In the field

New agricultural census will inform policymaking

The 11th agricultural census, which is underway now, is set to be vastly different and much more consequential than its past versions. For the first time, this huge exercise is being carried out fully digitally, on smartphones and tablets. It is using specially designed mobile apps and other modern tools, including satellite mapping, drones, and digitised land records — which are now available in most states — to ensure accuracy and early availability of data. The government avowedly intends to use the updated statistics to reorient its farm policies to help small and marginal farmers shift to relatively remunerative crops and agriculture’s allied activities. Lifting the quality of the farm produce to global standards to enhance its export potential is the other stated objective of the resultant re-jigged farm policies.

Significantly, the census would gather information based on operational holdings rather than their ownership, because the former is more critical for targeting resources better. The chosen parameters for data collection include the number and size of the operational farm holdings, their class-wise distribution, land use, tenancy systems, and cropping patterns. A want of this data is posing formidable problems in precise targeting of resources, especially the financial and other sops being given to farmers by the Centre and state governments through income support and input subsidies as direct benefit transfers. There are instances galore where the money goes to absentee landlords instead of tillers of the land. Tenants, share-croppers, and many genuine farmers are often overlooked and denied, quite unfairly, access to government sops, input subsidies, and even cheaper institutional credit.
 

Policy planners at present have no precise idea of how many farmers and farm holdings there are in the country, though all allocations for the farm sector depend on these numbers. The 10th agricultural census, conducted in 2015-16, had put the count of farmers at 146.5 million. But this figure turned out to be wide of the mark when the government launched the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana, under which Rs 6,000 is given annually to every farmer in three instalments, based on the Aadhaar-linked verification of their land ownership. Similarly, the number of operational farm holdings, reckoned by the last census at 109.3 million, too, is believed to have changed substantially due to inheritance-driven division of land, and legal and illegal sale, purchase, leasing and diversion of farm land to other purposes. The size of the cultivated land parcels continues to shrink due to an unabated fragmentation of holdings.

Going by the 10th census findings, about 86.2 per cent of all cultivators were small and marginal farmers (tilling less than two hectares). They collectively owned just about 47.3 per cent of the cropped area. In other words, more than half the country’s farm land was owned by less than 14 per cent farmers. The situation must have altered notably by now with many small holders becoming marginal farmers and a sizable section of the marginal farmers turning landless labourers. Capturing these changes through statistics is imperative to formulate effective policies for the development of agriculture and welfare of farmers and farm labour. The findings of the 11th census will, hopefully, provide the basis for meaningful and result-oriented planning.