedphenomenon with full of contradictionsrelated to the existing socio-economicorder. In the State of Odisha in India, theseparation of land from the tribalcommunities can be understood in amore scientific way with the help of thetheoretical formulations of the conceptof alienation of Marx as has beenconceptualised in the capitalist mode ofproduction in the industrial society.Forced displacement or deprivationthrough development projects as well asother forms of migration in India haveserious implications for a woman’seconomic and social status. Secondly,another consequence of such alienationand its impact on gender is looked in theform of the introduction of new relationsof power and dependency in a societythat formerly maintained separate maleand female realms and roles. Thesubaltern tribal women, after thealienation and displacement and afterbeing resettled, rarely maintain their



economic autonomy. In land-basedresettlement, land is allotted in the nameof individuals, invariably men, who areconsidered to be the heads of theirrespective households (An exception isthe female-headed household). Womenin subaltern groups had decision-makingpowers in the family and controlled itsproduction and economy as long as thecommunity sustained itself on CommonProperty Resources (CPRs). Withindividual pattas becoming the norm,power is transferred to the man and fromhim to his son. The woman is deprivedof her economic autonomy, ceases to bea decision maker and becomes fullydependent on men. Her social statusalso deteriorates with the emergence ofclass formation in what was previouslya more egalitarian society. In the past,she was not equal to men but had ahigher status than caste women did. Thissituation changes with the deprivationof her livelihood and the transformationof traditional institutions.

Against this backdrop, the presentstudy has been contextualised in Odishasince vast areas of lands in the State hasbeen acquired in the remote rural areas.Hence, any kind of acquisition by theState in the name of public purpose hasmade the tribal and peasants victims,who have borne the brunt of acquisitionover the last three to four decades.Mining activities in these areas have

various impacts on the naturalenvironment, most prominent of all theclearing of patches of tropical forest,land alienations and water pollutionresulting livelihoods loss. Understandingthe question of land and the currentprocess of acquisition need to be re-examined in the contemporarydevelopment discourse in India and moreparticularly, when there has been acontinuous conflict between the classes,castes, and communities and the Statedue to this acquisition and accumulationprocess.

More so, the implementation of thelegislations like Forest Rights Act, (FRA)in 2006 came up as a big challenge tothe government for the situation ofdisplacement in Odisha. Prior to the FRA,2006 coming into force, any occupationof forestland was considered to be anillegal encroachment (Pattanaik,forthcoming). The rights of thecommunities displaced from their forestland had never been duly recognised.Apart from that, due to mines and otherlarge industrial projects, there havebeen large-scale displacement of peopleand destruction of the environmentwhich have led to widespread grass-roots resistance (Kumar, 2014).

The study discusses the traditionalpolitical economy of the agrariantransition in Orissa and uses this



traditional historical approach as astarting point in understanding the landas a resource in the State. However, itfurther goes beyond this historicalapproach in understanding the issue of‘contemporary dispossession as anoutcome of land acquisition anddispossession; and other complex andconflicting issues surrounding the socio-cultural, political and ecological aspects.

A.D.Manikandan discussed (basedon his study co-authored with V. MathewKurian) the land alienation and landdegradation in Attappady, a tribal-dominated area in the State of Kerala.The main objectives of the study wereto understand the extent and factorscontributing for land alienation, landdegradation and their impacts on thelivelihood of the tribal households. It alsodiscussed tribal people’s perception ofland degradation. He observed that thatno single theory can adequately explainthe complex evolution of landdegradation and its effects on the triballivelihoods. So, the researchersemployed alternative theories viz.Malthusian, Neo-Malthusian, andBoserupian, Tragedy of the Commonsand Land Ethic in order to understandthe situation. Primary and secondarydata were used in the study. A total of380 tribal households were sampledusing mixed methods sampling. Severalmethods were administered to assess

land degradation, which include expertopinions, field observations, and opinionof land users, productivity changes, fieldmeasurements, remote sensing-GIS andeconometrics modelling methods thathelp in understanding land degradationat the field or farm level.

The organised land grabbing by non-tribal from the tribal people and theresultant land alienation of the pastdecades have weakened the social andpolitical bargaining power of the tribalpeople in their own territory. Leasing andmortgaging of land have emerged as thetwo ways in which possession continuesto be alienated from the tribes. Tribesare approaching non-tribes for a loan inthe event of a financial crisis. Whiledoing so, they pledge a part of their land.In most cases, however, they are unableto repay the borrowed amount, whichaccumulates interest over time and thisfinally ends up in the transfer ofownership in order to repay the amount.In other cases, non- tribes cultivate triballands on a nominal lease for a shortperiod of time to start with. In many ofthe reported cases, the non- tribal retainthe land even after the stipulated periodof time. In due course of time, the tribalpeople became predominantly landlesslabourers and reduced as minority inpopulation wise. Tribes are the worstvictims of land degradation because theincidence and intensity of the problem



is high in tribal areas due todeforestation and soil nutrients loss.

As a result, the agriculturalproductivity declined due to loss of soilnutrients and has resulted in low income,low food supply and low nutrition intakeamong tribal people. The study observedthat tribes have adequate knowledge ofland degradation, but they do not haveenough money to invest in soil and waterconservation. This underscores thesolution of the problem. The authorsuggested a Special Land DistributionAct in order to provide lands to landlesstribes.

The presentation was followed bycomments by discussants, Dr. SujitMishra and Dr. Shankar Rao and the floorwas opened for discussion. Severalquestions were addressed to the paperpresenters and these were clarified bythe paper writers. At the end, ProfessorDeepak Mishra thanked all participantsof the session.

