Abstract: May 1999 - Which factors prevent the rural poor and other socially excluded groups from having access to land in Orissa, India? The authors report on the first empirical study of its kind to examine - from the perspective of transaction costs--factors that constrain access to land for the rural poor and other socially excluded groups in India. They find that: Land reform has reduced large landholdings since the 1950s. Medium size farms have gained most. Formidable obstacles still prevent the poor from gaining access to land; The complexity of land revenue administration in Orissa is partly the legacy of distinctly different systems, which produced more or less complete and accurate land records. These not-so-distant historical records can be important in resolving contemporary land disputes; Orissa tried legally to abolish land-leasing. Concealed tenancy persisted, with tenants having little protection under the law; Women's access to and control over land, and their bargaining power with their husbands about land, may be enhanced through joint land titling, a principle yet to be realized in Orissa; Land administration is viewed as a burden on the state rather than a service, and land records and registration systems are not coordinated. Doing so will improve rights for the poor and reduce transaction costs--but only if the system is transparent and the powerful do not retain the leverage over settlement officers that has allowed land grabs. Land in Orissa may be purchased, inherited, rented (leased), or--in the case of public land and the commons--encroached upon. Each type of transaction--and the State's response, through land law and administration--has implications for poor people's access to land. The authors find that: Land markets are thin and transaction costs are high, limiting the amount of agricultural land that changes hands; The fragmentation of landholdings into tiny, scattered plots is a brake on agricultural productivity, but efforts to consolidate land may discriminate against the rural poor. Reducing transaction costs in land markets will help; Protecting the rural poor's rights of access to common land requires raising public awareness and access to information; Liberalizing land-lease markets for the rural poor will help, but only if the poor are ensured access to institutional credit. This paper--a product of the Rural Development Sector Unit, South Asia Region--is part of a larger effort in the region to promote access to land and to foster more demand-driven and socially inclusive institutions in rural development. Robin Mearns may be contacted at [email protected].

Based on a study of three districts, Sambalpur, Khurda and Ganjam in the Indian state of Orissa, discusses the factors that restrict access to land by the rural poor and other socially excluded groups from the perspective of transaction costs.

'Democracy in India is only a top-dressing on an Indian soil, which is essentially undemocratic', warned Bhimrao Ambedkar, the principal architect of the country's constitution, a year into independence. The social order - the soil on which India's new democratic edifice was then being erected - was marked by social hierarchies and economic vulnerabilities. Decades of socio-economic changes since then would transform this old order, albeit unevenly across Indian states, to decisively shape the development of democracy in the country. Why Democracy Deepens relates how these socio-economic changes have deepened democracy in India beyond its topsoil. Drawing on his research in villages and states, Anoop Sadanandan explains how socio-economic changes have heightened the need for local voter information, and have promoted grassroots democracy in some Indian states. By exploring the pivotal political developments in the world's largest democracy, the book puts forward a theory of local democratization.

This Country Assistance Evaluation (CAE) reviews the development effectiveness of World Bank assistance to India during the 1990s. It builds on evaluations of sector assistance programs, projects, and nonlending services to make these assessments. This report uses the standard evaluation categories of outcome, sustainability, and institutional development.

Life as we know it seems to be underpinned on electrical energy. Live without it for 2 days and everything unravels. You cannot work, meet deadlines, shop, store or feed yourself. --Suhasini Ayer, Auroville, Pondicherry, India This book describes global natural and cultural biodiversity and the way to unite individuals from various backgrounds through collaboration, natural restoration and peaceful co-existence. It explores Asian culture and economic growth, particularly in India, to promote equality within the Indian social order through a paradigm shift--building a society based on mutual well-being rather than caste distinction. India and the world has the potential to grow and expand in a profoundly sustainable and positive socioeconomic manner. Juxtaposing nature and our human world, this book reveals the parallels found between the worlds of nature and humanity. Learning from the symmetry and harmony of nature, humanity too can co-exist in a peaceful and positive way through the process of symbiosis. Pavan Gills manuscript addresses two of the most pressing issues of our time: inequality and human security. Her...insightful and well-researched work on ecological biodiversity and environmental harmony in India is both creative and original. Professor Gordon Smith -Executive Director of the Centre for Global Studies-Distinguished Fellow at the Centre for international Governance Innovation (CIGI), and Adjunct Professor of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of Victoria

This book discusses the nuances of corridor development in India and its implications on land acquisition and displacement. It explores the complexities of land related conflicts and its socio-economic impacts on people’s lives. Examining the evolution of a few corridors of national importance like the Mumbai-Nagpur Expressway, Yamuna Expressway, Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor, and Pune-Mumbai Expressway, the volume provides a comprehensive understanding of the dynamics of corridor development and regional growth. The book discusses how policies relating to land acquisition result in political, economic, legal and psychological hardships. The authors, using primary and secondary data, assess the socio-economic implications of land-acquisition on agriculture, employment, environment, demography, and land utilization along the regions touching these corridors. The work further discusses sustainable interventions in land acquisition practices to ensure equity of land and resources for vulnerable communities. The book will be useful for students and researchers of public policy, development studies, economics, urban and regional development studies and sociology. It will also be of interest to academicians, regional planners, and those working in the field of land development, resettlement and rehabilitation.

