A STUDY ON QUALITATIVE ASPECTS OF AREA RECORDED IN REVENUE LAND

Abstract

In India land use statistics under nine fold classification is being collected through complete enumeration in most of the states except Kerala, Orissa and West Bengal. In these three states statistics are collected by selecting 20% villages through random selection procedure. Further, these villages are completely enumerated for collection ol statistics. Ihe quality of these statistics is a topic of debate during discussions among planners and researchers in the field of agricultural research and development. In order to assess the quality of these statistics in a scientific and objective manner a study was taken up in Lalitpur district of UP in rabi season of 2001-2002 to study the qualitative aspects of land use statistics as recorded by village level worker (patwari) in revenue land records (khasra register). Survey number wise area under different land use categories as compared between revenue land records and ground truth survey (field survey) in randomly selected villages. Results revealed that the area recorded in the revenue land records is reliable after aggregation at the upper level i.e. village and above but there were variations at individual unit level i.e. at survey number level.