Legalise land leasing

By dilly-dallying on the enactment of laws in tune with the NITI Aayog's model bill, state governments are doing a disservice to the farm community

Legalisation of land leasing is no longer a potentially gainful agrarian reform but has become an economic necessity. Unlike the post-independence land reforms, which were required to dismantle the feudal land ownership regime and reduce the disparity between haves and have-nots, the need now is to facilitate expansion of farm holdings to make them economically viable. It is needed also to put the idle land belonging to absentee landowners to productive use.

Continual division of land owing to inheritance laws has rendered most farm holdings too small to support average farm households. The last agricultural census (2010-11) showed that nearly 85