Abstract: May 1999 - Access to land is deeply important in rural India, where the incidence of poverty is highly correlated with lack of access to land. The author provides a framework for assessing alternative approaches to improving access to land by India's rural poor. He considers India's record implementing land reform and identifies an approach that includes incremental reforms in public land administration to reduce transaction costs in land markets (thereby facilitating land transfers) and to increase transparency, making information accessible to the public to ensure that socially excluded groups benefit. Reducing constraints on access to land for the rural poor and socially excluded requires five key issues: restrictions on land-lease markets, the fragmentation of holdings, the widespread failure to translate women's legal rights into practice, poor access to (and encroachment on) the commons, and high transaction costs for land transfers. Among guidelines for policy reform the author suggests: Selectively deregulate land-lease (rental) markets, because rental markets may be important in giving the poor access to land; Reduce transaction costs in land markets, including both official costs and informal costs (such as bribes to expedite transactions), partly by improving systems for land registration and management of land records; Critically reassess land administration agencies and find ways to improve incentive structures, to reduce rent-seeking and base promotions on performance; Promote women's independent land rights through policy measures to increase women's bargaining power within the household and in society generally; Improve transparency of land administration and public access to information, to reduce rent-seeking by land administration officers and to strengthen poor people's land rights (and knowledge thereof); Strengthen institutions in civil society to provide the awareness, monitoring, and pressure needed for successful reform and to provide checks and balances on inappropriate uses of state power; In a companion paper (WPS 2124) the author addresses these issues at the level of a particular state - Orissa, one of India ' s poorest states - in an empirical study, from a transaction costs perspective, of social exclusion and land administration. This paper - a product of the Rural Development Sector Unit, South Asia Region - is part of a larger effort in the region to promote access to land and to foster more demand-driven and socially inclusive institutions in rural development.

July 1999 Between 1989-97, large private capital flows to Turkey contributed to economic growth. Yet chronic and high fiscal deficits - coupled with an inconsistent financial sector regulatory framework - left the banking system and the economy vulnerable to capital flow reversals and external shocks. Recent developments in a number of emerging economies have heightened interest in the relationship between macroeconomic management and financial regulation, in an environment of open capital accounts and large-scale movements of private capital. Celasun, Denizer, and He analyze the Turkish experience with capital flows in a macroeconomy characterized by chronically high inflation and fiscal deficits. They study the relationship between capital flows, macroeconomic management, and vulnerability in the financial system. Their analysis highlights the importance of fiscal policy in an era of large capital flows. Fiscal imbalances contributed both to real exchange rate appreciation and high real interest rates in Turkey. The high interest rates the government must pay on domestic debt have become one of the key issues of Turkey's macroeconomic management. Only by reducing its interest expenses can fiscal deficits be reduced and greater stability be achieved. The Turkish banking system, in becoming increasingly integrated with international financial markets, has become vulnerable to shifts in market confidence. Banks borrowed abroad in response to macroeconomic imbalances to benefit from high interest rates on domestic loans and government paper. In the process, the banks have exposed themselves to interest rate risk, to foreign-exchange risk, and to large credit risks. To reduce the Turkish economy's vulnerability to external shocks, financial regulation must be strengthened simultaneously with the achievement of macroeconomic stability. This paper - a product of the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Sector Unit, Europe and Central Asia Region - is part of a larger effort in the region to examine the relationship between capital flows and economic management. The authors may be contacted at [email protected], [email protected], or [email protected].

"How do rebels give up arms and return to the same political processes that they had once sought to overthrow? The question of weaning rebels away from extremist groups is highly significant in the context of counterinsurgency as well as pacification of insurgencies. Existing explanations focus mostly on state capacity, counterinsurgency operations, or on socioeconomic development. This book, drawing primarily on several rounds of interviews with Maoist rebels as well as other stakeholders in conflict zones, shows that from the rebel's perspective, what is of paramount importance in whether or not they quit extremism is the ease with which they can exit and lay down their arms without getting killed in the process. This fear is further exacerbated by the belief that while they could lose their lives, the Indian state, they believed, would lose nothing even if it failed to protect retired rebels and keep its side of the bargain. This created a problem of credible commitment, which, in the absence of institutional mechanisms, is addressed locally by informal exit networks that grow out of grassroots civic associations in the gray zones of democracy-insurgency interface. The book shows that a lot of Maoist rebels quit in the South of India because robust and harmonic exit networks in the South resolve the problem of credible commitment locally and create conditions for safety and reintegration of former Maoists. In the North, on the other hand, very few rebels quit the same insurgent organization during the same time because scrawny, discordant exit networks in the North exacerbate rebels' fear, discouraging retirement and impeding reintegration. This book also highlights how the various steps in the process of disengagement from extremism are linked more fundamentally to the nature of societal linkages between insurgencies and society, thereby bringing civil society into the study of insurgency in a theoretically coherent way"--