VII.Land Rights and the RuralPoor

The fifth session technical sessionwas chaired by Professor Judith Heyerand consisted of three presentations. P.S. Geetakutty’s presentation highlightedthe functioning of group farming amongwomen in the State of Kerala and the

groups’ challenges of land accessibilityand farming profitability among them.Around one-fifth of women only ownoperational holdings in Kerala and thewomen belonging to land less andmarginal landholding families faceserious challenges in accessingfarmland for land-based livelihoods. Asin other parts of India, thoughtraditionally rural women of Kerala wereengaged in primary farming as co-farmers (of men-headed households),and farmers (of women-headedhouseholds), their participation was notformally recognised or treated assignificant for agricultural planning anddevelopment in the State. Till recently,the participation of the femaleagricultural workers as hired labour onlyhad gained recognition as women’sparticipation in the agricultural context.The pilot scheme on Central SectorWomen in Agriculture (CSWIA)implemented in Kerala from 1996 to2005 by the Department of Agriculturewas the foremost development effort inthe State that had enabled selected ruralwomen groups in various districts toinitiate collective activities of primaryfarming. Then also, majority of thesegroups had started group-based farmingactivities on hired lands obtained fromthe owners of lands who do not cultivate.As leasing of land has been legallybanned in Kerala since 1963, informal



leasing or hiring was the only way oftransaction involved in such activities ofland accessing by the women groups.Evaluative study conducted on theCSWIA scheme (Geethakutty etal., 2006)had highlighted the initiative and thepotential of the same for the promotionof the participation of women in group-based primary farming activities. Thestudy also pointed out the lack ofaccessibility of farmlands and farmcredit as two prime challenges faced bythem to continue the newly foundlivelihood activity. Though the CSWIAhad developed promising impressionwith regard to the scope of participationand recognition of women in farming atvarious levels of planning anddevelopment, somehow the scheme wasnot continued by the Ministry ofAgriculture. Subsequent to thewithdrawal of the interventions of theCSWIA scheme, most of the womengroups formed under the scheme hadalso discontinued their collectivefarming activities. It is important to notethat a few of them were able to sustaintheir collective farming as part of theincome generating group activitiesinitiated under the KudumbashreeMission of Kerala. It was also a juncturewherein the farming sector in the Statewas facing crisis and fallowing of landamong land owners had become aprevalent trend.

The large-scale abandoning ofwetland farming by the land owningclass in Kerala is to be considered as oneof the important factors which hadcatalysed the entry and visibility of therural women of landless and marginallandholding families as farmers inKerala; the other push factors being themicro credit and institutional support thewomen groups could avail throughKudumbashree Mission at grassroots.Due to the legal ban on land leasing, ingeneral, the owners of fallow lands arereluctant to hire out their lands andprovide formal records of hiring out. Inaddition to this, rarely the women groupsare able to access the same lands inconsecutive seasons and/or years fromthe owners. This often leads todiscontinuing of the farming by the groupor limiting their farming efforts towhatever area available. Despite allthese challenges, a large number ofwomen groups of Kudumbashree wereable to hire in land and take up farmingas income generating activities. Thetrend, in fact, had persuaded theKudumbashree Mission to promotegroup farming as a rural livelihoodactivity among its members by availing(of) the funds from the Mahila KisanSashaktikaran Pariyojana (MKSP) ofthe Ministry of Rural Development in2011.



Simultaneously, the introduction ofthe Joint Liability Group (JLG) scheme by(NABARD) in 2007 had also enhancedavailability of farm loan facility with lowinterest among farmer groups engagedon hired or leased lands. Around 3 lakhrural women are engaged in JLG farminggroups under the Kudumbashree inKerala. These women groups undertookcultivation in 48,347 hectares of land in2014 and 93.66 percentage of the landwas hired in from land owners. However,no effective interventions are in placein the State to address the challengesthe landless women groups face inaccessing land on a sustainable basis.Hence, the Centre for Gender Studies inAgriculture of the Kerala AgriculturalUniversity had taken initiative tosensitise the stakeholders about thechallenges women groups face inaccessing land on hiring and how theabsence of formal hiring records isleading to profitability loss in theirfarming on hired lands. In this regard,one field survey and two stakeholderconsultations were organised during2015-17 with the support of theNABARD.

The study observed that the womengroups engaged in hired land farming aremostly without proper documents of landhiring. In the absence of land ownershipor hiring records, the development

departments are unable to considerthem as farmers and to provide themwith the eligible farming support andservices (bonus of fallow land farming,input subsidies, insurance claims,procurement price support, etc). It isimportant to note that though variousagricultural and rural developmentprogrammes introduced in the recentpast such as JLG Scheme by NABARD,Kudumbasree Mission for PovertyAlleviation by Department of RuralDevelopment, Fallow Land RiceCultivation from the Department ofAgriculture, etc., are promotingcultivation in hired land, guidelines forhired land farming do not exist in Kerala.In the absence of such a guideline, thesewomen collectives are facing the hurdlesof informal land hiring practices andassociated exclusion from thedevelopment system. These constraintsare seriously affecting the profitabilityand sustainability of their farmingactivity.

The potential role the local self-governments should initiate in setting upgram panchayat-based farmland banks,strict monitoring on implementation ofthe Kerala Conservation of Paddy Landand Wetland Act, effective convergencebetween the Department of Agricultureand Kudumbashree and introduction ofguidelines for hired land farming were



some of the policy recommendations thestudy had advocated to enhance landaccessibility and availability of farmland among the local women groups.

Ankita Goyal’s paper discussed thenature of customary land tenure systemand its impacts on their livelihoodpatterns, food security and poverty inselected districts of Jharkhand andMeghalaya. The paper shows lot ofvariation in the land tenure systems indifferent areas. But, the status of womenwith regard to land rights remains moreor less similar. A system of lease for fixedcash is more prevalent in Khasi andJaintia Hills; share cropping is thepredominant form of lease in Garo Hills.The paper has also noted that there is agrowing tendency towards individualownership and occupancy rights of land.Besides, lot of non-tribal businessmenand bureaucrats residing in Shillong aswell as Nepali cultivators are reportedto have purchased land and become apart of the local land use and localgovernance systems. Also, large areasof land on the border of Assam andMeghalaya have reportedly been sold bythe tribals to non-tribals. It is happeningin Jharkhand too. In Jharkhand, thetransfer of tribal land to non-tribals byway of gift or adverse possession of landis quite common. In most places,community land has been transferred to

individuals, including both tribal andnon-tribal. Lot of forest lands wereacquired by the government,dispossessing many tribal families anddepriving them from their importantsource of livelihood. .

