Terms and conditions of sharecropping contracts: An analysis of village survey data in India

Abstract

This paper reports data on terms and conditions of share‐cropping contracts collected in 1975–6 from 334 randomly chosen villages in four states in India. Among other things, it suggests some evidence of higher crop share for the tenant positively associated with higher‐yielding varieties of grains and negatively with cost‐sharing by the landlord. Unpaid and obligatory service by the tenant for the landlord is quite uncommon; even less common is the phenomenon of a tenant being tied to a particular landlord. The landlord quite often gives production loans to the tenant, shares in costs of seeds, fertilizers, etc., participates in decision‐making about the use of these inputs and in general takes a lot of interest in productive investments on the tenant farm, quite contrary to the traditional image of rentier or usurious landlords associated with “semi‐feudalism”