Revised version of papers presented at the National Workshop on Land Markets and Rural Poverty, held at Mussoorie during 10-11 August 2004.

Three-fourths of the world’s poor are rural poor. Most of the rural poor remain dependent on land-based livelihoods for their incomes and reproduction despite significant livelihood diversification in recent years. Land issue remains critical to any development discourse today. Market-led agrarian reform (MLAR) has gained prominence since the early 1990s as an alternative to state-led land reforms. This neoliberal policy is based on the inversion of what its proponents see as the features of earlier approaches, and calls for redistribution via privatized, decentralized transactions between ‘willing sellers’ and ‘willing buyers’. Its proponents, especially those associated with the World Bank, have claimed success where the policy has been implemented, but such claims have been contested by independent scholars as well as by peasant movements who are struggling to gain access to land. This book presents three thematic papers and six country studies. The thematic papers address issues of formalisation of property rights, gendered land rights, and neoliberal enclosure. These studies demonstrate the pervasive influence of neoliberal ideas on property rights and rural development debates, well beyond the ‘core’ question of land redistribution. The country cases bring together experiences from Brazil, Guatemala, El Salvador, Philippines, South Africa and Egypt. Common findings include the success of landowners in minimising the impact of reform, and a lack of post-transfer support, translating into marginal impact on poverty. The limitations of the market-led approach, and the implications of the studies presented here for the future of agrarian reform, are considered in the editors’ introduction. This book was a special issue of The Third World Quarterly.

The book provides a timely contribution to the discussion on land reform; scrutinizing the inadequacy of the market-oriented approach to land reform which is linked to structural adjustment policies and advocate convincingly a flexible approach toward re-distributive reforms as the most appropriate strategy towards alleviating rural poverty.

M. Riad El-Ghonemy argues that if current trends in government-led and market based land reforms persist the rural poor population in developing countries will continue to rise.Based on nearly half a century of academic and field research this valuable work presents compelling evidence on persistent rural poverty, hunger and increased inequality in

With the use of wide-ranging case studies the author clearly illustrates the impact of schemes intended to re-allocate land in developing countries. Concluding that land reform can play a major part in stimulating rural economies this book explores the extent to which such policies can successfully reduce poverty and increase agricultural growth.

A host of internationally eminent scholars are brought together here to explore the structural causes of rural poverty and income inequality, as well as the processes of social exclusion and political subordination encountered by the peasantry and rural workers across a wide range of countries. This volume examines the intersection of politics and economics and provides a critical analysis and framework for the study of neo-liberal land policies in the current phase of globalization. Utilizing new empirical evidence from ten countries, it provides an in-depth analysis of key country studies, a comparative analysis of agrarian reforms and their impact on rural poverty in Africa, Asia, Latin America and transition countries. Presenting an agrarian reform policy embedded in an appropriate development strategy, which is able to significantly reduce and hopefully eliminate rural poverty, this work is a key resource for postgraduate students studying in the areas of development economics, development studies and international political economy.

With the use of wide-ranging case studies the author clearly illustrates the impact of schemes intended to re-allocate land in developing countries. Concluding that land reform can play a major part in stimulating rural economies this book explores the extent to which such policies can successfully reduce poverty and increase agricultural growth.

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.

Redistributing land rights is a tricky subject and one that easily becomes controversial as recent experience has shown. This new book calmly examines the strengths and weaknesses of different forms of land redistribution.