RDI is engaged in a rapidly developing initiative to establish a new agenda for land reform in India. After three years of intensive research and assistance to government actors, RDI is seeing Indian policy-makers and international donors taking an increased interest in land issues. The national and state governments are now embracing key RDI-proposed reforms, pilot projects are developing, and a team of Indian professionals are taking charge of RDI in-country operations.

The focus of this agenda is a set of promising new measures to provide land access and improved land rights to the rural poor, women, and other marginalized groups. The centerpiece is an RDI recommendation that state governments in India allocate small house-and-garden plots to the rural landless (see below).

The Problem and The Opportunity
Poverty imposes an oppressive weight on India, especially in rural areas where almost three of four Indians and close to 80 percent of the Indian poor live. Despite decades of efforts at poverty alleviation, the absolute number of poor has doubled since Independence in 1947. India today has the largest number of poor people on the planet. India also has the greatest concentration of rural households that are totally landless — 60 million households. Landlessness and rural poverty are closely linked. In fact, a recent World Bank report, India: Achievements and Challenges in Reducing Poverty (A World Bank Country Study 1997), showed that landlessness is by far the greatest predictor of poverty in India—even more so than caste or illiteracy.

Another 250 million rural residents live in households that own less than 0.2 hectares of land. For many of these households, gaining access to more land would be an opportunity to climb out of poverty. However, land policy and the legislative and administrative framework in India present substantial obstacles to gaining greater land access and rights.

Rural women in India feel the weight of poverty the most. Females are more likely than males to die as infants and children. More than six of ten women in India are illiterate—almost double the male rate. And, most significantly, Indian women rarely have legal rights to land, despite the fact that they are often more engaged in agriculture than men.

Rural land problems in India have not gone unnoticed. In the decades following Independence, many Indian states passed land reform laws aimed at broadening access to rural land. But these efforts—except for a few notable successes—were poorly designed and implemented. Measures aimed at taking significant land from larger landowners (with very little compensation) and strictly regulating the landlord-tenant relationship were difficult to administer and aroused strong opposition. They provided little relief to the rural poor and women and, in many cases, led to perverse results that stymied land access and rights for the poor. Until recently, these failures caused Indian policy-makers to conclude that land reform was not an answer to problems plaguing India's countryside.

In recent years, RDI research and advocacy has encouraged policy-makers to put land reform issues back on the agenda. Numerous government actors at both the state and national level are actively exploring a revised agenda for land reform with the continued assistance of RDI's research and comparative experience.

The Program
RDI is working with partners including key government actors, selected research institutions, and NGOs to study, develop, communicate, and help implement feasible legislative, policy, and administrative reforms. RDI is currently active in Karnataka, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh and has begun the work in Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh. Additional states have also sought RDI's advice on land policy matters and we have dialogued with officials in numerous other states through national and state workshops.

The India program was established by RDI Executive Director, Tim Hanstad, who was stationed in-country for two years. Following his return to the U.S. in June 2003, RDI has continued its work through a team of Indian nationals based in Delhi, Bangalore, and Calcutta.

Work to date has consisted of a series of field studies, reports, workshops, and other advisory activities. This work has pointed to a set of new, practical measures that promise to provide meaningful land rights to the rural poor, women, and other marginalized groups. These include:

• Allocating house-and-garden plots to impoverished landless laborers;
  
  
• Revising tenancy laws to increase the rural poor’s access to land;
  
  
• Providing joint titling and other protections for women;
  
  
• Turning informal “possessors” (squatters) into formal owners; and
  
  
• Making land markets work better for the poor.

Homestead Plots
RDI's central recommendation is that Indian states allocate small house-and-garden plots to the landless poor. RDI's field studies in Karnataka and West Bengal, along with parallel data from other countries, has shown that families with house and garden plots of roughly 2,000 square feet or more enjoy greatly enhanced livelihoods. Such plots, though extremely tiny by developed-country standards, can be intensively cultivated to supplement existing sources of food and income. Benefits include improved nutrition, increased income, access to affordable credit, and improved status in the community.

Based on RDI's findings, the Karnataka state government is moving ahead with plans to distribute such house-and-garden plots to the rural landless in 35 of the state's most impoverished tahsils (counties). The West Bengal and Gujarat state governments are also actively considering similar policies. To implement such programs, state governments can distribute state-held land and could purchase the land on the market for distribution at very modest cost, averaging less than $100 per family. And the evidence—including RDI's further field research in Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh—suggests that this recommendation is applicable to other Indian states with large numbers of landless poor.

Women and Land
Field studies in Karnataka and West Bengal have also focused on empowering women through land ownership. RDI research in both states has indicated that:

• Women comprise a disproportionate share of the landless
  and rarely hold legal rights to land;
  
  
• The oppressive practice of dowry is integrally linked with women’s
  inferior access and rights to land; and
  
  
• Providing women with legal rights to land will increase their status
  and social and economic security.

Based on these findings, RDI is working with Indian counterparts to advance recommendations aimed at enhancing women's access and rights to land. Such recommendations include changing state legislation to require government-distributed land to be granted jointly to husbands and wives or independently to women. RDI is working actively in West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh to research and promote such measures.

Joint Projects
RDI has also started two "grounded" pilot projects on house-and-garden plots with local partners. In Karnataka, RDI has partnered with the University of Agricultural Sciences on a project to provide agricultural extension services to families with small kitchen gardens to help them use their land most efficiently to improve their nutrition and income. And in West Bengal, RDI is working with a local NGO to provide house-and-garden plots to landless and near-landless families.

Now also underway are projects on land purchase by landless women in two states with the World Bank; and on women and land ownership with the National Academy of Administration.

For more information on RDI's India program, contact Gregory Rake at gregoryr@rdiland.org.

	Field Studies/Research
	Selected Reports/Writings
	Workshops

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