Culturable wastelands. Before 1946, there were no attempts made to find out the extent of culturable waste lands available for reclamation. however, the Food Grains Policy Committee in 1947 drew the attention of the Government of India to the existence of about 3.6 million hectares of weed-infested land & jungle which could be cleared & made available for cultivation for growing additional foodgrains. Therefore, the Government of India through the Central Tractor Organisation (CTO) started operations in 1947-48 to reclaim about 1 million hectares of waste land within a period of 5 years. Till October 1959, when the C.T.O was closed down 0.68 million hectares of waste land & weed-infested land spread over Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Assam, Madras & Punjab States were reclaimed. Jungle clearance was undertaken in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh & Assam. The C.T.O was wound up as the state governments wanted to reclaim land themselves, instead of hiring the services of the C.T.O, other problems of follow up cultivation of reclaimed lands also came up.

In June 1959, the Government of India constituted a Committee to make a survey of land classified as 'Other uncultivated land excluding fallow land' & 'Fallow lands other than current fallows' & to locate areas where large blocks of land were available for reclamation & resettlement. By 1963, the Committee completed its survey in 13 states of Punjab, West Bengal, Bihar, Mysore, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala, Madras, Andhra Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Orissa & Gujarat. The Committee estimated that in these states, about 0.8 million hectares of waste land was available for cultivation in blocks of 100 hectares(or 250 acres) or more. The total waste land in such large blocks in the whole country was estimated at 1.2 million hectares. Typically wastelands in each state were visited by the Committee & were classified according to certain broad criteria, namely those affected by waterlogging, salinity & alkalinity, soil erosion, & infestation with thick growth of bushes.

After studying the type of soil, rainfall, natural vegetation, etc. suitable reclamation measures were suggested for bringing the areas under cultivation. In addition, whereever necessary, resettlement schemes needed for keeping the areas under cultivation were also proposed. Suitable cropping patterns for various areas & the economics of reclamation in respect of these areas were discussed. Finally, priorities were indicated among various categories of reclamable lands.In regard to the data on culturable wastelands , the Committee observed that land classified as culturable waste at the time of settlement sometimes continued to be shown as such in the revenue records long after they had come under cultivation. In the view of the Committee, the mere collection of statistics under the head 'culturable waste' served little purpose & detailed information about the type of wasteland in each state, the ownership of such land, its availability in sizable blocks & the cost of reclamation measures should be collected. The Committee , therefore, recommended that rapid reconnaissance surveys should be conducted for collecting such information. The Committee further recommended the survey & categorisation of wastelands in blocks measuring less than 100 hectares. For this purpose, several schemes were taken up by different state governments during the Third Plan.

Taking into account the total land resources including hills, mountains, lakes, rivers & lands of all descriptions, the availability of land per head in India comes to only 0.58 hectare as compared with the availability of 59 hectares per head in Australia, 45.07 hectares in Canada, 9.06 hectares in the U.S.S.R, 4.48 hectares in the U.S.A, 2.33 hectares in Burma, 1.21 hectares in Pakistan, 0.43 hectare in the U.K & 0.35 hectare in Japan. It is clear that the availability of land per head in India is among the lowest in the world. This is a natural corollary to the population explosion in old countries, such as India.

The percentage of arable land to the geographical area in India works out at 52.7 as compared with 31.8 in France, 23.9 in Pakistan, 29.6 in the U.K , 27.4 in Burma, 20.4 in U.S.A, 13.0 in Japan, 10.2 in the U.S.S.R & 5.8 in Australia.

The proportion of area under agricultural uses (arable land, permanent pastures & grazing land & land under miscellaneous tree crops & groves) to the total geographical area in India is estimated at 58.4% as compared with 77.2% in the U.K, 46.6% in U.S.A, 30.1% in Pakistan, 28.5%in Burma, 27.1% in the U.S.S.R &17.2% in Japan.The total area under all crops or the gross cropped area, counting the areas sown more than once during a year as many times as they are sown in India during 1970-71, was 167.41 million hectares. The difference between the gross cropped area & the net area sown represents the area sown more than once, & this was estimated at 26.25 million hectares. Thus the intensity of cropping representing the percentage of the gross cropped area to the net area sown works out at 118.6.

Forest Area.According to the land-utilisation statistics,the area under forests during 1970-71 is estimated at 65.9 million hectares. However, according to the returns of forest statistics furnished by the state forests departments, the forest area is put at 75.8 million hectares. The difference in the two sets of figures is due mainly to the variations in the definitions of the term 'area under forests', in geographical coverage and in the reference period.The question of reconciliation of the two sets of figures has been engaging the attention of the Central government and the state governments.A uniform definition has now been adopted for reporting the data by both the sources and it is hoped that the gap between the two sets of figures would be narrowed down considerably, if not altogether eliminated.

In India, forests account for about 22 percent of the total land surface. On the other hand, in advanced countries the area under forests is often about a third of the total land area. Table 2 gives the estimates of geographical, arable and forest areas per head in different countries of the world.