reformn legislation by state, focusing chiefly on ceilings on agricultural holdings<sup>7</sup> , some of the key provisions concerning tenancy, and progress in land consolidation. This brief review is by no means exhaustive, however. Further work is required to understand the practical operation of land legislation in selected states and its consequences for the rural poor and socially excluded.

Broadly speaking, three major types of land reform legislation have been enacted after independence, though not all of these have been enacted in all states: the abolition of intermediary tenures; regulation of the size of holdings (through ceiling-surplus redistribution and/or land consolidation); and the settlement and regulation of tenancy (Ray 1996, Appu 1997). The stated intentions of these reforms, justified on grounds of both social justice and economic efficiency in agriculture, were to transfer land 'to the tiller' (often entailing a _dejure_ if not _de facto_ ban on landlord-tenant relations), to increase security of tenure for tenants (through registration of informal, oral tenancy agreements; conversion of continuous tenancies into ownership rights), and to regulate rents paid by tenants.

The political reality behind these reforms, however, is that they were generally promulgated by ruling elites composed of or electorally dependent on the upper echelons of agrarian society (Herring 1983). The **abolition of intermediaries** during the 1950s was more completely and easily achieved than subsequent reforms owing to political expediency: it brought substantial gains to many at relatively low political cost. Paradoxically, many of the beneficiaries of the abolition of intermediaries (former upper and middle caste tenants) are now among those politically visible, larger landowners who bitterly oppose ceilings on land holdings (Ray 1996). Moreover, the cost of the abolition of intermediaries was high: the heavy compensation paid to former _zamindars_ enabled many of them to become rich agro-industrialists, and many acquired ownership rights over land they did not previously own. These early reforms left substantially unchanged the inequalities in land holdings and the precarious position of sharecroppers and agricultural laborers.

It is conventionally thought that **ceiling-redistributive reforms** in India have achieved little. For example, Ray (1996) estimates that over a period of 35 years ceilings have been enforced and land redistributed on less than 2 per cent of the total operated area. Ceilings were frequently set too high in relation to the average size of household operational holdings to have much impact on the agrarian structure in most states. Various exemptions and loopholes left by individual states allowed landlords to retain control over land holdings, most infamously through _benami_ transactions whereby village record-keepers _(patwaris)_ could be bribed to register holdings in the names of deceased or fictitious persons. The lack of accurate, updated records of rights in land is widely noted to be a major constraint on the effective implementation of ceilingredistributive and tenancy reforms. However, the threat of ceilings does seem to have prevented the further expansion of large holdings, and there is little doubt that the redistribution of even very small plots of homestead land has brought substantial benefits to the poor. Some states have achieved much greater progress than others in implementing ceiling-redistributive reforms: Jammu and Kashmir has redistributed 17 per cent of its operated area, West Bengal 6 per cent, and Assam 5 per cent.

All land ceilings acts have a sliding scale of ceilings according to land quality; only the lowest ceiling is indicated here. In Rajasthan, for example, ceilings in desert areas are as high as 70 ha.

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