Overview of Land Use Policies in India

India supports nearly 18% of the world’s population on just 2.4% of its total land area. That’s an enormous pressure on a finite resource. And yet, approximately 32% of India’s land is already degraded, with 25% undergoing active desertification. For a country where agriculture forms the backbone of rural livelihoods and food security, the way land is used – and protected – is not just an environmental question. It’s an economic and social one. Land use policies in India directly address this challenge, setting out objectives for preventing soil degradation, reclaiming damaged land, and ensuring that future generations inherit productive, healthy soils.

Why land use policy matters in India
The National Land Utilisation Policy: core goals
Preventing soil degradation
Improving soil fertility
Reclaiming degraded land
Watershed-based land use planning
What watershed planning achieves on the ground
Countering exploitative land development
The role of local governance
Key challenges that remain

Why land use policy matters in India

Land is the most fundamental input in agriculture, yet it is often the most neglected. Although agriculture accounts for only about 14% of India’s GDP, it remains the primary source of livelihood for the majority of the rural population and the foundation of the country’s food security. With food grain demand projected to rise significantly in coming decades, protecting and improving land quality is non-negotiable.

Soil degradation in India is estimated to be occurring on 147 million hectares of land – including 94 million hectares from water erosion, 16 million from acidification, 14 million from flooding, and 9 million from wind erosion. These numbers make India one of the most land-degradation-affected nations in the world. Around 29% of eroded soil is lost to the sea, 61% is transferred from one place to another, and 10% is deposited in reservoirs – permanently reducing the country’s agricultural productive capacity.

Land use policies exist to reverse this trajectory. They provide a framework for how land should be allocated, managed, and restored – across agriculture, forests, urban spaces, and wastelands – to serve both current needs and future sustainability.

The National Land Utilisation Policy: core goals

India’s National Land Utilisation Policy (NLUP) is the primary framework guiding land use decisions at the national level. Its overarching goal is to achieve improvement of livelihood, food and water security, and the best possible realization of various developmental targets to ensure sustainable development. It provides a framework for states to develop their own land utilisation policies that incorporate region-specific conditions and priorities.

The policy’s objectives cover a wide spectrum. From a social standpoint, it aims to protect agricultural lands from conversion to non-agricultural uses, thereby safeguarding food production capacity. From an environmental perspective, it focuses on preserving ecologically sensitive zones, maintaining ecosystems that provide critical services, and countering land degradation. On the developmental side, it calls for coordinated, sustainable development across agriculture, urban areas, industry, infrastructure, and mining – minimizing land use conflicts and negative environmental impacts.

Preventing soil degradation

One of the most urgent objectives of India’s land use policy is stopping the ongoing degradation of soils. Years of chemical-intensive agricultural practices following the Green Revolution have led to extensive soil degradation across the country, with consequences ranging from loss of topsoil to declining crop yields, salinization, and acidification.

Perverse incentives – such as free power for groundwater pumping, nitrogenous fertilizer subsidies, and Minimum Support Price policies that influence crop choice toward water-intensive varieties – have contributed to degradation of additional areas. Addressing these structural drivers is a core part of the policy agenda, alongside more direct soil conservation measures.

Practical soil conservation approaches promoted under India’s land use framework include contour plowing, terracing on slopes, cover cropping to protect bare soil between harvests, and agroforestry – integrating trees and shrubs into farmland to stabilize soil and improve its organic content. Research consistently shows that application of organic manure is more effective than chemical fertilizer use in terms of soil conservation, pointing toward a need for policies that incentivize organic input use among farmers.

Improving soil fertility

Degraded land isn’t just unproductive – it’s a long-term liability. India’s Draft National Soil Policy envisions reducing soil loss by one-third by 2030 compared to 2004 levels, with a key objective of increasing soil organic carbon levels in line with India’s commitments under the Paris Climate Agreement.

Improving soil fertility requires moving away from the current over-reliance on chemical fertilizers. In the 1950s, 16% of soil nutrients in India came from organic sources, while 84% came from chemical fertilizers. Today, that balance has sharply reversed – 94% of nutrients now come from inorganic fertilizers and only around 7% from organic sources. This shift has depleted soil organic matter, reduced microbial activity, and caused deficiencies in micronutrients like zinc, sulphur, and manganese that were not present a generation ago.

Policy responses include promoting the Soil Health Card scheme, which provides farmers with detailed information about their soil’s nutrient status to enable more efficient and targeted fertilizer application, and encouraging composting, farmyard manure application, and crop residue incorporation as fertility-enhancing practices.

Reclaiming degraded land

Land reclamation is a critical component of India’s land use policy objectives. Degraded land – whether waterlogged, saline, alkaline, or eroded – cannot support productive agriculture until it is actively restored. The economic loss from reduced productivity on degraded lands has been estimated at Rs. 285,000 million – representing about 12% of the total productivity value of these lands. These are not abstract losses; they directly affect the incomes and food access of marginal farmers and tribal communities who often rely on the most degraded soils.

Reclamation efforts are guided by an assessment of land capability – identifying what type of restoration is feasible for a given parcel, and what land use it can realistically support after treatment. Soil conservation measures and reclamation of degraded lands are decided based on land capability and land use suitability, with integrated watershed management adopted as a key national strategy for scaling these efforts.

Watershed-based land use planning

One of the most significant shifts in India’s land use policy thinking over recent decades has been the move toward watershed-based planning. Rather than treating individual plots of agricultural land in isolation, watershed planning considers the entire landscape – the network of soils, water flows, vegetation, and communities – as an integrated unit that must be managed holistically.

