Agrarian Change In India : A Critical Study

Abstract

In this article, we present a case study on agrarian change contrasting the official secondary data with independently collected primary data regarding some key aspects of agrarian change in rural India. The main argument of the paper is that while the official statistics on certain aspects are reliable, on other aspects of agrarian change such as land holding structure can be misleading when taken prima facie. In order to get closer to the truth, we need disaggregated original primary surveys, which can portray a nuanced picture of agrarian change over time. This is particularly the case with the longitudinal data pertaining to land ownership.