A Study on the Trends of Land-Use Change in India (1950-2009)

Objective: An attempt is made to study the change in land use for the period of five decades (1950-2009) so as to access the direction as well as scale of these changes.

Method: This research paper takes the help of secondary data to analyze the trends of land use change at the whole national level. A regression analysis is done on the time series land-use statistics to demonstrate an existential linkage among different categories of land-use. The regression analysis has taken land under non-agricultural uses as dependent variable and barren as well as arable land area as independent variables.

Findings: The null hypothesis is rejected at 5% level of significance, giving the regression equation Y= 194.83 -0.144X1 -0.0588X2, which implies that the transformations which occurred in land area that is taken under non-agricultural purposes will revise the use of land that is barren and non-arable & arable land. If in the present time there is increase in area of land that is under uses other than agricultural then there will be 14.4% decrease in non-arable and barren land and 5.8% fall in arable (land area) tomorrow. The point to be noted is that with rapid rise in area that is under non-agricultural use, there is an immediate decrease in arable land. There is an increase from 2.2% in 1950-60 to 9.4% in 2000-2009 of land area under non-agricultural use. The barren and non-arable land declined from 11% to 6.3% during the same period. The existing studies also shows that there is a rapid decline in arable land area in the past few decades but the variables taken into account in this study are not studied very frequently in other studies.

Application: The study will be helpful in making future policies which are concerned with using current arable land area for non-agricultural activities.