Which of the following are disadvantages of subdivision and fragmentation of land holding ?
(a) Wastage of Land
(b) Disguised Unemployment
(c) Easy to Land Management
(d) Low Productivity

Question

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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.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) 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.  (c) 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.  (d) 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.

Concept: 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.

State PCS 2026 Q45 — Economy PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2026 Q45 — Economy PYQ with Answer