Land, caste and tenancy: understanding the origins and effects of absentee landlordism in the changing context

Abstract

ABSTRACT India is witnessing a transition in policy perspective from the creation of peasant proprietorship to tenancy liberalisation as a part of market friendly land reforms in contrast with state-led redistributive land reforms. The proposed market friendly reforms are more oriented towards landlord interests compared with landless tenants and agricultural labourers. This justifies the historical unjust and unfair forms of the process of accumulation. The present article, by explicitly considering the case of tenancy liberalisation, argues that the policy absolves the problem of widening socio-economic inequalities and abstains from addressing the issues of absentee landlordism. The research maps evidence of the concentration of land with the feature of absenteeism amongst dominant castes and fallowisation. Hence, a case is made for enabling land ownership by the cultivator in order to achieve equity, efficiency and sustainability in agriculture.