Budget 2024: Land and labour the focus of next generation of reforms
Mint earlier reported that the budget may introduce digital cards for farmers with geo-tagging, containing their land details. These actions will facilitate credit flow and other agricultural services, as per the finance minister's budget speech. The linking of land and farmer registries to help credit flow into agriculture aligns with the suggestions made by chief economic advisor V.
Anantha Nageswaran in the economic survey for FY24 released on Monday. The wider economic link was drawn out in February when the then rural development minister Giriraj Singh said that digitization of land records and registrations will likely improve India's GDP by about 1.5 percentage points. “Completing the digitalization of land records will not only decrease the extensive backlog of land dispute cases in courts but also significantly improve the country's ease of doing business ranking," Singh had said.
In the FY25 budget, the rural development ministry has been allocated ₹1.77 trillion, including ₹2,667 crore for the land resources department, against ₹1.71 trillion of revised estimates for FY24. The department's FY24 revised budgetary allocation was ₹1,898 crore, as per the budget document. However, some experts were sceptical about the proposals announced on Tuesday.
“This has been going on for decades. Around 90% of holdings are small and marginal, so their digitization may be of little help. These landholders earn less than ₹10,000 per month.
Aggregation of their produce may be marginally helped by digitization. The more important issue is their corrections so that they are up to date," said Siraj Hussain, former union agriculture secretary. Neeraj Hatekar, economist and professor at Azim Premji University, said, “The intentions
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