A large number of people in rural India who are landless, although their main…

In India's rural workforce, people are often classified by whether they own agricultural land. Those who own land — however small — are farmers: a 'marginal farmer' holds under 1 hectare and a 'small farmer' holds between 1 and 2 hectares. Those who own no land, and instead earn wages by working on someone else's agricultural land, are agricultural labourers. Landless rural workers who additionally move from place to place — commonly following the seasonal harvest cycle in search of this same wage work — are described as migrant (agricultural) labourers. Unlike the two farmer categories, neither of these two labourer categories owns any land.

Among the four categories named in the question, only marginal farmers and small farmers are defined by owning land; migrant labourers and agricultural labourers are, by contrast, defined by the absence of land ownership and by dependence on agricultural wage-work. So the landless group whose main livelihood is agriculture is captured exactly by migrant labourers and agricultural labourers, while marginal and small farmers are excluded because they own land.

• A combination that pairs migrant labourers with marginal farmers brings in a category that owns land, alongside one that does not.

• A combination that keeps both landless categories alongside marginal farmers still carries a land-owning category among them.

• A combination that keeps both landless categories alongside small farmers likewise carries a land-owning category among them.

• The combination that keeps only migrant labourers and agricultural labourers has no land-owning category among them.

So, among the four categories named, the landless people whose main livelihood is agriculture are captured only by migrant labourers and agricultural labourers.