Small, marginal and women farmers in Uttar Pradesh: Land rights and credit flows

Indian agriculture is characterized by millions of small and marginal farmers with uneconomical landholdings facing myriad of difficulties to sustain their livelihood. In India 85 percent of the farmers are marginal or small, operating less than two acres. In fact 66 percent operates less than one acre each and hence most of these farms are not viable. Land is one of the most critical resources for the rural poor dependent on farming for their livelihood and the foremost base for economic development and poverty alleviation. Peasant population occupies the margins of the modern world economy, have rarely been prosperous, often precarious and poorest people in the world. Farmers can be defined as those which have an access to the resource of land as the basis of their livelihood. If we split this group of farmers gender wise, amazing fact is that women contribution is greater or equal to men. Women are equally involved in agriculture in all phases. Despite, women play a significant role in the agriculture production system, most often they are neither legally nor socially recognized as farmers. Government of India's current definition of “farmer” recognizes only those as farmers who have legal ownership over land and hence, their valuable contribution is ignored. Land ownership in general and women land ownership in particular play a major role in their credit worthiness. The problems of farmers are very large, but the main problem is regarding their land ownership, security of tenure and land quality in case where landownership is assured which limits their livelihood options. They are unable to apply technology, inputs, credit and various agricultural services and hence, restricts them from reaping the avenues of agricultural growth. Land is not only the most important factor for small and marginal farmers, but it is also the root cause of their problems as they are being thrown out of their holdings. Government distributes land in the name of poor and dalit farmers but the process of entitlement and possession is not so easy.

Uttar Pradesh is predominantly a small landholding state with large regional variations in average farm size, and land and labour productivity. About 92 percent holdings are small occupying 63 percent cultivated area in the state. Across regions, the number of small farm holdings is highest in the Eastern region, about 95 percent cultivating 72 percent of land. The average size of landholding in Uttar Pradesh is 0.80 ha and for small farm category, it is only 0.55 ha causes large regional variations in agricultural growth. Uttar Pradesh is predominantly a land of poor peasant surviving on marginal and uneconomical holdings.

In light of the above, the focus of the paper is to review the present situation of land rights among small, marginal and women farmers in Uttar Pradesh and its relationship with other critical factors of agricultural growth specially institutional credit. Also, to focus on factors this can change their deprived position and help in achieving large scale poverty reduction.