information are essential, coupled with the countervailing influence of strong civil society institutions, it is equally important that the land administration officers are regarded as allies rather than obstacles to reform, and ways devised to see that they also benefit.

- _Promotion of women's independent land rights:_ the clearest way to begin challenging embedded social norms and customs that prevent women from exercising their legal rights to hold land is through policy measures that aim explicitly to increase the bargaining power of women within the household and within wider society. Women's access to land may come about through inheritance of parental property, government allotment of ceiling-surplus land, and clear contractual access through tenancy and access to commons. In some states, gender biases in tenancy laws need to be removed, as do certain biases in the Hindu Succession Act of 1956. Legislative measures alone will be insufficient, however, and will do little to challenge discriminatory norms and customs. Even limited steps such as joint land title over ceiling-surplus land and house-sites, for example, which are already accepted at the policy level, have yet to be implemented on any substantial scale. A complementary approach towards realizing women's land rights directly would be to grant land to groups of women, with access to credit for complementary investments and inputs such as tubewell irrigation. Such collective approaches, often with NGOs playing a catalytic role, have demonstrated advantages in strengthening women's bargaining power, which might then allow them more scope to challenge customary restrictions on their independent property rights.

- _Transparency andpublic access to information:_ A principal reason for high observed rates of rent-seeking by government officers in land administration, and for patterns of discrimination against the rural poor and other groups with weak bargaining power, is the very complexity of the legislative framework governing land reform and land administration in many states. In spite of well-meaning provisions ostensibly designed to protect the poor, this complexity allows considerable scope to those - usually the non-poor - who are best able to exploit legal loopholes to their own advantage. Our Orissa study reveals some of the ways in which access to land by the rural poor is inhibited by the practical functioning of land survey and settlement operations, land consolidation programs, the failures in implementation of legislation to prevent encroachment on revenue land, and in land records management more generally. While these findings cannot be assumed to apply to all states, they do suggest hypotheses that may be tested through further state-level studies. Overall, it is suggested that the legislative framework governing land administration in many states warrants considerable simplification (e.g. bringing together of numerous laws into a unified structure), and that investments be made in the wide public dissemination (e.g. local-language manuals, made available through gram panchayat meetings) of information regarding people's land rights, and how to go about pressing legal claims to land.

- _Strong_ **_civil_** _society institutions:_ Strong civil society institutions are the other side of the coin to transparency and public access to information. Where there has been most success in tenancy reforms (e.g. West Bengal) and land consolidation (e.g. Uttar Pradesh), common ingredients have included broad-based participation through strong representative bodies (e.g. panchayats) or community-based organizations. NGOs have achieved wide and justified acclaim for their efforts in defending tribal land rights, women's land rights, and pursuing public interest litigation to prevent illegal encroachment by non-poor groups on land intended for redistribution to the landless. In all these cases, awareness-raising, monitoring, and pressure from strong civil society institutions ensures that there are checks and balances on inappropriate uses of state power, and that safeguards for the poor are upheld in law

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