Changes in Land Relations in West Bengal

Kalyan Dutt Notwithstanding the ever-increasing stringency of measures to enforce the ceiling on landownership and to secure the protection of bargadars' right to cultivate, the rural economy of West Bengal has turned out to he completely different from what the legislators had envisaged. Despite a decrease in the extent of lawlessness, the weight age of small owner-operators operating the bottom 20 per cent of land has decreased from 69 per cent to 57 per cent between 1954-55 and 1971-72; while that of the large owner-operators operating the top 20 per cent of area has increased from 4 per cent to 6 per cent.