The National Policy for Farmers (2007) envisaged an activity-based definition of 'farmer' but remained largely unoperationalised. Critically analyse the administrative and political reasons behind this gap.

Acting on the National Commission on Farmers (M.S. Swaminathan), the National Policy for Farmers, 2007 widened "farmer" to every person engaged in agriculture — tenants, sharecroppers, labourers, livestock rearers — irrespective of title [1]. Nearly two decades on, that definition survives largely on paper, because delivery, data and politics all remain anchored to land.

Administrative reasons

• Land-record-based delivery architecture: PM-Kisan eligibility rests on cultivable landholding verified against State land-revenue records, with land-seeding made mandatory [2]. An activity-based identity has no equivalent, machine-verifiable proof.
• No machinery to verify "activity": tenancy is overwhelmingly oral, as owners avoid written leases fearing tenancy claims; correspondingly, the Centre has stated there is no proposal to extend PM-Kisan to tenant farmers [3].
• Data vacuum: the Agriculture Census 2015-16 recorded only about 11.72% of operated area under female operational holders [4]; administrations count holdings, not cultivators, so activity-based claimants remain statistically invisible.
• Schemes substituted for status: MKSP under DAY-NRLM had supported 4.62 crore Mahila Kisans by June 2025 [5] — conferring training and livelihoods, but never legal identity.

Political reasons

• Federal division: agriculture is a State subject (Entry 14, List II), so a Central policy definition binds no State; a comparable Bill introduced in the Rajya Sabha in 2011 lapsed.
• Landowning constituencies: formally recognising cultivators revives fears of tenancy-law claims, making recorded leases politically costly.
• Incentive asymmetry: visible cash transfers deliver quicker electoral returns than a redistributive identity reform whose gains accrue slowly and diffusely.

A qualified failure The gap is not absolute. Kerala's Kudumbashree made women's collective leases the unit of credit, and Maharashtra's Women Farmers' Empowerment Bill (2026) has given the land-delinked definition its first statutory form through a Woman Farmer Certificate.

The failure, therefore, has been one of instrumentation rather than imagination. Operationalisation now needs the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare to accept such certificates as proof for PM-Kisan and KCC, village-level Krishi Sakhis to certify farming activity [5], and recorded group leasing to anchor it. With FAO estimating that equal access to resources could raise output on women's farms by 20–30% [6], recognising the real cultivator serves both the constitutional promise of equality and national food security.