Paper short abstract:

This paper would deal with changes in the concentration of land ownership in a set of eight villages in Maharashtra State, India. The results of the paper are drawn from a larger study of agrarian change in these eight villages between the 1950s and 2000s.

Paper long abstract:

This paper deals with changes in the ownership and distribution of land in eight villages in the State of Maharashtra, India between the 1950s and the 2000s. Six of the eight villages resurveyed were first surveyed by the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune in the 1950s. These villages were resurveyed by a team of researchers led by the author between 2007 and 2011. The villages were chosen from different geographical and agro-climatic regions of Maharashtra. Data on the ownership of land were analysed temporally across caste groups. Data on purchase and sale of land across caste groups were also analysed for a period of 20 years preceding the latest survey to understand who were the net gainers/losers in the land market.

There was a clear increase in landlessness in 6 out of 8 villages over the period between the 1950s and the 2000s. The rise in landlessness was higher among the historically disadvantaged and marginalised social groups, such as Dalits and Adivasis. Historical forms of dominance in land ownership continued to persist, and even intensified in some villages. Land market was active in the 20 years that preceded the survey, and primarily involved transfer of land between the historically land-dominant caste groups. In some villages, new dominant landowners emerged, but not supplanting the old land-dominant caste groups. Dalits and Adivasis did not appear in the land market at all, except during the sale of land in times of distress.