Land Owner, Small Farmer, Marginal Farmer and the Landless

The Act grades its protection by a person's relation to the land: the recorded owner, the owner outside the record, the farmer defined by holding size, and the landless defined by work. The categories decide who receives compensation, who receives which rehabilitation entitlements, and whose consent counts. This closing note of the foundations part takes the categories in turn.

1. Land Owner: Title Beyond the Record

• The recorded owner: the person whose name stands in the record of rights, or in documents such as sale deeds and pattas, as owner of the land, the starting point of every acquisition file.
• The forest-rights holder: a person granted rights under the Forest Rights Act, 2006, Scheduled Tribes and other traditional forest dwellers whose individual or community rights are recognised, owners for this Act though the revenue record never knew them.
• The assignee: a person entitled to hold land assigned by the State or Central Government under any of its schemes, the welfare grantee protected against re-dispossession.
• The State-law owner: any person declared owner under a law of the State for the time being in force, the clause that absorbs tenancy-reform and occupancy-rights statutes.
• The consequence: each limb takes compensation in its own right; the definition is the Act's answer to a century of acquisitions that paid only the record and left customary and reform-law holders to fight the apportionment.

2. Small and Marginal Farmers

The Act adopts the standard agrarian classification. A marginal farmer cultivates up to one hectare of un-irrigated land or half a hectare of irrigated land; a small farmer cultivates up to two hectares of un-irrigated or one hectare of irrigated land, being more than a marginal farmer's holding. The categories do their work in the Act's margins and in policy around it: the SIA weighs the project's incidence on small holdings; State ceilings on multi-crop acquisition under Section 10 are set with the small-holder economy in view; and R&R practice, choice of land-for-land where offered, annuity against employment, the fisherfolk and artisan allowances, turns on how far a family's holding could absorb the loss. The thresholds also feed State rules and schemes that key benefits to the classification.

3. The Landless and the Agricultural Labourer

The 1894 Act had no category for those who worked land they did not own; the 2013 Act builds them into its central definition. The landless enter as the second limb of affected family, agricultural labourers, tenants of every description, sharecroppers and artisans with three years' work in the affected area and livelihood dependence on it, and through the forest and water dependent and urban-livelihood limbs (Topic 13). Their entitlement is the R&R award: the subsistence allowance, the choice among employment, one-time payment or annuity under the Second Schedule, the resettlement benefits where displaced, and training and skill-development where the scheme provides. They take no land compensation, having no land, but the Act's premise is that the acquisition took their economy nonetheless. Their inclusion in the consent denominator (Section 2(2)) gives the landless a veto-share in private-benefit acquisitions, which is, doctrinally, the Act's most radical single choice.

4. The Categories at Work

5. Related Topics and Provisions

• Affected family in depth (Topic 13): the limbs the landless enter by
• Food security and Section 10 (Topic 23): where the farm categories weigh
• The Second Schedule (Topic 48): the entitlements the categories unlock
• Apportionment (Topic 77): when limbs of ownership collide