There seems to be pros as well ascons of both community ownership andindividual ownership of agricultural landand that system alone is not helping theuplift of these marginalisedcommunities. With proper agricultureextension services, marketing,transportation and better irrigationfacilities, the agriculturists will certainlybenefit.

The paper argued that it is certainlybetter in terms of collective security ofthe indigenous people but without properinfrastructural support, the poor farmerwill remain in deplorable condition. Thecustomary land tenure systems serve theinterest of the poor household better.Besides, based on the perceptive views,it can be said that women feel moresecure under customary laws than whatcan be expected from the market laid/individual land ownership kind of landgovernance system.

Paridhi Kindo (jointly written withPradip Kumar Bhowmick) discussed theissues with regard to the land rights oftribes in Jharkhand. The paper noted that



tribal people are one of the mostvulnerable, marginalised and isolated/excluded social groups in the process ofthe development. Despite impressiveeconomic growth shown in recent yearsand specific measures (protective andpromotional) undertaken for tribaldevelopment, these communities arestill lagging behind in terms of severalsocio-economic indicators. There is aconcern over how to protect the currentsources of livelihood and promoteeconomic and human development ofthese communities through vibrant andpro-poor institutions. The governmenthas introduced many Acts relating to landrights of tribes such as the ChotanagpurTenancy Act (CNTA), 1908 and SanthalParganas Tenancy Act (SPTA), 1949, thePanchayats Extension to ScheduledAreas Act (PESA) and Forest Rights Act(FRA) over the years.

Here the question arises: Dodifferent land rights Acts really addressland issues and development of tribes?This paper has tried to address thisquestion. The main objectives of thestudy were to examine the different Actsof Tribal Land Rights in Jharkhand andto find out as to whether they areleading towards development of thetribal clan; and to explore the challengesand opportunities in implementation ofForest Right Act in Jharkhand.Unfortunately, till date, the development

approach followed is not organicallylinked to the roots. As a result, the tribalshave benefitted the least. Experiencefrom the field shows that most of theJoint Forest Management (JFM)communities that are selected by theForest Department for theimplementation of JFM are not based onproper assessment of the potential ofthe JFM communities for collectiveaction. Consequently, many JFMcommunities have failed to organisethemselves as an institution, leading tounsuccessful forest management andprotection. The study found that theForest Rights Act has not beenimplemented properly in the State. Thereis need for effective implementation ofthis Act by different stakeholders.

Presentation of papers was followedby comments by the discussant,Professor G. Omkarnath. He felt happyto find papers drawn from three differentregions. These papers were extremelyinteresting and the presentations wereclear and lively. He said that land userights in general and the variety of landuse rights and its performance in relationto women are of importance. Referringto Geethakutty’s paper on group farmingamong women in Kerala, he said that itis a big issue because land is essentialmeans of production in agriculture andit is non- reproducible resource.Ownership and control of land invariably



enter into the socioeconomic powerstructures. Land also acquires as astrategy of development. In independentIndia, industrialisation was emphasisedas important strategy of developmentbut the absorption of labour force in jobswas very low. Majority of workforce haveto fall back on rural areas and especiallyin agricultural sector. As a result, itexerted continuous pressure on land asan important source livelihood. But, abulk of the population dependent onagriculture could not diversify theactivities other than agriculture. This ledto severity of problem related to povertyand women’s well-being. In a State likeKerala, there is no development ofbroad-based industries. In agriculture,there has been decline of area underpaddy for a long time and there iscompeting demand for land for housingespecially for the gulf returnees. In sucha scenario, the community farminginvolving women under theKudumbashree Mission has its ownimportance. But these groups requiresupport from different stakeholders tomake them viable and sustainable.

In regard to the paper on customaryland tenure in Jharkhand and Meghalaya,Professor Omkarnath said that onerequires objective conditions at theground level about the productivity,efficiency of communal land tenure andthat of private farming. Professor

Omkarnath agreed with K indo’sobservations that there is an urgentneed to monitor on a continuous basisthe operation of different land Acts aswell as the Forest Right Act, 2006 andsystems in operation in various Statesat the grassroots level. One gets theimpression that FRA, 2006, especially inJharkhand, is operating on a top-downapproach and does not seem to involvepeople’s organisation, and there is nodemocratic decision making at the locallevel. After the comments of thediscussant, the floor was opened fordiscussions. Several questions wereaddressed to the paper presenters andthese were addressed by them.

Many participants reported thatseveral civil society organisations havecome together and become stakeholdersfor implementation of FRA, 2006 inJharkhand. Similarly, there has beenawareness among the people inJharkhand as to how to safeguard theirland from predators who are interestedto acquire huge amount of land.Professor Judith Heyer thanked all theparticipants for the useful deliberation.

VIII. Digitalisation of Land Records in India

The last technical session waschaired by Professor M. Thangraj and ithad two presentations. Pradeep Nayakfocused on the working of the



digitisation of land recordsmodernisation programmes initiatedsince the 1990s in India. The paperunraveled interesting developments thathave emerged in the light of nearly threedecades of land records digitisationprogramme in India. By studying thecomputerisation or land recordsmodernisation programmes in India, oneis required to straddle many aspects ofthe subject matter such as the historiclegacy of the land records management;role of the State and its policy shifts inland records management; impact ofcomputerisation on its bureaucracy; thecapacity of the government officials tohandle delivery of CLRs; role of thepolitical and administrative leadership;and role of ICTs in contributinggovernance reforms and its impact ondemocratic governance, citizenship,federalism and development process.

It is claimed by the State that e-governance would provide increasedtransparency, greater accountability,impact on corruption, greaterconvenience to citizens, revenue growthand cost reduction. The National LandRecords Modernisation Programme(NLRMP) as “a high-tech and complexproject” seeks to computerise the landrecords, digitise cadastral maps,integrate registry with tahsil /taluka/mandal and undertake modern landsurvey and mapping for providing citizen

services like issue of Record of Rights(RoRs), online correction, maintenanceand updating of land records. Ultimately,the Centrally-sponsored scheme seeksto switch over from the presentpresumptive land titles to a conclusivetitle system. The paper criticallyexamined these assertions of the IndianState in the light to the actual workingof the digitisation programme broughtfrom the findings from field study.

