Bihar Assembly poll campaign puts spotlight on tenant farmers' rights

Campaigning for the Bihar polls has put spotlight on tenant farmers' rights, even as tenancy legalisation remains contentious

As the high-stakes assembly election campaign peaks in Bihar, the issue of tenant farmers and sharecroppers — and their rights — has gained political traction.

 

One of the key promises made by the Opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD)-led Mahagathbandhan (MGB) is to extend the benefits of the minimum support price (MSP), cheaper loans through Kisan Credit Cards, and other government schemes to sharecroppers. For this, they propose issuing special identity cards to such farmers.

 

The Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), or CPI(ML), a crucial ally within the MGB, has also pledged in its manifesto to introduce identity cards for sharecroppers, guarantee their rights, and impose a ban on evictions.

 

A report by the State Level Bankers’ Committee (SLBC) released a few years ago noted that sharecropping or tenant farming remains one of the defining features of Bihar’s agrarian landscape. The report said that the extent of sharecropping in the state rose from 22.67 per cent to 25.1 per cent of the operational holding between 2012-13 and 2018-19. Nationally, the figure increased from 10.88 per cent to 13 per cent of total operational landholdings during the same period. However, experts have long argued that official data underestimates the true scale of tenancy, with some suggesting that more than 37 per cent of Bihar’s farmland is cultivated by tenant farmers.

 

Some reports indicated that the MGB, until a few weeks ago, was in advanced discussions over incorporating the recommendations of the D Bandyopadhyay Commission on sharecroppers. The commission, set up years ago, had proposed an umbrella law to protect tenant farmers and a cap on landholdings. The MGB’s manifesto, however, stops short of fully endorsing these recommendations. 

“In the INDIA bloc manifesto, there is partial accommodation of the issues that it (the Bandyopadhyay Commission report) addressed. With regards to residential land, the manifesto has promised five decimal land in rural areas and three decimals in urban areas for the landless. For tenant farmers, it has spoken about tenancy security, and their registration,” Dipankar Bhattacharya, general secretary, CPI (ML) told Business Standard. He said on the larger question of agrarian reforms, there is considerable reflection and recognition of those concerns in the MGB manifesto.

 

The ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA), meanwhile, has sought to bolster its rural support base by promising to top up the existing PM-KISAN payments by an additional ~3,000 under a new scheme titled the ‘Karpoori Thakur Kisan Samman Nidhi’. The PM-KISAN scheme, which offers ~6,000 annually to farmers, excludes most tenant farmers as it is limited to those with land titles.

 

As of August 7, 2025, Bihar had around 7.5 million PM-KISAN beneficiaries, most of whom were landowners. Identifying genuine tenant farmers has remained a major challenge, which has led to their continued exclusion from such schemes.

 

Recently, Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan told Parliament that the Centre had decided to allow tenant farmers to access benefits under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), provided the landowner gives written authorisation. He said the same rule would apply for MSP procurement, subject to state government approval.

 

Chouhan added that 650,000 tenant farmers had benefited from the PMFBY in recent months, while MSP purchases had been made from around 4.2 million sharecroppers — a shift from earlier policies that left them out of key schemes.

 

Farming in Bihar

 

The SLBC report also revealed that, in 2015-16, small and marginal farmers accounted for about 97 per cent of Bihar’s total operational holdings, compared with a national average of 86.1 per cent. The average size of holdings in Bihar was 0.39 hectares — just over a third of the all-India average of 1.08 hectares. Among marginal farmers, the average holding was 0.25 hectares, compared with the national average of 0.38 hectares.

 

Problems of tenant farmers

 

Across India, very few income-support schemes have meaningfully reached tenant farmers. A 2022 study of Telangana’s Rythu Bandhu scheme found that only 0.4 per cent of tenant farmers received a share of the financial assistance from landlords. Just 1 per cent received compensation for crop damage, even though 77 per cent reported suffering losses over the preceding three years.

 

The study, one of the most exhaustive on the status of tenant farmers, was conducted by grassroots organisation Rythu Swarajya Vedika. Covering 7,744 farmers across 34 villages in 20 districts of Telangana, it found that 2,753 of them were cultivating leased land. Total number of tenant farmers in Telangana, the report estimated, stood at 2.2 million, twice the figure projected by the NSSO. 

The survey also found that only 5 per cent of tenant farmers had received Loan Eligibility Cards under the 2011 Licensed Cultivators Act, and just 44 per cent were able to sell their produce at MSP rates, as procurement remains tied to land ownership.

 

The social composition of tenant farmers was revealing: 61 per cent belonged to backward castes, 22.9 per cent to scheduled castes, 9.7 per cent to scheduled tribes, and the rest to other castes and minorities.

 

Identity cards and legalising tenancy

 

Introducing identity cards for tenant farmers is seen as an important step towards formal recognition and the guarantee of rights. But experts caution that it is not enough on its own.

 

“Legalising tenancy is definitely a better option from the tenant farmers’ point of view as it then puts a system in place, even if the government in question changes,” said Kiran Vissa, social activist and co-founder of Rythu Swarajya Vedika, in an interview with Business Standard. “But until that happens, having identity cards for sharecroppers or tenant farmers is a good step forward.”

 

He added that identity cards without legal backing are of limited use as they don’t carry the same weight, and banks are reluctant to lend against them. Such cards could, however, help tenant farmers access agricultural schemes and disaster compensation.

 

“Landlords themselves often discourage tenant farmers from enrolling for such cards unless they have legal validity,” noted Vissa.