India is a vast country which occupies about 2.3 percent of the World’s total Land area but has 18 percent of the total world population with an average life expectancy of 68.5 years. Apart from this it also consists of 15% of the Livestock in the world. These figures show us how important land is.
To accommodate this ever expanding population, of the available land mass of India, we can’t use the whole as there are forests, barren lands, fallow lands, Agricultural fields, Industrial areas and urban sprawls and eco-sensitive zones. Also there are wide variations in the distribution and utilization of land resources across different states of the country, based on topographic, geographical, political and other factors.
India has a land mass of 328,726,300 Hectares of which nearly 23 percent i.e. about 75.5 million Hectares is categorized as Wastelands. As per the National Remote Sensing Agency, the per capita arable land in the country is only 0.15 hectare which may come down to 0.08 hectare by 2025.
Which areas can be utilized and which areas cannot is a tough decision to make thereby making the available land for accommodating this vast population not only important but also scarce.
India, today finds itself in a paradoxical situation. More production is required from the scarce soil resources for meeting the demands of the ever expanding population while we witness that the cities are ever expanding, converting the Agricultural fields into Non-Agriculture uses.
The dynamics of land-use shifts in each state can be examined with the help of a simple identity of linearly additive land-use changes. The Government of India has classified the available land mass, i.e. the Total Endowment Land (R) into three major sectors which are further sub-divided for more clarity as shown in the figure below
The Ecological sector consists of two parts – Desirable Ecology (E1) and Undesirable Ecology (E2).
The Desirable Ecology has the following Land Typologies under it.
Area under Forests (Fr)
Area under Permanent Pasture (P)
Area under Miscellaneous Tree Crops (M)
Under Undesirable Ecology we have Ussar and Barren Land (U).
The internal changes in dynamics of Ecological sector land typologies are shown through the following equation.
Since area of each land typology is not constant, delta symbol (∆) is shown to denote the ever changing quantity of the Land resource over a period of time.
The Agricultural Sector, which has a share of 60.5% of the available land mass of India, consists of the following Land Typologies.
Current Fallows (Fe)
Fallow lands other than Current Fallows (Fo)
Culturable Wastelands (W)
Net Cultivated area (C)
The internal changes in dynamics of Agricultural sector land typologies are shown through the following equation.
These formula show us the changes that happen within each sector but we are concerned with the total land mass of India and how it’s affected. From the above equations and the remaining sector left, Non-Agricultural Sector (N), the following equation was derived.
The annual rates of change in different sectors are worked out and budgeted as per the given equations. This budgeting facilitates analysis land-use shifts and their dynamics. We can pinpoint which subdivision area is increasing and which decreasing. If a state's net cultivable land is decreasing then that parcel of lost land will be added into may be Fallow lands or Non Agricultural Areas. Based on this we can try to revitalize the wastelands or try reduce the growth of the Non-Agricultural areas like towns and cities or try to use the Wastelands for setting up industries. Once you have the numbers you can have progressive decisions creating a win-win where People and available land can help growth . Policy decisions can then help aid or facilitate the ever changing dynamics of the land.
We must use the space available to its optimum as we do not have the luxury of wasting space.
It will be interesting to use this formula to check how the available land has changed with the advent of Amaravati, the new Capital city for the residual state of Andhra Pradesh. Was the decision to convert 21723 hectares of cultivable land a wise one or not. Watch out for this Space.