Whether irrigation raises the rate on your land

01The classification exists

The farmland rate book divides land into irrigated, printed in Gujarati as piyat, and unirrigated, printed as bin-piyat. Across the twenty two villages of this region it publishes 362 unirrigated rates and 13 irrigated ones.

All 13 irrigated rates are in a single village, Mundi. No other village page in the region carries an irrigated rate at all, which tells you something about how this coastal stretch of Dhandhuka was farmed when the book was compiled.

02And it makes no difference to the rate

Mundi is the only village in the region whose page prints both classes. Every irrigated rate on that page has an unirrigated rate beside it at exactly the same figure.

That is the finding, and it is worth stating plainly: in the only village where the comparison can be made, the rate book values irrigated and unirrigated land identically at every road situation. The classification is recorded and it is not priced.

So a buyer being told that irrigated land carries a higher government valuation, and therefore a higher registration cost, is being told something the published rate book for this region does not support.

03What this does not mean

It does not mean irrigation is worth nothing. It means the 2011 rate book did not translate it into a different valuation here, which is a statement about a tax instrument rather than about agriculture.

It also does not generalise beyond this region. Nineteen village pages were read for the farmland book and only one of them prints both classes, so the comparison rests on one village. That is a thin base and it is described as one rather than dressed up as a regional rule.

The comparison is drawn from a single village, Mundi, because it is the only village in the region whose page in AHMEDABAD-AGRI.pdf prints both irrigated and unirrigated rates. It should be read as one observation, not as a rule for Gujarat.