India: Land Under Relief Features PDF

for everybody’s need and not for any body’s available land for various purposes with careful greed.” He placed the greedy and selfish planning. individuals and exploitative nature of modern India has land under a variety of relief technology as the r...

for everybody’s need and not for any body’s available land for various purposes with careful greed.” He placed the greedy and selfish planning. individuals and exploitative nature of modern India has land under a variety of relief technology as the root cause for resource features, namely; mountains, plateaus, plains depletion at the global level. He was against and islands. About 43 per cent of the land area mass production and wanted to replace it with is plain, which provides facilities for agriculture the production by the masses. and industry. Mountains account for 30 per cent of the total surface area of the country and ensure perennial flow of some rivers, provide At the international level, the Club of Rome facilities for tourism and ecological aspects. advocated resource conservation for the first About 27 per cent of the area of the country is time in a more systematic way in 1968. the plateau region. It possesses rich reserves Subsequently, in 1974, Gandhian philosophy of minerals, fossil fuels and forests. was once again presented by Schumacher in his book Small is Beautiful. The seminal LAND UTILISATION contribution with respect to resource Land resources are used for the following conservation at the global level was made purposes: by the Brundtland Commission Report, 1987. This report introduced the concept of 1. Forests ‘Sustainable Development’ and advocated 2. Land not available for cultivation it as a means for resource conservation, (a) Barren and waste land which was subsequently published in a book (b) Land put to non-agricultural uses, e.g. entitled Our Common Future. Another buildings, roads, factories, etc. significant contribution was made at the Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992. 3. Other uncultivated land (excluding fallow land) (a) Permanent pastures and grazing land, LAND RESOURCES (b) Land under miscellaneous tree crops groves (not included in net sown area), We live on land, we perform our economic (c) Cultruable waste land (left uncultivated activities on land and we use it in different for more than 5 agricultural years). ways. Thus, land is a natural resource of utmost importance. It supports natural 4. Fallow lands vegetation, wild life, human life, economic (a) Current fallow-(left without cultivation activities, transport and communication for one or less than one agricultural year), systems. However, land is an asset of a finite (b) Other than current fallow-(left magnitude, therefore, it is important to use the uncultivated for the past 1 to 5 agricultural years). 5. Net sown area the physical extent of land on which crops are sown harvested is known as net sown area. Area sown more than once in an agricultural year plus net sown area is known as gross cropped area. LAND USE PATTERN IN INDIA The use of land is determined both by physical factors such as topography, climate, soil types as well as human factors such as population Fig 1.3: India : Land under important Relief density, technological capability and culture Features and traditions etc. 4 CONTEMPORARY INDIA – II Reprint 2024-25