India - Land and Livestock Holdings Survey: NSS 48th Round : January - December 1992:Visit-1

India Land and Livestock Holdings Survey: NSS 48th Round : January - December 1992:Visit-1

Socio-Economic/Household Survey The survey on Land and Livestock Holdings carried out in the forty-eighth round (January-December 1992) of the National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) is the fifth in the series of similar surveys conducted so far by the NSSO.

The first survey on land holdings was taken up by the NSS in its eighth round (July '54-April ‘55) as part of the World Agricultural Census initiated by the Food & Agricultural Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations. In this survey, information on (agricultural) holdings was collected mainly to meet the requirements of the FAO. In addition, information on household ownership holdings was collected to provide the policy framers with the much needed data for formulating land reforms policy for the country. A similar survey was conducted again in the sixteenth (July '60 - August '61) and seventeenth (September '61 - July '62) rounds of the NSS as a part of the World Agricultural Census Programme of 1960.

Since then, NSSO has been regularly conducting Land Holdings survey every ten years. The third Land Holdings survey, conducted in its twenty-sixth round (July '71 - June '72), was integrated with a survey on Debt and Investment at the instance of the Reserve Bank of India. The present enquiry, as well as the fourth survey of the series conducted in the thirty-seventh round (January - December '82), essentially repeat the twenty-sixth round survey with some modifications in item coverage and the method of data collection.

ID Number DDI-IND-MOSPI-NSSO-48Rnd-Sch18dot1-visit1-1992

In the 48th round, information on various aspects of ownership and operational holdings was collected for both rural and urban areas.

Particulars of land owned, land leased out, types and terms of lease formed the main body of information for the study of ownership holdings. Further, particulars of land leased in were also collected to ascertain the land possessed by the households. For the operational

holdings, data on size, composition, tenurial form, land use, extent of irrigation by source, fragmentation of holding, drainage facilities and other related aspects of holdings were collected. Since livestock and agricultural machinery form the basic resources for agricultural operations, an inventory of these assets owned by the households on the date of survey was also obtained.

In the land holdings part of the survey, data collected on ownership and operational holdings. Particulars of land owned and land leased-out by terms of lease and type of lessee, together with area of land owned by type of land, were collected plot wise for each ownership holding. Besides these, particulars of land leased-in was also collected from each sample household. As for the operational holdings, information on their size, composition, tenural form, land use, fragmentation, irrigation practices, drainage drain age facilities and agricultural activities were collected for each agricultural season as well as the agricultural year 1991-92. In the part relating to livestock holding, an inventory of livestock and agricultural machinery were taken from each sample household. In addition to the particulars of land and livestock holdings, information were also collected on exploitation of trees owned by the sample households.

STRUCTURE OF THE SCHEDULE: As stated in the preceding paragraphs, the survey was conducted in two visits and some items of information were collected in only one of them. The schedules of enquiry for the two visits are structured accordingly. In all, the schedule consists of 19 blocks (including two sub-blocks). Of these, blocks 0 to 4 and 10 were common to the schedules for both the visits and had exactly the same formats. However, since block 10 was meant for recording some auxiliary information about operational holdings of an agricultural season, it had Kharif and Rabi seasons as the reference periods in visit one and two respectively. Blocks 5 and 9 also appear in the schedules for both the visits, but their formats were not the same. Of the remaining blocks, six appear only in the schedule for visit-1 and five (including two sub-blocks) in only that for visit-2.

The forty-eighth round was planned to cover the whole of Indian Union excepting

(i) Ladakh and Kargil districts of Jammu & Kashmir; (ii) 768 interior villages of Nagaland (out of a total of 1119 villages) located beyond 5 kms. of a bus route,

(iii) 172 villages in Andaman & Nicobar Islands (out of a total of 520 villages) which are inaccessible throughout the year.

However, the survey could not be conducted in six districts of Jammu & Kashmir viz., Anantnag, Pulwana, Srinagar, Badgam, Baramula and

Kupwara, and in the district of Amritsar in Punjab due to unfavourable field conditions.

Name	Abbreviation	Affiliation	Role
Computer Centre	MOSPI, CC	M/O Statistics & Programme Implementation	Documentation of the study

2012-08-20 Version 1.0 (Aug 2012)

DDI-IND-MOSPI-NSSO-48Rnd-Sch18dot1-visit1-1992