Land reforms

The effects of land acquisition processes and poor urban planning on Dalits and the marginalised landless population are analysed. How minor changes in laws and policymaking processes can change or prevent future policy issues by addressing landlessness-borne issues in consistency with sustainable development goals and social inclusion is examined. This study aims to understand the complexities and transitory socio-economic problems underlying urban development planning. It finds that poor and marginal landless village residents, who had little to no idea about the land acquired for a public purpose, undoubtedly faced the most unfavourable outcomes in the course of rural to urban development.

Rentier Capitalism: Disorganised Development and Social Injustice in Pakistan by Shahid Ahmed, UK: Palgrave Macmillan UK, March 2016; pp 248, $120(hardcover).

Secure and just land tenure, and sound management of land and natural resources are crucial to easing conflicts between farmers, the State, and extractive industries. This paper underlines that Myanmar cannot hope to achieve inclusive social and economic development without a just and comprehensive framework that protects the land rights of small farmers, ethnic minorities, and the poor. A lack of participation and transparency in land management, coupled with legal and institutional weaknesses that work in favour of big capital rather than small farmers and the rural poor, poses a major challenge to the country's social and economic reform programme.

Land reform legislation in India, designed to redress issues of poverty and landlessness, has in most cases, suffered from design flaws and a failure of implementation. Land reform efforts are also stymied due to a lack of political will, scarcity of land and resources. Research summarised in this article seeks to offer an innovative and alternative solution, one that involves the provision of amply-sized homestead plots. As experiments in other countries, replicated in certain districts of Karnataka have borne out, such homestead and garden plots hold out the prospect of substantial benefits to poor, rural households, offering them much more than a place to build a house.

This study on two districts of West Bengal focuses on the status of rural women, and their equal right to productive resources, especially land, keeping in view the fact that the implementation and scale of land reform in the state has surpassed that of any other in India. Given the overwhelming desire of the women to be considered as individuals above all other classifications, and for direct ownership of property, to be able to emerge from the shadows of dependence, much needs to be done in the legislative, executive and legal spheres to address the issues pertaining to women's rights.