The importance of up-to-date landrecords in effective implementation ofredistributive land reforms has been aconstant refrain in all public policydocuments on land questions and anyacademic studies on the impact of landreform measures. Interestingly, the soleobjective of the contemporary landrecords modernisation programme is todo way with the existing presumptivenature of land records and implementconclusive title guarantee system inwhich the State would provide titleguarantee to land holders not theimplementation of land reforms. Thispolicy shift is certainly a historicreorientation of India’s land policy. Thepaper made an attempt to bring out theimpact of digitisation programme, basedon comparative study in Karnataka andOdisha, its constraints and emergingtrends.

The next paper was on Status ofComputerisation of Land Records in



Punjab and its Impact on Credit Flow toFarmers by Sher Singh Sangwan. Thefindings of this paper were based on astudy conducted by author for NABARDwith a view to examine the status ofComputerisation of Land Records (CLRs)in Punjab and their impact on ease inaccessing and on increasing bank creditand tenancy. The district-wise status ofCLRs was obtained from the office of thePunjab Land Records Society. To studythe impact of CLRs, 180 farmers wereinterviewed from 12 branches ofdifferent banks in two tehsils of Samralaand Payal in Ludhiana district of theState. The main findings of the studiesare as follow.

The CLRs of rural areas in respectof villages made alive, updating ofmutations and rapats is almost 100 percent as compared to 70 per cent forurban Khewats as the later were reportedmore cumbersome with frequentchanges. The nakal (copy) of Jamabandi(ownership) is available from FaradKendra at tehsil level since last quarterof 2011. The computerised Jamabandi isaccepted by all banks for any type of loanand security. The availability ofcomputerised revenue record wasreported as very convenient, time andcost saving by the farmers and bankers.It is easy to monitor ones records on thewebsite. The analysis of trend inagricultural credit in terms of number

and amount revealed that the numberof loans after 2011 declined for twoyears compared to steep growth during2004-05 to 2008-09 but the KCCs againincreased since 2013-14. Hence, CLRsalone may not affect credit offtake.Perhaps, some other policies likedoubling of agricultural credit during2004-08, interest subventions on KCC in2006&2011 and liberal KCC coveragesince 2012 may have affected the trendin credit flow.

Further, a few policy changes arerequired to leverage full benefits ofdigitalisation of land records. Farmershave still to take the no encumbrancecertificate (NEC) which is costing themminimum Rs.1000 and it takes severaldays through an advocate. As discussedwith officials of the Punjab Land RecordSociety and bankers, CLR is anauthenticated and updated document inall respects which has been cross-checked at three stages and its lateststatus copy is again obtained aftermortgage with the bank. Therefore, apolicy decision is required to dispensewith requirement of NEC and some otherrelated documents to give full benefit ofCLRs. As regards financing for leased inland, there is no provision to record thename of tenant in CLRs. However,bankers in Punjab are informallyincluding the leased-in land forenhancing KCC limit, if any affidavit



given by the tenant or a letter by Patwarithat the farmer concerned is leasing inso much of land. The State governmentsmay prescribe a certain type of formatwhich can be given on the basis of dairyrecords of the Patwari to the tenantfarmer against payment of fixedcharges. Banks should also considerincluding the leased rent in KCC to someextent, say 50 per cent, which has to begiven in advance by the tenant. Thepresentation of papers was followed bydiscussion. Chairman of the session,Professor M. Tangaraj, thanked thepaper presenters and the participants forthe useful deliberation.

IX. Valedictory Session

The valedictory session was chairedby Professor G. Nancharaiah. Beforerequesting Prof. Haque to deliver hislecture he made few observations.Though the share of agriculture in thenational income has come down, but stillit is important sector in terms ofsupporting more that 50 per cent of thework force.

In rural economy land plays a crucialrole in terms of important source ofincome and symbol of social status.Even today, the occupations of Indianvillagers are organised on caste line withsome deviations. Despite severalmeasures taken by the States, theinequality in the ownership as well as

operational holdings of land amongsocial groups is very high and it isconcentrated among the higher castesgroups. The marginalised communitiescould not gain much in terms of accessto land except in few States such asWest Bengal to some extent.

Further, the tribals have beenaffected severely due to land acquisitionby the State for the developmentalpurposes as well as usurious practice ofmoney lending persisting despite theefforts of the States to prevent the same.Professor Nancharaiah emphasised thatthe States have to take proactive stepsin providing land and other necessarycapital to marginalised communities.This will be step towards for inclusivedevelopment.

Valedictory Address

Thanking the organisers of theseminar and Professor Nancharaiah,Professor Haque began the valedictoryaddress by stating that land, water,forests and animals are the mostimportant resources of India which needto be preserved, protected and utilisedfor improving the lives of poor.

Of these, access to land is crucialfor the livelihood and food security of alarge segment of India’s rural population.However, the incidence of landlessnessin rural India in general, and among themarginalised groups is very high. Even



if they want to switch from agricultureto other forms of employment, theyseldom get appropriate opportunitiesdue to lack of adequate and appropriateeducation and skill. Thus, for such peopleat least, access to land is critical tolivelihood.

Land is not only a source oflivelihood for about half of India’sworkforce, but also it is in growingdemand for the purpose of housing,urbanisation and industrialisation.Therefore, our land policy should (besuch that it) ensure efficient, equitableand sustainable use of land foraccelerated, diversified and inclusiveeconomic growth.

