State ranks fourth in rural landlessness

Ruchika M Khanna

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Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, July 4

Punjab’s average operational landholdings have increased marginally but the percentage of landlessness in rural households in the state is amongst the top four in the country. This was revealed by the Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC) data released by the Union Rural Development Ministry yesterday.

With the sub-divisions in agricultural land happening rapidly, the operational land holdings are increasing. But the more worrying factor - the high percentage of 65 per cent of landlessness in rural households of the state - reveals that the state’s farmers are either selling their prime agricultural land, indicating “de-peasantisation” in the state’s rural economy — a factor that has been worrying agricultural economists.

The data released yesterday reveals that Punjab has the fourth highest percentage of rural households without land (65 per cent), the same as Bihar. The highest percentage of rural landlessness is in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu (73 per cent each), followed by Kerala (72 per cent) and West Bengal (70 per cent).

“The percentage of agricultural labourers is high in the rural segment. Farmers are selling their land and though they continue to remain in rural areas, they are earning their livelihood from the land sale proceeds, or by working as labourers,” says Dr Sucha Singh Gill, Professor South Asia, at Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development (CRRID).

Dr MS Sidhu, a leading economist from Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), said that in spite of land reforms in Punjab, it was strange that the landlessness in rural households was high. “The land consolidation took place in Punjab in the 1950s and 1960s and land sealing came about in 1955 (when the cap was 30 acres) and again in 1972 (when the cap was lowered at 17 acres). The high rural indebtedness, with each farmer in Punjab estimated at having a debt of Rs 3.32 lakh, and rural landlessness, together calls for better government intervention and schemes specifically targeting these issues,” he says. According to him, there are 18 lakh cultivating workers in Punjab (farmers) and 12 lakh labourers, with the latter’s number increasing.

Officials in the state government’s Rural Development Department said that they had not received the findings of the SECC regarding landless rural households, but the data seemed to be based on the Census and the agricultural census.

They say that this data would allow the Centre as well as the state government to prepare a blueprint for root causes of poverty in rural areas and address specific challenges.

Interestingly, a study conducted by leading agriculture economists RS Ghuman, Lakhwinder Singh and Inderjit Singh in 2007, on “Status of Local Agricultural Labour in Punjab”, had initially sent the alarm bells ringing with its revelation that 67 per cent of rural households in Punjab are landless. Ghuman told The Tribune that traditionally too land in rural households was concentrated only in the hands of Jats, and the 32 per cent Dalit population was largely landless, and the other communities have only been taking land on lease for cultivation. Moreover there has been a substantial rural — urban migration, with many selling their land — which explains the high landlessness in rural Punjab,” he said.