What are the possibilities of the landless in rural areas getting land for cultivation at present? Those farmers having landholdings that are more than 5 hectares in size constitute only 5% of the total landed farmers and they own 31.8% of the total cultivable area. The average landholding size for this category being about 10 hectares of land which is less than the ceiling. The rest 95% of landed farmers have landholdings of less than 5 hectares and the average size is only 2 hectares. Thus, this latter cultivable area which constitutes 68.2% of the total is not available for redistribution. Totally 26 lakh hectares were identified as ceiling surplus land of which 24 lakh hectares were possessed and 20 lakh hectares redistributed. Some 1 lakh hectares are under legal dispute. Therefore, currently only about 5 lakh hectares of ceiling surplus land is available for distribution to 10 crore landless households. Which means that each landless household can at the most get 0.05 hectares of land. The overall average landholding size is also 0.8 hectares which is less than the limiting size for marginal landholdings - 1 hectare. Under the circumstances it is unlikely that landless people will get economically viable plots of agricultural land. Increasing the sustainability of agriculture and natural resource management combined with in situ localised production of energy through gasification of biomass and post harvest processing in cooperatives will be better options than distributing miniscule plots of land among 10 crore landless households.
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