Context :

• The Paris-based World Inequality Lab (WIL) released an important report on land inequality in India in April 2026 titled "Land Inequality in India: Nature, History and Markets".

Key Points :

• The research paper is co-authored by Nitin Kumar Bharti, David Blakeslee and Samarin Malik.
• It focuses on rural areas of ten major Indian states (Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and West Bengal).
• It uses data from the 2011 Socio-Economic Caste Census, covering 270,000 villages and around 650 million individuals.

Key Findings :

• Land ownership in rural India is highly concentrated. The top 10% of households own 44% of total land, while about 46% of households are landless.
• The top 5% and top 1% households own 32% and 18% of land respectively.
• In many villages, the largest landowner controls on average 12% of land. Bihar and Punjab have the highest number of such villages.
• The richest household’s land ownership ranges from 7.3% in Uttar Pradesh to 20.1% in Bihar.
• Landlessness is highest in Punjab at 73%, while it is relatively high in Madhya Pradesh (51%) and Bihar (59%). It is lower in Rajasthan (34%) and Uttar Pradesh (39%).

Inter-state Inequality and Gini Coefficient :

• Kerala has the highest Gini coefficient at 90, indicating the highest level of land inequality.
• It is followed by Bihar, Punjab, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, with Gini coefficients around 80.
• Karnataka and Rajasthan have the lowest Gini coefficients, below 65.
• The average landholding size among landholding households is 6.2 hectares.
• Small landholders (0–1 hectare) own 28.9% of total land, while those with 1–2 hectares own 48.6%.
• In 3.8% of villages, the largest landholder owns more than 50% of the land.
• Access to cultivable land and markets accounts for 18.3% of variation in land inequality.