Taking a look at the evolution ofsome of the land reform policies thathave been formulated, in 1956 the Indiangovernment passed laws to abolish thezamindari system which involvesintermediaries. Initially, there weremany problems. For instance, some land-owners resorted to eviction of tenantson the pretext of self-cultivation usingvarious legal as well as administrativeweaknesses, but over time land keptdividing and sub-dividing and now hardlyany intermediaries are found. In respectof the tenancy reforms introduced in the1960s, 1970s and 1980s, Kerala andJammu & Kashmir have, without anyexception, prohibited land leasingaltogether, while most other Statesallowed it in a highly restrictive manner;

for instance, to widows, minors, defencepersonnel, physically and mentallychallenged and some such restrictedcategories, but not other people ingeneral. As a result of tenancy reform,on the one hand, about 12.6 milliontenants were conferred occupancyrights over 6.7 million hectares of land,but on the other, it resulted in large-scaleeviction of tenants. Many landownersprefer to keep their lands fallow due tofear of losing their rights over the land.This resulted into underutilisation ofscarce land resources. Thus, restrictivetenancy law has slowed down bothproductivity and the pace of much-needed occupational mobility and ruraltransformation.

Coming to ceiling, in the 1950s, bothWest Bengal and Jammu & Kashmirimposed ceilings on land along with theabolition of intermediaries. As a result,there was little manipulation from theintermediaries to keep land tothemselves or divide or sub-divide theland. This is one reason why land reformswere relatively successful, at least incase of West Bengal. But, in other cases,during the second phase of ceiling from1960 to 1970, the ceiling levels were alittle higher. Presently, ceilings rangebetween 3.68 hectares and 28.3hectares for different categories of land,except in some places like Rajasthanwhere quantum of ceiling is highbecause it is mostly a desert. So far,



about 5 million acres of ceiling surplusland have been distributed among 5.4million families, of which 2.1 millionbelong to SCs, 0.9 million STs and 2.4million other castes. The State of WestBengal alone distributed one millionacres among 2.5 million beneficiaries.However, as of now, there is hardly anyscope or political will to redistribute theceiled land which has been divided andsub-divided over time.

In case of bhoodan and gramdanlands, we find that 4.9 million acres ofland was donated all over India, of which3.2 million acres were distributed topoor rural households. However, 1.10million acres of land that was donatedwas found “not fit” for cultivation.

Despite stringent laws, the problemof land alienation in tribal areascontinues. It may be attributed to variousreasons such as acquisition of land bythe government, manipulation of recorddue to defective surveys and settlementsand non-recording of possession; and,granting of easy possession for purchaseof tribal land by local level competentauthority or benami purchases. In fact,attempts were made by the Stategovernments to identify and restore landto the tribals, but in nearly 50 per centof the cases, the tribals lost their landfollowing court rulings.

The Ministry of Rural Developmentinitiated a scheme for computerisationof land records initially on pilot basis in

1988-89 and as a full-fledgedprogramme in 1992-93. But so far, theprogress is quite unsatisfactory, exceptin a few States like Karnataka, AndhraPradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan,Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. It must benoted that e-governance is not asubstitute for good governance ashardcore jobs such as correcting andupdating land records, recordingencroachments, verifying mutation in thefield and observing changes in landrequire capacity building of officials.Besides, none of the State governmentswere able to finish fresh revisionalsurveys of land. As a result, land recordshave not been updated due tounsatisfactory nature of the outputs ofthe survey operations and theexploitative nature of the wholeprocess. Therefore, State governmentswill have to devise a method by whichRoR (Record of Right) can take placewithout conducting survey operations inthe present mode. The Warangal modelof digitisation and updation of landrecords which involves communityparticipation, legal and paralegalassistance and active support of thelocal level revenue officer is critical inthis regard.

The biggest challenges the countryfacing today are as follows: to improveaccess to land for the rural poor by wayof redistribution of available ceilingsurplus land; legalise land leasing to helpimprove land ownership security for the



landowners and land tenure security forthe tenants as well as help raiseagricultural productivity; protect land andforest rights of tribals; provide legal andinstitutional framework for adequate andsecure land rights of women; prepare,update and digitise accurate record ofland rights on a regular basis; and,formulate and implement farmer-friendlyland acquisition policies as well asrehabilitate the affected families.

Under the present circumstances,we need to focus on the followingoptions to achieve these objectives: (i)Government should allocate at least 10-15 per cent of the land to 20 millionlandless families, giving patta in thename of women or joint patta in thename of husband and wife or even asingle woman. (ii) Under the PradhanMantri Gramin Awas Yojana, the ruralhousing scheme of the government, theconcept of land purchase for houseconstruction for eligible rural landlessfamilies should be modified to provideat least 10 per cent of land and not 2–3per cent. A guaranteed access tohomestead plot of 10 per cent in sizewould create a sense of livelihoodsecurity for the landless poor. (iii) Landleasing should be legalised within theceiling limits in all States to improveaccess to land for the rural poor. (iv)There should be a special land tribunalin every State to expeditiously disposeof all ceiling surplus cases and distributethe nearly 2.0 million acres of land which

is presently under litigation. (v)Encroachment by land mafia and the richand should be freed for redistributionamong the eligible landless and semi-landless families. (vi) Effectiveimplementation of the Forest Rights Act,2006 for conferring real ownership andutilisation rights over forest resourcesby the tribal and other forest dwellers,for which massive legal aid andawareness building campaign amongtribals and forest officials would haveto be initiated. (vii) Ensure effectiveimplementation of Hindu Succession(Amendment) Act, 2005 and also enacta national law empowering women of allreligions, castes and region by providingownership and inheritance rights towomen over agricultural and non-agricultural land in respect of bothparental and husband’s land. (viii)Updation and digitisation of land recordand village maps coupled withverification of ground truth in a time-bound and cost-effective manner, withparticipation of Gram Sabha is critical forpromoting private investment forincreased agricultural production andproductivity. It will facilitate farmers’access to bank credit, insurance,disaster relief, and marketing and othersupport services. (ix) Use innovativeways that minimise the need for landacquisition for urban expansion.

The seminar was concluded with avote of thanks by Professor KailashSarap.



X. Policy Brief

Land rights became an importantagenda of Sustainable DevelopmentGoals (SDGs) formulated in 2015 alongwith poverty eradication and foodsecurity at the global level. Earlier in2012, the Voluntary Guidelines on theResponsible Governance of Tenure ofLand, Fisheries and Forests in theContext of National Food Security(VGGT), an internationally negotiateddocument by the Committee on WorldFood Security (CFS) under the Food andAgriculture Organisation of the UN(FAO), is now encouraged by G20, Rio+20, United Nations General Assembly andmany others. Land policy is crucial forgovernance, and a key component ofsome government programmes. Thereare many challenges in India relating toland rights for sustainable, inclusive andgood governance.

