The continued exclusion of Telangana’s tenant farmers from state-funded schemes is making tenancy more insecure in the state.
The Telangana government led by the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) does acknowledge that tenant farmers exist in the information manual of the Department of Agriculture, which says, “Most of the farmers in Telangana State are tenant, marginal and small farmers with low economic status”. However, the government categorically refuses to recognise them as farmers.
In Brahmanapalle, Ramu, a field coordinator of the Gramya Resource Centre for Women, conducted a survey of households and found that out of the 361 farmers, 177 were leasing some amount of land to supplement their incomes.
In the past, Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao and other BRS leaders have incorrectly said that there was no way to identify tenants.
The Land Licensed Cultivators Act (2011) exists to identify and register tenant farmers as cultivators. It is the implementation of the law that has been a failure. As per the law, tenant farmers were allowed to use a Loan and Other Eligibility Card (LEC). The LEC was meant to be a kind of middle path to provide some legal protection to tenant farmers. The last LEC, a card that was supposed to be renewed annually, was reportedly issued in 2018. This has harmed tenant cultivators, both socially and economically.
The number of tenant farmers in the State has also been a point of contention.
The Land and Livestock Holdings of Households and Situation Assessment of Agricultural Households (2019) has the most recent data on tenancy. Comparing this with the Land Livestock Holdings Survey reports of 2002-03 and 2012-13 shows that tenancy has seen a substantial increase in Telangana as per the official records. In 2002-03, tenant holdings were 4.7 per cent of total operational holdings. In 2012-13 this went up to 20.1 per cent and then reduced to 17.5 per cent in 2019.
Several activists and agrarian experts have maintained that these are not accurate estimates of tenancy and that the real numbers are higher.
The Rythu Swarajya Vedika (RSV), a farmers’ rights organisation working in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, released a survey in December 2022 on the situation of tenant farmers in Telangana. The RSV team interacted with 7,744 farmers across 34 villages in 20 districts. As per the survey report, nearly 36 per cent of farmers in Telangana were tenant farmers.
A fifth of the total tenant farmers were landless, as per RSV’s report. While those with marginal and small land tracts can accrue some benefits from the State, landless tenants continue to be one of the most vulnerable farmer groups in Telangana. In a previous study, RSV had established a link between farmer suicides and the insecurity of tenancy-based cultivation.
“Apart from being excluded from Rythu Bandhu, landless tenant farmers cannot avail crop loans from the bank,” said B. Kondal Reddy, RSV State Committee Member. “Disaster compensation is also not available to them and neither is the Rythu Bima (insurance in case of death).” Tenants who own some land get benefits commensurate to that portion of the land even if they are cultivating larger farms on a lease. For almost all tenant farmers, “it is difficult to sell the harvested crop as at least a photocopy of the landowner’s land passbook is required,” says Reddy.
Yet, beyond the disgruntlement in anonymous interviews and surveys, there are only muted protests against the exclusion of tenant farmers in government schemes. A fear of facing repercussions seems to be the primary reason for this.
“Land in our village is already a scarce commodity,” said Sai (name changed) of Brahmanpalle. “If we make much of a fuss, the landlord can give it on lease to someone else.” The farmers are also wary as several of them are not pure tenants, and get at least a few thousand rupees under Rythu Bandhu and do not want to lose it.
Tenancy should also be looked at in the context of landlessness. As per the Telangana Social Development Report (2017), 43.3 per cent of total rural households were landless. The number remained the same between 2002 and 2012. Landlessness was highest among OBCs (48.8 per cent) and SCs (34.4 per cent). As per the same report, the highest share of the area under tenancy in Telangana belonged to OBCs and SCs.
In the absence of state support and redistributive land reform, which seems impossible in the current political landscape, tenancy is burdened not only by a lack of institutional support but also by having to operate under the norms set by the dominant land-owning castes and private money lenders.
The Crux
- The Telangana government does acknowledge that tenant farmers exist in the information manual of the Department of Agriculture but categorically refuses to recognise them as farmers.
- In Brahmanapalle, Ramu, a field coordinator of the Gramya Resource Centre for Women, conducted a survey of households and found that out of the 361 farmers, 177 were leasing some amount of land to supplement their incomes.
- Landless tenants continue to be one of the most vulnerable farmer groups in Telangana.
- In a previous study, the Rythu Swarajya Vedika (RSV) had established a link between farmer suicides and the insecurity of tenancy-based cultivation.
- “Apart from being excluded from Rythu Bandhu, landless tenant farmers cannot avail crop loans from the bank,” said B. Kondal Reddy, RSV State Committee Member.
