Nature of Agricultural Land Lease Contracts : A Study of Three Villages in Anaed District

摘要

The National Sample Survey Organization notes that in 2003, marginal and small farmers constituted 90.4 per, cent of all farmers in India, but held only 43.4 per cent of land. However, medium and iarge farmers who constituted only 9.6 per cent of landowners owned as much as 56.21 percent of land (Bandyopadhyay, 2008). Rawal (2008)' notes that the percentage of landless households in Gujarat was 35,37 per cent, while just 1.02 per cent of farm households owned land more than 10 hectares. The share ofIndian households participating in land lease markets decreased from 26 per cent in 1971 to 11 per cent in 2001 .The NSSO puts the figure of tenancy India at around 6-7 per cent. Many micro studies indicate that incidence of tenancy could vary between 15-35 per cent. Since tenancy is illegal in many states, tenants often do not disclose their status; and oral tenancy contracts are often exploitative in nature (Bandyopadhyay, 2008). This is conbary to the trend in other, countries where land lease markets have beers found to significantly increase productivity of land (World Bank, 2007).