Resolution of the land question in contemporary rural India remains an unfinished task and a critical issue. With neoliberalism as the dominant ideology guiding state policy, Indian state has abdicated the responsibility of implementing land reforms. This makes it even more important for people interested in progressive change to revisit the land question and the need for land reforms.
What is the land question in rural India today? How unequally is land distributed in rural India and how has land distribution changed over time? Has there been a proliferation of tiny holdings and have large landholdings disintegrated? What have been the trends in respect of landlessness in rural India? Are land reforms still relevant?
This paper attempts to find answers to these questions on the basis of a detailed analysis of large-scale data on landholdings.
This is an updated version of SSER Monograph 21/2.
Recommended citation:
Rawal, Vikas and Bansal, Vaishali (2022), “The Land Question in Contemporary Rural India”, SSER Monograph 22/2, Society for Social and Economic Research, New Delhi (available at: http://archive.indianstatistics.org/sserwp/sserwp2202.pdf).