Comparative Analysis of Tenancy Statistics: Implications for Concealed Tenancy

Reliability of leased out area reported under the household ownership holding distributions of the National Sample Survey is doubtful. It suffers from significant negative bias due to underreporting of tenancy by landlords. The degree of bias was found to vary substantially across the states for 1981-82 (37th Round). The author argues that its variation over the ownership size class, too, must be unequal and therefore warns against an elaborate analysis of leased out area statistics.

More important is the implication of direct and significant relationship of the size of negative bias with the value of output per hectare and incidence of rural poverty. Indeed, in areas with high concentration of tenancy and poverty, growth in informal tenancy has been distressingly high.