1 **INTRODUCTION**

# **1.1 Background**

Access to land is of fundamental importance in rural India. It remains the principal determinant of rural income distribution, although the direction of causality in this relationship is not clear. The weight of international evidence now strongly endorses a strategy for rural economic growth that is based on small yet economically viable, family-run farms. In the Indian context, in which a large and rising share of the rural poor derive livelihoods principally from their own labour, a powerful case can be made in favor of more equitable land distribution on grounds that such a strategy would generate more employment than alternatives. In sum, with the overall objectives in mind of reducing poverty, raising agricultural productivity, and promoting social inclusion, there are strong arguments for seeking ways to improve access to land for the poor and other socially excluded groups in rural Indial.

Conventional approaches to improving access to land for the rural poor, both in India and elsewhere, have focused on land and agrarian reform. Land reform is perceived by some to be rising up the political agenda once again in many states of India. In the Ninth Five-Year Plan (1997-2002) the Department of Rural Development, Government of India, is focusing on land reforms, including new strategies to benefit socially excluded groups such as the selective liberalization of land-lease markets, and the promotion of women's land rights. Although state-imposed, redistributive land reforms are conventionally believed to have been unsuccessful in the Indian context (with notable exceptions), recent evidence suggests that much more has been achieved in implementing Indian land reform legislation than is often supposed. Nevertheless, the prospects for bringing about a meaningful improvement in access to land by the rural poor may be even stronger if attention is turned now to more limited, pragmatic measures, such as the selective deregulation of lease markets; and incremental reforms in land administration to facilitate more rapid, fairer, and cheaper conveyancing procedures. Such institutional reforms would also help to meet some of the preconditions necessary for the successful implementation of land consolidation and/or land redistribution programs where appropriate.

# **1.2 Scope and objectives of study**

In FY98 the South Asia Rural Development Sector Unit of the World Bank initiated an informal study on access to land in rural India. The overall objectives were to contribute to poverty reduction and rural economic growth in selected states of India by: (i) identifying feasible legal and institutional reforms, policy instruments, or other mechanisms to improve access to land, particularly for the rural poor and other socially excluded groups; and (ii) determining the potential role for the Bank (if any) in supporting such reforms, instruments and mechanisms.

During Phase I of the study, an overview policy issues and options paper (Mearns, 1998) was prepared based on literature review and consultations with specialists within and outside the World Bank. The aims and scope of this review were: (i) to exanine the broad context of land relations in rural India; (ii) to identify the major constraints on access to land by the rural poor and other socially excluded groups; (iii) to suggest priority areas

> 1 Patterns of social exclusion tend to be closely correlated though not synonymous with the incidence of poverty. It is well recognized that people of scheduled tribes and scheduled castes in India are much more likely than other groups to live below the poverty line. Throughout this paper, 'socially excluded groups' refer to people of scheduled tribes and castes, women, and the rural poor. All of these groups are more likely than better-off or more powerful and influential groups to suffer from forms of discrimination at the hands of those government officials with whom they come into contact, and to be more or-less excluded from receiving entitlements through administrative procedures.

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