LAND AND CREDIT REFORMS 13 able economic benefits, however defined. The ownership of even a tiny plot of land, even though economically non-viable, provides in our rural society some kind of prestige, acceptance and insurance to families who are otherwise wholly dependent on finding employment in the labour market and who form really the hard core of rural poverty and distress. (To be continued) 1 See National Sample Survey, Report No. 113. 2 For details, see D S Swamy, "Differentiation of Peasantry", Economic and Political Weekly, Vol XI. No 50, 11 December 1976. s D S Swamy, "Dynamics of Tenancy System in India", ^ameer, Vol 1, No 2, March 1977. 4 See D S Swamy, ^Land-to-the-Tillcr with Patience and without Resistance", Vishleshan, Vol IV, No 4, December 1978. 6 P H Prasad, "Limits to Investment Planning", in Ashok Mitra (edj. Economic Theory and Planning, Delhi, Oxford University Press, pp 262-272; A Bhaduri. "A Study of Agricultural Backwardness under Semi-feudalism", Economic Journal, March 1973. 6 R Sau, "Land Utilization: A Note", Economic and Political Weekly, Vol XI, No 36, September 1976. 7 V M Dandekar and N Rath, Poverty in India, Poona, Indian School of Political Economy, 1971, p 81. 8 B S Minhas, "Rural Poverty, Land Distribution and Development Strategy", Indian Economic Review, April 1970,pp 111-112. 9 Guidelines for the purpose of land ceilings on agricultural land have been worked out by several committees on land reforms. But even accepted guidelines and ceiling laws have not been implemented. However, we have assumed the ceiling to be fixed at 10 hectares to calculate the potential effect of land reforms. 10 If 22.4 million hcctaers of surplus land are distributed among houscholds*"cultivating less than one hectare, who, in 1971, were estimnted to operate a total of 14.5 million hectares already, the average size of their operational holdings would increase from 0.4 hectares to one hectere. For all practical purposes one hectare may be considered as a reasonable floor to operational landholdings. In any case, this implies that differences in per household operational landholding over all size classes would not be larger than 10 times and differences injper person landholding would be about six times since the average family size of the well-to-do farmers is considerably larger than those of marginal farmers. 11 The yield offoodgra|ns per hectare for India as a whole is calculated on the weighted average of the state-wise yields, the weights being the surplus land in each state. 12 See A K Sen, "bize of Holdings and Productivity", The Economic Weekly, Annual Number, February 1964; M Chattopadhyay and A Rudra, "Size Productivity Revisited", Economic and Political Weekly (review of agricultue), 25 September 1976; A M Khusro, "Returns tb Scale in Indian Agriculture", Indian Journal of Agricul" tural Economics, July-December 1964; Krishna Bhardwaj, Production Conditions in Indian Agriculure, Cambridge University Press, 1974; G K Chadda, Production Efficiency by Farm Size:^A Study of Punjab Agriculture at 1969-70 Level of Technology, Punjab University, Ph D dissertation. 13 G S Blialla, Changing Agrarian Structure in India, Delhi, Mcenakshi Prakashan. 14 C H Hanumantha Rao, The Technological Change and Distribution of Gains in Indian Agriculture, Delhi, Meenakshi Prakashan, 1975, p 8.