The top 10 per cent of rural households in India hold 44 per cent of the country’s land, while nearly 46 per cent of rural households remain landless, according to a working paper released by the World Inequality Lab.
Titled Land Inequality in India: Nature, History, and Markets, the study further highlights that the top 5 per cent of households own 32 per cent of land, while the top 1 per cent alone accounts for 18 per cent of rural land ownership.
The paper is co-authored by Nitin Kumar Bharti, David Blakeslee and Samreen Malik, and is based on one of the most extensive datasets on land ownership in India, covering nearly 650 million individuals across approximately 2.7 lakh villages.
According to the study, the average village-level land Gini index—a measure of inequality on a scale of 0 to 100—reaches 71 when landless households are included. It also notes that, on average, the largest landholder in a village controls about 12 per cent of total land, while in some cases a single individual owns more than half of all agricultural land.
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The World Inequality Lab, which operates primarily out of the Paris School of Economics, emphasised that variations in land inequality across Indian states are nearly as pronounced as those observed between different countries globally.
The paper also finds a strong link between agricultural productivity and land concentration. Villages with more favourable agro-ecological conditions tend to display higher levels of land inequality, with a larger share of land concentrated in the hands of big landowners.
Highlighting the long-term impact of history, the study notes that regions once under direct British colonial administration exhibit higher land inequality compared to those historically governed by Indian rulers.
Social factors continue to play a significant role as well. Villages with higher populations of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes tend to have greater levels of landlessness, underlining the lasting influence of social hierarchies on access to productive resources. However, the paper points out exceptions in states like Kerala and West Bengal, which have historically been governed by left-leaning political parties.
Finally, the study concludes that improved market access alone is not sufficient to address entrenched inequalities. Proximity to towns, roads, and markets has limited impact in reversing deep-rooted disparities shaped by historical institutions and natural conditions.
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