The participants ranging fromacademic researchers, policymakers, andNGOs functionaries cutting acrossdifferent disciplines and backgroundsidentified a number of issues andconcerns relating to land market andsuggested measures to assure moreequitable access to land to poor. Sixtechnical sessions were devoted fordeliberations on the above theme.

Suggestions emerged from thediscussions of the seminar are givenbelow:

Land to Landless and Other LandPoor Households

Absolute landless households optingfor agriculture for sustenanceshould be provided sufficient1 landfor cultivation along with theschemes, easy credit and supportto ensure sustained economicprogress.

Absolute landless to be providedhouse site of at least 10-15 centsof land along with support forhousing, kitchen garden and animalshed.

There is a need to prioritise landdistribution to the landless givingfirst priority to very vulnerablesections such as single woman,female-headed households, victimof natural calamities, andcommunal, caste and ethnicviolence, the internally displaceddue to development projects andviolence, destitutes, manualscavengers, and other sociallyvulnerable and marginalised groups.

1 Land available from ceiling surplus land, Bhoodan land, land encroached by ineligible personsand government land can be utilised for this purpose.



Determination and recognition /regularisation of possession and/oruse of government land/communityland by eligible persons forlivelihood needs includingresidence, and as legal rights.

Women’s Access to Land right

Title of land ownership to be jointlyheld by the spouses as far aspossible.

Land title in the name of women inthe case of single women andwomen-headed household.

Determining and recognisingwomen’s occupation and access toland and its resources ongovernment and community land ona priority basis to secure, ensureand increase women’s access andownership to.

Ensure effective implementation offeatures of Hindu Succession(Amendment) Act, 2005 enactednational law for empoweringwomen belonging to all religions,castes, and regions by providingownership and rights to women overagriculture/ non-agriculture land inrespect of both parental andhusband’s land.

Lowering stamp duty andregistration fee in all cases whereland is registered in their name, ifnot done yet.

Land Leasing: Individual andGroup

Land leasing should be legalisedwithin the ceiling limits in all theStates to protect the interest ofmarginal and small farmers.

Leasing of all unused, potentiallycultivable lands, includingendowment lands, canalembankments, inland fisheriesrights, etc., to landless poor, womenand other such vulnerable groupsand recognise them as validcategory of landowners and leasers.

Lease farming groups like jointliability groups (JLG) underKudumbashree mission in Keralacan be replicated in other areas asfar as possible. Government issupporting and promoting thesegroups under the National RuralLivelihood Mission (NRLM).

Encourage and provide priority toleasing of land by workerscooperatives.



Effective Implementation ofForest Right Act, PESA and LARR

PESA, FRA and LARR are legalinstruments that have to bestrengthened in law and practice,and expanded to cover themaximum ST population along withrelated other laws such as theScheduled Caste and ScheduledTribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act,1989 and relevant orders, directionsand guidelines among theconcerned political andadministrative structures besidesthe communities.

First priority to be given todemarcation and conferment oftitles to the Gram Sabhas forCommunity Forest Resources, thecustomary common forest landwithin the traditional or customaryboundaries of the village orseasonal use of landscape in thecase of pastoral communities

Massive legal aid and awarenessbuilding campaign among tribals andother officers are to be carried out.

Convergence of all programmesrelated to development forimproving productivity of FRA landand to enhance the livelihood of FRAforest rights holders.

Ensure no land acquisition is carriedout in Scheduled Areas as far aspossible as provided for in the Rightto Fair Compensation andTransparency in Land Acquisition,Rehabilitation and Resettlement Actof 2013 (LARR) by introducing freeprior informed consent of the GramSabhas, besides the affectedpersons.

Ensure that the consent provisionsfor land acquisition and forestdiversion are strictly followed withadequate participation of womenand with 50 per cent quorum.

Community Land Rights in Tribaland Plain Areas

Codify customary rights on land andresources uses in all tribal areas,including the north east region atthe community and Gram Sabhalevel through a participatory processin order to safeguard the interestof the communities.

Legal recognition of communityrights to safeguard againstprivatisation of such resources inthe context of peasantdifferentiation should go hand inhand with; the State’s responsibilityto protect such community rightsagainst attempt to privatise them



from within or outside thecommunity.

Determination of rights by the GramSabha and recognition of customaryand traditional rights over revenueland remains to be legislated.

Every State with Scheduled Area toestablish a ‘Land ConsolidationFund’ (LCF) to enable the GramSabhas in the Scheduled Areas topurchase those lands at marketprices that come up for sale by andamongst tribals and non-tribals, andbetween tribals to non-tribals; theselands which are to be inalienableand non-transferable are to be usedas community lands or by thelandless and marginalised tribals asdetermined by the Gram Sabha.

A speedy, effective and accessiblecriminal justice system for enforcingthese laws add to ensuring tenurialsecurity.

Land Governance

Updating and digitisation of landrecords, village maps after groundtruthing and approval of and certificationby Gram Sabhas in a time-bound andcost-effective manner to ensure securityof tenurial rights with accurate updatedland records.

All transfer of lands to be verifiedby the Gram Sabhas as genuine and asper proper procedures.

Focus on improving cadastral mapsof the area.

System of title registration.

Systematic recording of land,recognition of land and resourcerights, occupation, possession, andland use, whether seasonal orcontinuous, whether use by differentcommunities for same or differentuse of the same land on allcategories of government andcommunity land.

There is a need to record the nameof tenants and leased area incomputerised land records (CLRs).

Land Administration

Consolidation and simplifying ofland legislations by all the Statesto update and remove irrelevant,complex and outdated provisions inlaw and practice.

Increasing awareness on landlegislation enhances knowledge andpower of right holders over land andresources, whether individual,collective or communities.



Incidence of land dispute has to bereduced. Access to legal servicesto poor/landless through legal aidservices, the law department, NGOsand through customary communitydispute resolution methods.

