Answer

Karma-bhumi is the land where people can actively perform actions that create karma and where spiritual effort, dharma, tapa, and liberation are possible. Akarma-bhumi is the land where people live in a more natural, easy, and less effort-based way, and where karmic activity is very limited.

Explanation

In Jain tradition, the world is divided into different types of lands:

Karma-bhumi

• Here, human beings can work, earn, trade, farm, build, and perform various actions.
• Because of active effort and choice, the soul accumulates karmas through action, thought, and speech.
• It is also the land where spiritual practice, penance, right conduct, and liberation are possible.
• Bharat Kshetra and Airavat Kshetra are examples of Karma-bhumi during certain time cycles.

Akarma-bhumi

• Here, life is more simple and natural.
• People do not need to do much labor for food and basic needs.
• Because there is very little active worldly effort, it is called Akarma meaning “without कर्म-like activity” in the practical sense.
• These lands are not the same as Karma-bhumi in terms of worldly actions and social structure.
• Such lands are described in Jain cosmology as regions where human life exists in a different, more effortless form.

Spiritual Understanding

The main spiritual difference is this:

• In Karma-bhumi, the soul gets more opportunities to bind karma, but also more opportunities to remove karma through dharma and sadhana.
• In Akarma-bhumi, there is less worldly struggle, but also generally less scope for the intense spiritual effort seen in Karma-bhumi.

So, from a Jain view, Karma-bhumi is especially important because it is the field of both bondage and liberation.

Takeaway

• Karma-bhumi = land of active worldly and spiritual action.
• Akarma-bhumi = land of very limited worldly action and easier living.

If you want, I can also give this in a table form or explain it according to Jain cosmology with examples.