Session 2A on Day 2 (November 7, 2025) of the International Conference on Agrarian Change was chaired by Niladri Sekhar Dhar (Associate Professor, Bihar Institute of Public Finance and Policy, Patna). The discussant was Mihika Chatterjee (Lecturer, International Development, Department of Social and Policy Sciences and Co-Director, Centre for Development Studies and Centre for the Study of Violence, University of Bath). The speakers were Ameet Kumar (Doctoral Student, IIT Roorkee), Mrityunjay Pandey (Research Consultant, National Centre for Good Governance), Gobinda Padhan (PhD Scholar, Maa Manikeshwari University), and Peddi Dayakar (Assistant Professor, AERC, Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune).

The session discussed unequal land rights, rising tenancy, caste-based land inequality, and worsening land degradation, and how together they shape a deeply uneven rural landscape in India.