Land Acquisition

Ensure that there is awareness ofthe provisions of LARR, PESA andFRA along with related other laws

such as the Scheduled Castes andScheduled Tribes (Prevention ofAtrocities) Act, 1989 and relevantorders, directions and guidelinesamong the concerned administrativeand policies personnel, besidesAdivasis (tribals).

Use innovative ways that minimisethe need for land acquisition forthe infrastructure and urbanexpansion.



LIST OF KEY PARTICIPANTS

1 Professor R. Radhakrishna, Chairman,Centre for Economic Social Studies,Hyderabad, & Chairman, S.R. Sankaran ChairAdvisory Committee ---

2 Professor T. Haque, Council forSocial Development (CSD), New Delhi ---

3 Professor Sucha Singh Gill,Centre for Research in Rural and IndustrialDevelopment, Chandigarh ---

4 Professor G. Nancharaiah, Former Dean,School of Economics, University of Hyderabad ---

5 Professor Vikas Rawal, Centre forEconomic Studies and Planning,Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi [email protected]

6 Professor Ritu Dewan, Former Director &Professor, Department of Economics, Mumbai [email protected]

7 Professor(retired) M. Mohan RaoAndhra University, Vishakapatnam [email protected]

8 Dr. Judith Heyer, Emeritus Fellow,Oxford University OX2,CHD,Somerville College, [email protected]

9 Professor Sher Singh Sangwan,SBI Chair, Centre for Research inRural and Industrial Development, Chandigarh [email protected]

10 Professor M. TangarajFormer Professor, Department ofEconomics, University of Madras Chennai [email protected]

11 Professor Raj Kishore Meher,NKCCDS, Bhubaneswar [email protected]

12 Mr.C.R Bijoy,Independent Researcher,Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu cr,[email protected]

13 Professor Geethakutty,Project Coordinator,Centre for Gender Studies,Kerala Agriculture University [email protected]

S. No. Name & Designation Email



14 Professor G. OmkarnathSchool of Economics,Central University of Hyderabad [email protected]

15 Dr. Ch. Radhika RaniAssociate Professor,Head of Centre for Agrarian Studies,NIRD&PR, Hyderabad [email protected]

16 Dr. Partha Pratim SahuAssociate Professor,Centre for EntrepreneurshipDevelopment, NIRD&PR, Hyderabad [email protected]

17 Dr. Sujith MishraAssociate Professor,Centre for Social Development, Hyderabad [email protected]

18 Dr. Sharmishta PatnaikAssociate Professor,Department of Humanities andSocial Sciences , IIT Bombay [email protected]

19 Dr. Surjit VikramanAssociate Professor, Centre forCorporate Social Responsibility,NIRD&PR, Hyderabad [email protected]

20 Dr. G. VijayAssistant Professor, School ofEconomics, University of Hyderabad [email protected]

21 Ms. Vaishali BansalPh.D Scholar,Centre for Economic Studies and Planning,Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi [email protected]

22 Dr. Shyamal Kumar JanaProgramme Manager, West Bengal [email protected]

23 Dr. Anju Helen BalaAssistant Professor,Central University of South Bihar, Gaya [email protected]

24 Dr. Ch. Shankar RaoAssistant Professor,Council for Social Development, Hyderabad [email protected]

25 Dr. Dinesh Kumar NayakEconomist, National Institute ofPublic Finance and Policy, New Delhi [email protected]




26 Mr. Jeetendra KumarPh.D Scholar,School of Economics, University of Hyderabad [email protected]

27 Mr. Animesh GhoshO.S.D NIRD&PR, Hyderabad [email protected]

28 Mr. Mohan Kumar NaikPh.D Scholar,Department of Humanities andSocial Sciences, IIT Bombay [email protected]

29 Dr. A.D ManikandanResearch Officer, S.R Sankaran Chair,NIRD&PR, Hyderabad [email protected]

30 Ms. Ankita GoyalAssistant Professor, Centre forSocial Development, New Delhi [email protected]

31 Ms. Dipti Paridhi KindoPh.D.Scholar,RDC, IIT Kharagpur [email protected]

32 Dr. Pradeep NayakSenior Civil Servant,Government of Odisha [email protected]

33 Mr. Jogindra NaikPh.D Scholar,Centre for Economic andSocial Studies (CESS), Hyderabad [email protected]

34 Dr. JagadeeshConsultant,Centre for Agrarian Studies,NIRD&PR, Hyderabad [email protected]

35 Dr. Digambar A ChimankarAssociate Professor,Centre for Wage Employment,NIRD&PR, Hyderabad [email protected]

36 Dr. Ruchira BhattacharyaAssistant Professor,Centre for Gender Studies and Development [email protected]




S. R. Sankaran Chair (Rural Labour)National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, Hyderabad

National Seminar onLand Market and the Rural Poor

January 18-19, 2018

Day 1 18thJanuary, 2018 (Thursday)

9.30 AM to 10.00 AM : Registration (S.K. Rau Conference Hall)

10.00 AM – 11.30 AM : Chairperson: Professor R. Radhakrishna

: Welcome Address: Dr. W.R. Reddy, IAS

: About the Seminar – Professor Kailash Sarap

: Inaugural Address – Professor Y.K. Alagh

: Vote of Thanks – Dr. Ch. Radhika Rani

Technical Session I

11.45 AM – 01.30 PM Chairperson: Professor Alak N. Sharma Access to Landand Land Rights

1 Changes in Incidence of Agricultural Tenancy in India,Vikas Rawal & Vaishali Bansal

2 Land Lease Market and Rural Poor in Punjab, SuchaSingh Gill

3 Land Lease Market and the Rural Poor: Evidence fromField Experience in AP, M. Mohan Rao

Discussant: S.S Sangwan

Technical Session II

Chairperson: Professor D.N. ReddyGender and Land Right

2.30 PM – 4.15 PM 4 Land Rights of the Marginalised: India & Maharashtra,Ritu Dewan

5 Methods and Approaches for Addressing Gender Gapsin Land Distribution Programmes: A Study in WestBengal, S.K. Jana

Programme Schedule



6 Women, Land and Laws of Inheritance: A Study ofCustomary Practices among the Oraon Tribe inJharkhand, Anju Helen Bala

7 Gender Dispossession and the Transformation of LandRights in Arunachal Pradesh, Vandana

Discussant: Vikas Rawal

Technical Session III

Chairperson: Professor S.S. GillLand Market: Regional Scenario

4.30 PM to 5.45PM 8 Land, Class and Gender in India, M. Thankaraj

9 Political Economy of Informal Land Markets in North-East India: Insights from Arunachal Pradesh, India,Deepak Mishra

10 The Impact of Changing Land Markets in Tiruppur/Coimbatore Villages, Judiyth Hyer

11 Land Price Bubble: Dynamics of Agricultural Land SaleMarket and its Implications on Agriculture in AndhraPradesh, Shankar Rao

