MPSC 2026 Prelims Paper-I · Question 45 of 100

Correct — option (2), "Only (a), (b) and (d)". Subdivision is the splitting of a holding among heirs generation after generation. Fragmentation is what that splitting produces on the ground — a single farmer's land ending up as several small, scattered, non-contiguous plots, sometimes strung across different parts of the village. Three of the four items printed are recognised consequences of that process and one is not. Statement (a), wastage of land, is a disadvantage and a very literal one. Every plot needs its own boundary ridge or bund, and every scattered plot needs an access path to reach it. The more numerous and the smaller the plots, the greater the proportion of the total area given over to boundaries and footpaths rather than to crops. Land is also wasted indirectly: irregular, awkwardly shaped strips cannot be ploughed efficiently and leave unusable corners. Statement (b), disguised unemployment, is a disadvantage. Disguised unemployment is the condition in which more people are engaged on a piece of land than it needs, so that the marginal product of the additional worker is close to zero and withdrawing him would not reduce output. Subdivision produces exactly this. As holdings shrink, the family that owns them does not shrink with them; the same number of hands works a smaller area, everyone appears to be employed, and much of that labour adds nothing. It is the standard textbook illustration of the concept in Indian agriculture. Statement (d), low productivity, is a disadvantage and follows from the rest. Tiny scattered plots cannot be irrigated as a unit, cannot justify a tubewell or a tractor, cannot be consolidated for land levelling or soil conservation, and force the cultivator to waste time and bullock power moving between them. Investment per acre falls, supervision is harder, and yields suffer. Statement (c), "Easy to Land Management", is not a disadvantage. Whatever the printed grammar, the sense of the phrase is ease of managing land — and that is the opposite of what fragmentation does. Managing one consolidated block is easier than managing five scattered strips, which is the entire rationale for consolidation programmes. The item is an advantage-shaped intruder placed in a list of disadvantages, and spotting it settles the question. Once (c) is out, the arithmetic is quick. Option (1) contains (c) and dies. Option (4), "All of the above", contains (c) and dies with it. That leaves option (2), which takes (a), (b) and (d), against option (3), which takes only (a) and (d) and drops disguised unemployment — the one consequence of fragmentation that every syllabus names explicitly. Option (2) is the answer. A word on option (4). "All of the above" is offered eleven times in this booklet. It is not a choice you take because a list looks broadly right; it is right only when every single named item can be shown to belong, and wrong the moment one of them survives your scrutiny. Here (c) survives, so (4) is closed.

• (1)Only (a), (b) and (c) — Option (1) admits (c), ease of land management, into a list of disadvantages, and simultaneously drops (d), low productivity. Both moves are wrong. Ease of management is what consolidation of holdings is designed to achieve and what fragmentation destroys — a cultivator with five scattered strips spends time and bullock power simply travelling between them. And low productivity is the most frequently cited economic consequence of small scattered holdings in every account of Indian agriculture, so it cannot be the one item excluded.
• (3)Only (a) and (d) — Option (3) is the careful candidate's error. It correctly refuses (c) and correctly keeps (a) and (d), but it drops (b), disguised unemployment. That is the one item this option cannot afford to lose, because fragmentation of holdings is the standard Indian illustration of disguised unemployment: the family stays the same size while the holding shrinks, so surplus labour is absorbed on the farm at close to zero marginal product. A candidate who rejects (b) has usually confused disguised unemployment with seasonal or open unemployment.
• (4)All of the above — Option (4) sweeps in all four items including (c), ease of land management, which is not a disadvantage of fragmentation but the thing fragmentation takes away. An escape option of this kind is available only when every named item can be shown to belong; a single survivor closes it off, and here (c) plainly survives. Candidates reach for 'All of the above' when three of four items look right and the fourth is not examined — which is precisely the reflex the option is printed to punish.

Subdivision and fragmentation are two linked but distinct defects of India's agrarian structure. Subdivision is the division of ownership: under prevailing inheritance practice a holding is partitioned among sons in each generation, so the average operational holding shrinks steadily over time. Fragmentation is the division of location: the partitioned shares are not carved out as single blocks but distributed plot by plot, so that each heir receives a piece of the good land, a piece of the irrigated land and a piece of the poor land, and ends up with several disconnected strips. The causes usually listed are the law of inheritance, the breakdown of the joint family, mounting population pressure on land in the absence of non-farm employment, the decline of village handicrafts which pushed artisans back on to agriculture, and rural indebtedness leading to distress sale of parcels. The consequences run from the physical — land lost to boundaries and paths, obstacles to irrigation and mechanisation, difficulty of soil conservation — to the economic — low productivity, high supervision cost, unviable holdings that cannot support investment or credit — to the social, in the form of endless boundary disputes and litigation.

