Improving the Rural Poor’s Access to Land and Water in India
The present paper analyses the key issues related to the access of rural poor to secured and sustainable land
and water rights in India, thereby identifying and suggesting policies which helps to improve rural poor’s access to land and water.
The present paper analyses the key issues related to the access of rural poor to secured and sustainable land and water rights in India, thereby identifying and suggesting policies which helps to improve rural poor’s access to land and water. The distribution of land ownership amongst different land classes is found to be skewed. In 2006, vast majority of the rural households (around 79.6%) with less than 1 ha land had very less land comprising about 23.0% of the total area while 3.6% of the households (having more than 4 ha of land) had around 34.7% of the total area. This poses a threat to stability and peace in the villages. However, the situation can be improved if the landless and marginalized farmers are able to lease in land from medium and large farmers.The landholding status of the Scheduled Castes (STs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) is examined separately and it is found that the incidence of landlessness is higher among the STs followed by SCs while that of marginal landholdings is higher among SCs followed by STs (NSSO 2006a). Further, the quality of land of the tribal households is generally poor. Both SCs and STs also lease in land but average land leased in by them is smaller compared to the other groups.
Despite of the amendment of Hindu Succession Act which gives equal rights to men and women in matter related to property, rural women in India are still deprived of secure land rights.
Even though the farmers have been given the right to extract water from their own land (as per the Indian law); the marginal farmers often do not have the access to their entitlement to the groundwater because of the high installation costs. They are further exploited due to high water prices in the water market which is monopolistic in nature.
In order to promote agricultural growth, state governments have undertaken several measures such as abolition of tenancy, imposition of ceilings on landholdings and redistribution of ceiling surplus land among landless and semi-landless families, prevention of alienation of tribal land , modernization and digitization of land records etc. In view of the limitations of existing ceiling laws; a new policy should be formulated wherein both ceiling and non-ceiling approaches to land redistribution should be attempted.