12 Emerging Issues in Landholding Structure: A State-levelAnalysis, Dinesh Kumar Nayak and P.P Sahu

13 Changing Land Structure in Rural Madhya Pradesh: ACase Study of Digatpura V illage, Morena District,1961-2014, Jeetendra Kumar

Discussant: G. Vijay

Day 2: 19th January, 2018 (Friday)

Technical Session IV Chairperson: Professor Deepak Mishra

Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation in Tribal Areas

9.20 AM to 11.120 AM 14 Rendering Land Acquisition Legible: Redefining itsBorders and Frontiers, C.R. Bijoy

15 Can the New LARR Act 2013 Prevent ImpoverishmentRisk of Marginalised People Loosing Land (Agriculturaland Forest) for Development Projects in India: TheCase of Odisha: Rajkishor Meher

16 Adopted Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation andResettlement Process at Rampachodavaram in AP,Animesh Ghosh

17 Land Acquisition and Livelihood Insecurity threedistrict of Odisha, Sharmishta Pattanaik and MohonKumar Naik



Organising CommitteeDr. W.R. Reddy, IAS, Director General, NIRD&PRDr. Radhika Rani, Head, In-charge, Centre for Agrarian StudiesDr. Kailash Sarap, Professor and Convener & Secretary, S.R. Sankaran Chair(Rural Labour)

CoordinatorProfessor Kailash Sarap, S.R. Sankaran Chair (Rural Labour)

18 Land Transfers in Kondh Land: Trajectory of Tribal LandAlienation in Western Odisha, Tapas Kumar Dalapati

19 Land Alienation and Degradation in the Tribal Areas:A Study of Attappady Tribal Block in Palakkad District,Kerala, Manikandan A.D and V. Mathew KurianDiscussant: Surjith Mishra and Shankar Rao

Technical Session V Chairperson: Professor Judith HeyerLand Rights and the Rural Poor

2.00 PM – 3.15 PM 20 Challenges of Land Accessibility and FarmingProfitability Among Women – Experiences of WomenFarmer Groups Engaged in Hired Land Farming inKerala, Geetha Kutty

21 Customary Land Tenure Serves the Poor Better: A Studyof Jharkhand and Meghalaya, Ankita Goyal

22 Does Different Land Rights Acts in Jharkhand Leadingtowards Development of the Tribal Clan?, ParidhiKindo and Pradip Kumar BhowmickDiscussant: Professor G. Omkarnath

Technical Session VI Chairperson: Professor M. Thangaraj Digitisation ofLand Records in India

3.15 PM – 4.15PM 23 Digitisation of Land Records in India, Pradeep Nayak

24 Status of Computerisation of Land Records in Punjaband Its Impact on Access to Credit by the Farmers, S.SSangwanDiscussant: Raj Kishore Meher

Valedictory Session

4.15 PM - 5.30 PM Chairperson: Professor G. Nancharaiah

Valedictory address: Professor T. Haque

Vote of Thanks: Kailash Sarap

S. R. Sankaran, a Civil Servant, is known for his commitments and actions for the upliftment of the poor and the marginalised. The seamless integrity between his life, ideas and work was the unique dimension of his personality. As a civil servant he took Constitution as a mandate and made every opportunity to put in practice the fundamental principles of equality, non-discrimination, justice and affirmative action in favour of the economically backward sections. He believed that his true vocation as a civil servant was to serve the people where the poor occupied the primacy of position. Within the poor his concern was about SCs and STs as they have been at the lowest rung of the social hierarchy, wallowing in chronic misery and deprivation and subjected to daily acts of injustice and indignity.

The transformative role that Sankaran as a civil servant played in the lives of the poor is exemplary to date. His deep understanding of the social environment of the poor is remarkable. In his view, the poor are typically unorganised, hard to reach, inarticulate and often invisible by residing in periphery. Along with lack of access to land and other natural resources, lack of access to education makes them vulnerable to manipulation by adversaries leading them to internalise the ideology of dependence and submission. The conditions of poor can be compressed into five disabilities: (i) lack of access to land and employment, (ii) unfree labour, (iii) low wages, (iv) institutionalised discrimination, and v) deprivation in social services. His work during his career and after retirement devoted to uplifting the poor by relieving them from such adversaries and organising them. While working for the poor he had not only used his professional skill but also brought to bear on the problem of human touch.

Sankaran was a legendry civil servant, a crusader for social justice, a civil rights activist, a perceptive critic of development and public policy with extraordinary sensitivity, clarity, and above all, an epitome of compassion. A single social goal of his entire life’s work was the reduction of contradiction between political and socio-economic inequality.

Shri S. R. SANKARAN



(Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India)Rajendranagar, Hyderabad - 500 030

Tel: 91-40-24008516; E-mail: [email protected]

National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj

S. R. Sankaran Chair (Rural Labour) is instituted at the

National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati

Raj (NIRD&PR), Hyderabad by the Ministry of Rural

Development (MoRD) with the objective of promoting

research on issues that would enhance understanding

and help in improving the world of work and the life

worlds of rural labour. Collaborative research, seminars,

workshops and policy dialogues involving institutions,

organisations, policymakers and other stakeholders with

similar objectives, and placing the results in the larger

public domain through working papers, articles in

learned journals, books and policy briefs are part of the

activities set out for the Chair.

LAND MARKET AND THE RURAL POOR - nirdpr.org.in

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