Landlessness in India and Bangladesh: A Critical Review of National Data Sources

Abstract

Disenchantment with the orthodoxy of the 1950s and 1960s-that is, policy oriented toward growth led by urban-industrial expansion-has resulted in a widespread reexamination both of the meaning of development and of the means of achieving it. Attention has shifted from growth to equity, and from the urbanindustrial to the rural-agricultural sector, as the realization dawned that inequality and agricultural productivity would not simply take care of themselves if public policy remained narrowly focused on industrial growth. Alternative approaches to planning have emerged, such as the basic needs strategy, which emphasizes direct concern with the lot of disadvantaged segments of developing country populations and places equity in the forefront of goals. Consistent with this redefinition of priorities, the distribution of land and the extent of landlessness have become especially important as social indicators, and the plight of the landless has become a special concern of policy, particularly in densely populated and dominantly agrarian rural South Asia. One frequently hears or reads that landlessness is increasing in South Asia. This is, in fact, a widely held view. At one level, the assertion is undeniably true. With the rapid population growth experienced by this region in recent decades, there is little question that the number of landless households has grown simply by natural increase. This is not, however, what is normally meant by increasing landlessness. What is meant is that the proportion of landless households in the rural population is increasing-a reference to increasing inequality in the distribution of land. Aside from whatever policy concern may exist over the issue of inequality per se, change in the structure of landholdings has immediate implications for rural employment policy. In Bangladesh, for example, if one assumes that the current structure of land-