The Integrated Watershed Management Programme, launched in 2009, brought together several earlier schemes including the Desert Development Programme, Drought Prone Area Programme, and Integrated Wasteland Development Programme under a single unified framework. It was later absorbed into the Watershed Development Component of the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (WDC-PMKSY) in 2015-16.

The objectives of watershed development projects are to improve the productive potential of rainfed and degraded land through integrated watershed management, to strengthen community-based local institutions for livelihood promotion, and to improve efficiency through cross-learning and incentive mechanisms. WDC-PMKSY 2.0, approved for 2021-2026, targets coverage of 49.50 lakh hectares with a central financial outlay of Rs. 8,134 crore.

What watershed planning achieves on the ground

The results of watershed-based management programmes provide compelling evidence for this approach. Under WDC-PMKSY 1.0, groundwater levels rose by up to 3 meters in several project areas, net cultivated area increased by up to 30%, and farmer incomes in some regions rose by over 70% through a combination of farm ponds, agroforestry, and allied activities.

Studies from watershed projects in Chhattisgarh found significant positive impacts on soil and water conservation, soil fertility, farming methods, and farming intensity – along with substantial increases in the water table and groundwater levels. These outcomes underscore that watershed planning is not just an environmental intervention – it is a rural development strategy.

Watershed management also promotes soil moisture conservation through field bunds, contour trenches, farm ponds, and check dams, which collectively reduce runoff, recharge groundwater, and extend the availability of moisture for crops in rain-fed areas. Watershed management increases soil productivity and agricultural production by improving water availability and soil fertility, and empowers local communities to adopt sustainable practices that increase their incomes.

Countering exploitative land development

Beyond the natural processes of degradation, India’s land use policy also has to contend with human-driven exploitative land use – agricultural practices and development patterns that extract value from land without restoring it. India strives to achieve Land Degradation Neutrality by 2030, a commitment under the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, which means that any new degradation must be offset by equivalent restoration elsewhere.

Key policy recommendations for countering exploitative land use include promoting soil literacy campaigns, revising land use policies to prevent conversion of productive agricultural land, and implementing the National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture (NMSA), which promotes climate-resilient and resource-efficient farming practices.

The FAO, working in collaboration with India’s Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, is currently implementing GEF-funded projects across eight states to mainstream biodiversity conservation, climate change adaptation, and sustainable land management into Indian agriculture. These projects aim to bring greater coherence between the government’s policies, investments, and institutions at the landscape level – the kind of integrated approach that individual sector-specific policies have historically lacked.

The role of local governance

No land use policy, however well-designed, can function without implementation at the local level. Virtually all outstanding examples of sustainable land management in India are traceable to visionary local leadership supported by communities and assisted by public policies for sustainable resource use, infrastructure creation, and knowledge development.

India’s soil governance strategies must be inclusive, addressing the needs of small and marginal farmers who constitute the majority of the agricultural workforce and are often most vulnerable to soil degradation, lacking the resources to invest in restoration technologies. Providing technical and financial support to these farmers is identified as critical for achieving national land use and soil health goals.

A proposed National Soil Policy, aligned with SDG 15.3 on land degradation neutrality, calls for establishing a National Soil Inventory to gather data on soil health parameters, developing a soil information system for decision-making, and promoting science-based conservation measures at the village and district level. The success of these efforts depends on active participation from communities, panchayats, women’s groups, and NGOs – not just top-down directives from government departments.

Key challenges that remain

Despite the progress made through watershed programmes and the evolving National Land Utilisation Policy, several structural challenges persist. State Land Use Boards, established in the 1970s to coordinate soil and land resource management, have largely been abolished, and most states currently lack consistent, logical approaches to land use issues – with responses that are often spontaneous and unplanned.

Rapid urbanization continues to convert productive agricultural land at an accelerating rate. The fragmentation of landholdings – average farm size declined from 2.3 hectares in 1970 to 1.3 hectares by 2000, with 80% of farmers holding 2 hectares or less – creates economic pressures that make sustainable land management practices difficult for small farmers to adopt without external support.

There is also a persistent gap between policy design and ground-level implementation. The programme faces challenges including poor project design, financial constraints, insufficient training for District Watershed Teams and Gram Panchayats, and a lack of national legislation specifically governing watershed management. Addressing these gaps requires not just policy revision, but institutional strengthening and sustained investment in community capacity.

India’s land use policy landscape is broad and evolving. From the National Land Utilisation Policy’s foundational objectives to watershed-based programmes that have demonstrated tangible outcomes on the ground, the direction is clear – protect what remains, reclaim what has been lost, and plan land use around the natural systems that sustain agriculture. The scale of the challenge is significant, but so is the policy architecture that has been built to address it.

What do you think? Given that over 30% of India’s land is already degraded, should the government prioritize restoring degraded land over preventing new degradation – or are these goals inseparable? And with small and marginal farmers most affected by soil degradation yet least able to invest in restoration, what policy mechanisms would most effectively reach them?

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Table of Contents

Why land use policy matters in India 🔗

The National Land Utilisation Policy: core goals 🔗

Preventing soil degradation 🔗

Improving soil fertility 🔗

Reclaiming degraded land 🔗

Watershed-based land use planning 🔗

What watershed planning achieves on the ground 🔗

Countering exploitative land development 🔗

The role of local governance 🔗

Key challenges that remain 🔗