The Model Land Lease Act, 2016, was proposed by the NITI Aayog as a solution to the stringent tenancy laws that, according to it, were prohibiting the formalising of land leases across the country. The NITI Aayog report argued that the Model Land Lease Act of 2016, if applied in all the states, would formalise the concealed land leases and protect both the tenant and the owner and improve agricultural efficiency and equity. Some states started taking steps in that direction, and Maharashtra was one of them, introducing a bill based on the model law in April 2017.

This chapter critically examines the land lease bill introduced by the Government of Maharashtra in 2017 through an exploratory study of lease agreements and practices in the Osmanabad district of Maharashtra State. It looks at the salient provisions of the bill in the neoliberal state and whether it holds the potential for providing a security of tenure for the landless and women’s collectives. It concludes that by and large the land lease bill and the model act on which it is based is largely silent on the rights of the tenant and in its present form does not address the concerns of land leases by women and landless people’s collectives.