The statement is profoundly true; the transfer of land from cultivating to non-cultivating owners is indeed a significant driver of socio-economic transformation in Indian society, often with far-reaching and negative consequences.

Justification and Illustrations:

1. Agrarian Distress and De-peasantization: Small and marginal farmers, facing chronic indebtedness, crop failures due to climate change, lack of irrigation, and unremunerative prices, are often forced to sell their land. This land is frequently acquired by urban investors, real estate developers, or large corporations who are non-cultivating owners. For example, farmers in regions surrounding rapidly urbanizing cities like Bengaluru or Gurugram sell their agricultural land for commercial or residential projects, losing their primary livelihood and identity as cultivators.

2. Rise of Absentee Landlordism and Corporate Farming: The new non-cultivating owners often lease out the land to tenant farmers or engage in corporate farming, focusing on cash crops or industrial raw materials. This revives a form of absentee landlordism, where the owner has no direct connection to the land or the local community, leading to a detachment from traditional agricultural practices and local food security needs.

3. Increased Inequality and Social Dislocation: This transfer exacerbates rural inequality, concentrating land ownership in fewer, often wealthier, hands. Displaced farmers become landless agricultural laborers, migrating to urban areas in search of work, contributing to the growth of the informal sector and urban slums. This process breaks down traditional village social structures and community bonds, leading to social dislocation and increased vulnerability for the former landowners.

4. Shift in Agricultural Practices: Non-cultivating owners might prioritize profit-driven agriculture, leading to a shift from subsistence food crops to commercial crops, or even converting agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes (e.g., solar farms, industrial parks). This can impact local food security, environmental sustainability, and the traditional agrarian ecosystem.

5. Exploitation of Labor: When land is leased out, the new owners often dictate terms that are unfavorable to tenant farmers or agricultural laborers, leading to increased exploitation, low wages, and precarious employment conditions.

In essence, this land transfer transforms a society of self-reliant cultivators into one with a growing class of landless laborers and a concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few non-agrarian entities, fundamentally altering the social fabric and economic landscape of rural India.