The recognised remedy is consolidation of holdings, the exchange and re-allotment of scattered plots so that each cultivator receives a single compact block of equivalent value. Maharashtra's governing statute is the Bombay Prevention of Fragmentation and Consolidation of Holdings Act, 1947, which both fixes a standard area below which a plot may not be further fragmented and provides the machinery for consolidation schemes. Cooperative and joint farming were pressed as alternative answers in the Five Year Plan era with limited success; ceilings on holdings addressed the opposite problem, concentration at the top, and did nothing to arrest fragmentation at the bottom. The scale of the problem is visible in the Agriculture Census: the average size of an operational holding in India fell from about 2.28 hectares in 1970-71 to 1.08 hectares in 2015-16, and small and marginal holdings — those below two hectares — accounted for roughly 86 per cent of all holdings by then. Maharashtra is among the five States in which the majority of India's small and marginal farmers live.

• Subdivision is the partition of ownership among heirs; fragmentation is the resulting scattering of one cultivator's land into several small, non-contiguous plots. The two are usually named together but describe different things, and examiners test the difference.
• Standard causes: the law of inheritance, decline of the joint family, growing pressure of population on land, decline of village handicrafts and rural industry, and rural indebtedness leading to distress sale of parcels.
• Standard consequences: land wasted on boundaries and access paths, obstacles to irrigation and mechanisation, difficulty of soil conservation, high supervision and travel costs, boundary disputes and litigation, disguised unemployment, and low productivity per acre.
• Agriculture Census figures: the average operational holding in India shrank from about 2.28 hectares in 1970-71 to 1.08 hectares in 2015-16, with small and marginal holdings below two hectares making up roughly 86 per cent of all holdings.
• Maharashtra's statutory remedy is the Bombay Prevention of Fragmentation and Consolidation of Holdings Act, 1947, which prescribes a standard area below which land may not be fragmented further and provides the machinery for consolidation schemes.

• Treating subdivision and fragmentation as synonyms. Subdivision reduces the size of a holding; fragmentation scatters it. A holding can be small without being fragmented and fragmented without being especially small.
• Confusing disguised unemployment with seasonal or open unemployment. Disguised unemployment means the worker appears employed but his marginal product is near zero — withdrawing him would not reduce output.
• Taking an 'All of the above' option because most of the list looks right. It is available only when every named item can be shown to belong; a single surviving item closes it.
• Assuming a ceiling on landholdings is the remedy for fragmentation. Ceilings attack concentration at the top of the distribution; consolidation of holdings is the measure aimed at scattering at the bottom.

MPSC returns to agrarian structure in three shapes. The first is this list-sorting format — a set of consequences with one intruder that belongs to the opposite column, testing whether the candidate reads each item rather than recognising the topic. The second is definitional, separating subdivision from fragmentation, or disguised from seasonal unemployment. The third is statutory and State-specific: which Maharashtra Act governs prevention of fragmentation and consolidation, what a standard area is, and how consolidation schemes are notified. Because the intruder in list questions is usually the item that would be a benefit rather than a cost, the fastest reading strategy is to scan the list once for an item pointing the wrong way, and only then decide between the remaining combinations.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Consolidation of holdings is recommended as a remedy chiefly for which agrarian problem ?

  • (a)Concentration of land ownership in a few hands
  • (b)Scattering of a cultivator's land into non-contiguous plots
  • (c)Insecurity of tenure of tenant cultivators
  • (d)Absence of recorded rights in land

  Answer(b) Scattering of a cultivator's land into non-contiguous plots. Consolidation exchanges and re-allots plots so that each cultivator receives a single compact block of equivalent value, which restores the possibility of irrigation, mechanisation and soil conservation. Concentration at the top is addressed by ceiling legislation, insecurity of tenure by tenancy reform, and absence of recorded rights by record-of-rights and land record modernisation — three different limbs of land reform.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  As per the Agriculture Census 2015-16, the average size of an operational holding in India was approximately :

  • (a)2.28 hectares
  • (b)1.08 hectares
  • (c)0.38 hectares
  • (d)3.15 hectares

  Answer(b) 1.08 hectares. The average operational holding has fallen steadily as subdivision continues — it stood at about 2.28 hectares in 1970-71, which is the distractor offered at option (a), and small and marginal holdings below two hectares made up roughly 86 per cent of all holdings by 2015-16. The direction of the trend is as examinable as the number itself.