Land-use change and the commons

Detail

1. Key terms first

• Land use: what people use a piece of land for, such as farming, forest, housing or roads.
• Reporting area: the land for which land-use records exist. It is smaller than India's geographical area because some land has never been surveyed or recorded.
• India's geographical area is 328.72 million hectares (Mha) [2][3].

• All land-use shares in this section (Fig. 3.1) are percentages of reporting area, not of geographical area.

• Net sown area (NSA): land sown with crops at least once in a year. Land sown twice is counted only once.

• Barren and wasteland: land that cannot be farmed with today's technology, such as bare hills, desert and rocky land.
• Culturable wasteland: land left unfarmed for more than 5 years. It can be farmed again after reclamation (repair and improvement of the land).
• Current fallow: land left unfarmed for one agricultural year or less. Farmers leave it so the soil can get back its fertility.
• Other fallow: land left unfarmed for more than 1 year but less than 5 years.
• Tree crops and groves: land under orchards and fruit trees that is not counted in net sown area.

2. Why land use changes: land is fixed, the economy is not

• The total land area does not grow. The economy does, and it changes in three ways:

Change in the economy	What happens	What it does to land
(i) Size	Population, income and technology grow	More output is needed, so marginal land (poor land, used last and only under pressure) is brought into use
(ii) Composition	Industry and services (secondary and tertiary sectors) grow faster than farming	Land moves from farming to non-agricultural uses. The shift is sharpest at the edges of cities
(iii) Farm pressure persists	Farming's share of GDP falls fast. The share of people who depend on farming falls much more slowly	Farmland stays in demand, because more people must be fed and many still earn their living from it

• What this means: India loses farmland to cities and roads, yet it cannot spare that farmland. This is the main land-use tension in India today.

3. Land-use changes in India, 1950-51 to 2019-20 (Fig. 3.1)

Five categories rose:

Category	Why it rose
Forests	More land was demarcated (officially marked as forest). This does not mean more trees grew
Land under non-agricultural uses	Highest rate of increase of all categories. Houses, industry, roads, railways and other infrastructure grew. They took land from wasteland and from farmland
Permanent pastures and grazing land	Small rise in recorded share
Current fallow	Goes up and down from year to year. It rises in drought years, when farmers cannot sow, and falls in good-rain years
Net sown area	Fell slowly for decades, then rose recently because culturable wasteland was reclaimed

Four categories fell:

Category	Why it fell
Barren and wasteland	Land hunger pushed people to use even poor land. Some of it went to non-farm uses
Culturable wasteland	Reclaimed and brought under cultivation
Area under tree crops and groves	Lost to farming and to non-farm uses
Other fallows	Pressure to farm every piece of land shortened fallow periods

• Satellite check on wasteland: NRSC (National Remote Sensing Centre, ISRO, Hyderabad) mapped wastelands using Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) satellite data. This is the Wastelands Atlas of India 2019, the fifth edition of the atlas, released by the Ministry of Rural Development [2][3].
• Wastelands in 2015-16 = 55.76 Mha, which is 16.96% of India's geographical area [2][3].
• This counts wastelands by a satellite-mapping definition. It is wider than the "barren" and "culturable waste" categories of the land-use records, so the two figures cannot be compared directly.

4. Actual increase vs rate of increase (an exam trap)

• Actual increase = later value − earlier value.
• Rate of increase = (actual increase ÷ base-year value) × 100.
• Why the difference matters: a category that starts small can have a huge rate of increase but a small actual increase.
• Example (illustrative numbers only): a category grows from 3% to 9% of reporting area. The actual increase is 6 percentage points. The rate of increase is (6 ÷ 3) × 100 = 200%.

• This is why non-agricultural uses show the highest rate of increase: they started from a small base in 1950-51.

• Read every question for the exact word it uses: "increase" or "rate of increase".

5. Class 10 view: 1960-61 vs 2019-20 (Fig. 1.4)

• NCERT Class 10 compares land use in 1960-61 and 2019-20. It asks why net sown area and forest area changed only a little.
• NSA: almost all good land was already farmed by 1960-61, so there was little room left to expand. Any land gained by reclamation was roughly cancelled out by land lost to cities and roads.

• Forests: the recorded forest area rose slowly. It stayed far below the 33% of geographical area that the National Forest Policy (1952) called desirable (NCERT).

• Regional contrast in NSA (NCERT): more than 80% of total area in Punjab and Haryana. Less than 10% in Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Manipur and the Andaman & Nicobar Islands.

