Economic Affairs, Vol. 64, No. 4, pp. 813-819, December 2019 DOI: 10.30954/0424-2513.4.2019.17 ©2019 EA. All rights reserved How to cite this article: Bansal, S. and Grover, D.K. (2019). Tenant farming in Punjab: nature, pattern and constraints. Economic Affairs, 64(4): 813-819. Tenant Farming in Punjab: Nature, Pattern and Constraints Surbhi Bansal* and D.K. Grover Department of Economics and Sociology, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana-141004, Punjab, India *Corresponding author: surbhi.bansal1993@gmail.com (ORCID ID: 0000-0003-3780-9850) Received: 20-06-2019 Revised: 15-10-2019 Accepted: 27-11-2019 ABSTRACT The paper has demonstrated slow growth rate of agricultural output, escalating input cost, declining proft margin, fragmentation of land, and unemployment are the symptoms of the Punjab’s economy. In such a situation, it become imperative to study how the tenant farmers survive in farming. To keep in mind the above facts, the present study was undertaken to examine the nature of tenancy system and constraints faced by tenant farmers in the state. The study was based on the primary data, collected from 120 farmers, for all the three agro-climatic zones of Punjab pertaining to the crop year 2017-18. Descriptive tools were used to study the nature of tenancy and mean score was used for constraints analysis. The study highlighted that to make them self employed or fulfll the need of family, tenant farmers took land on leased from cultivator who switched to another sector and migrated in large number outside the country. From the study it was perceived that with the increase of size of holding and majority of tenant farmers adopted land holding to improve the scale of farming and to be economically viable. Highlights m Expensive farm machinery, inefective government policies and inadequate timely fnancial assistance from banks were found as major constraints confronted by the tenant farmers. m The legalization of land leasing, transparency in leased contracts, factors afecting the tenant farming is the main policy implications to encourage the tenant farmers in the state. Keywords: Tenant farming, Nature of tenancy system, Legalization of land leasing, Constraint analysis Tenancy is one of the oldest agrarian institutional devices evolved in order to make the distribution of operational holdings more equitable than the distribution of ownership holdings and contributes to a beter distribution of income than would be possible without it (Srivastava 1983). Thus the promotional role of tenancy as an institution has an important bearing upon the distribution of land ownership. Contrary, the distribution of land ownership not only determines the concentration of land holdings in the rural economy but also shapes the tenancy structure. The traditional view of tenancy market holds the view that the small farmers, in general, intend to leased-in land, while the large farmers are involved in leased-out operation. This temporary transfer of land via tenancy is evolved to facilitate adjustment and interlinked transactions in agriculture (Bardhan and Rudra 1978). The tenancy is seen as a source of exploitation of the tenant and thus some proponents of the thought leveled it as a semi-feudal institution which retards technological innovation in agriculture (Bhaduri, 1973; Bharadwaj, 1974; Prasad, 1974). Being inelastic in supply and immobile in nature it assumes greater importance among the farming community with an increasing demand for it. Main factors which afect the demand for land are population, urbanization and productivity. It is, however, felt that owing to enforcement of various land laws, high cost of farm technology, exorbitant land prices, etc. the land market has somewhat frozen (Chadha and Baumik 1992). In fact the efficiency of tenant farming is