Indian Official Statistics: Part VII (a)

1. Agricultural Statistics

Collection of agricultural statistics in India is primarily the responsibility of the States. At the all-India level, the Directorate of Economics and Statistics under the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation (DES-Ag) is the central coordinating agency responsible for the collection, compilation and publication of agricultural statistics. The primary statistics on agriculture are those relating to land utilisation (including area under crops) and crop production.

1. Land utilisation statistics
   1.                                                               i.      By land utilisation statistics we mean statistics giving are areas of land put to different uses, area irrigated and crops irrigated, and areas under different crops. Such data have been almost continuously available since 1844, but the geographical coverage of these statistics and their scope have been gradually expanding. Currently, land use statistics are available for about 92% of the total geographical area of the country. Over four-fifths of the other 8% of the total area is located in Jammu & Kashmir and broadly covers the part of the State under occupation of Pakistan and China. The remaining non-reporting areas cover inaccessible areas under forests, barren mountains and holly tracts of the North-Eastern States.
   2.                                                             ii.      From the stand-point of collection of area statistics, the States may be divided into three groups. In the first group are the former temporarily-settled States, where the village revenue agency maintains land utilisation statistics as part of land records. These are collected by the patwari on the basis of complete field-to-field enumeration and fairly reliable. The second group comprises the former permanently settled States of West Bengal, Orissa and Kerala, where no village revenue agency exist. Until recently, the land utilisation statistics for these States used to be collected by the chowkidars. Since the chowkidars had many other duties to perform, the data were of a poor quality. As such, these States have in recent times adopted the sample survey method for obtaining land use statistics. The third group consists of areas which are neither cadastral surveyed nor have the requisite revenue agency. For these areas, the statistics reported are in the nature of eye estimates of revenue officers. Out of the total reporting area, estimates for 81.7% of the area are based on complete enumeration, those for 9.2% in sample surveys and those for the remaining 9.1% in conventional or impressionistic estimates by the village chowkidars or higher revenue officials.
   3.                                                           iii.      Till 1949 -50 land use statistics used to be presented according to a five-fold classification. Since the classification did not give a clear, meaningful picture and was not detailed enough to serve the needs of agricultural planning, a nine-fold classification replaced the old classification in 1950-51. Standard definitions of the classes were also laid down. The correspondence between the old classes and the new and also descriptions of the new classes are given below:

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