6. New demands on land today

• Urban sprawl: cities spread outward onto fertile farmland at their edges. This is the "composition" effect in action. (Link: human-settlements.)
• Solar parks: large ground-mounted solar plants need big blocks of land, often in dry regions.
• Highways and corridors: new expressways and economic corridors take strips of farmland. Towns, warehouses and factories then grow along them.
• Result: farmland, pastures and village commons are squeezed from all sides.

7. Common property resources (CPRs)

• By ownership, land is of two kinds: private land (owned by a person or a household) and common property.
• Common property resources (CPRs): land and resources owned by the state and meant for the community.
• Every member has the right to access and use them, with duties (obligations) attached, such as not overgrazing and helping with upkeep.
• No one has property rights over them. No one can sell them or fence them off.

• They are managed by a group larger than one household.

• Examples: community forests, pastures and grazing lands, village water bodies (ponds, tanks) and public spaces such as threshing grounds.

• What they give:
• Fodder for animals.
• Fuel wood for homes.

• Minor forest products: fruits, nuts, fibre and medicinal plants.

• Who depends on them most:

• Landless people and marginal farmers. They have no land of their own, so they need the commons for fodder and fuel.
• Women. In rural areas they usually collect fuel, fodder and water. If the commons shrink, they must walk farther and spend more hours each day.

8. Shrinking commons and the policy response

• N.S. Jodha's studies (1980s): these were field studies in villages of dry tropical India, published in Economic and Political Weekly (1986). They recorded that CPRs were shrinking:
• Privatisation: common land was given out to private holders through land-distribution schemes, or taken by better-off farmers.
• Encroachment: people slowly took over common land for farming or building.

• Result: the poor lost an important source of fodder, fuel and income. The remaining commons became overused and degraded.

• Tragedy of the commons: when a resource is open to all but no one is responsible for it, each user takes as much as they can. The resource then gets overused and ruined. (Link: resources-development-planning.)

• The answer is clear rules for the community, not open access. This is why CPRs carry duties with their use rights.

• Forest Rights Act (FRA) 2006: the full name is the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006. It recognises community forest resource (CFR) rights. These are the right of forest-dwelling communities to protect, regrow, conserve and manage their customary forests through the Gram Sabha (the village assembly).

• Up to 31 October 2023, 23,43,009 land titles (individual and community) covering about 1.81 crore acres had been given out under the FRA [4].

Prelims Hooks

• The land-use category with the highest rate of increase from 1950-51 to 2019-20 is land under non-agricultural uses, not forests.
• The rise in recorded forest area is mainly due to demarcation, not an actual increase in tree cover.
• Current fallow goes up and down with rainfall. It rises in drought years.
• Fallow by duration: current fallow is ≤ 1 year. Other fallow is 1-5 years. Culturable wasteland is > 5 years, but it can be reclaimed.
• Fell since 1950-51: barren and wasteland, culturable wasteland, tree crops and groves, and other fallows. Rose: forests, non-agricultural uses, permanent pastures, current fallow and net sown area.
• Rate of increase = (later − earlier) ÷ base value × 100. A small base gives a high rate.
• NSA over 80%: Punjab and Haryana. Under 10%: Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Manipur, and the Andaman & Nicobar Islands.
• Wastelands Atlas of India 2019 (5th edition, made by NRSC with IRS satellite data): 55.76 Mha = 16.96% of geographical area, for 2015-16 [2][3].
• CPRs are owned by the state. Community members have use rights with duties, but no property rights.
• The FRA 2006 gives community forest resource rights, managed through the Gram Sabha. By 31.10.2023, 23.43 lakh titles had been given out [4].

Mains Points

• Causes of land-use change (GS-I):
• A growing economy pulls marginal land into use.
• Faster growth of industry and services moves land to non-farm uses, mostly around cities.
• Farm pressure stays high because jobs shift out of farming more slowly than farming's share of GDP falls.

• Example: the highest rate of increase is in non-agricultural uses, while net sown area has stayed almost flat.

• New land conflicts (GS-III): urban sprawl, solar parks and highways compete for fertile farmland and village commons. Policy responses include:

• Wasteland reclamation, using satellite mapping such as NRSC's Wastelands Atlas (55.76 Mha in 2015-16) [2][3].
• Placing solar parks on degraded land instead of farmland.

• Planned, compact city growth.

• Commons and equity (GS-I/III):

• CPRs supply fodder, fuel and minor forest products to the landless, marginal farmers and women.
• Jodha's 1980s studies showed privatisation and encroachment shrinking the commons, which makes rural poverty and women's work burden worse.

• Answer: community rules (avoiding the tragedy of the commons), protecting commons in land records, and CFR rights under the FRA 2006 (23.43 lakh titles by October 2023) [4].

• Reading the data correctly: a high rate of increase on a small base must not be mistaken for a large actual change. Rises in recorded forest area are administrative (demarcation), not ecological.