Land Transfers: a Case Study

Over the years, and specifically since the enactment of land ceiling laws in a number of States in the country in the 1950s, agricultural land has changed hands in a manner that needs a searching enquiry not only for academic purpose but the planners and rural development agencies as well. Land transfer is of utmost significance as it offers vital clues to the emerging agrarian structure. Land alienation is nor only uprooting hundreds of thousands of small farmers but also adding to the population explosion in the urban areas which are already tottering under the weight of too much population. What are the factors behind land alienation? Which classes are losing land and which classes are gaining it? Why is landlessness on the increase? Is it due to immiserisation or has the diversification of the economic abetted the process. All these and other questions have been analysed in this empiricial study in the context of dynamics of new agricultural technology in a backward state like U.P. with its marked regional diversities.